I'm going to try to make this a daily thing, but bear with me if I skip a day here or there...
I was just thinking that I can't manage to go a day without thinking of at least one irony relating to the left-leaning members of our society. I probably should be more specific, I should talk about "environmentalists," or "pro-choice advocates" or "the gay rights lobby," or the "pro-illegal immigration traitors activists."
I'll try to do that, but again, forgive me if I fail and lump y'all into one big soup. You shouldn't mind, I mean, if you did, that in itself would be ironic since to you all Republicans, all conservatives, all of those who disagree with you are routinely lumped together, and sometimes the terms you use are far meaner and nastier than "right-leaning" or "conservative."
Now that we've got that out of the way, let me get down to business. I was listening to Rush today, and he played a clip from former Fed. Chairman Alan Greenspan. Mr. Greenspan was commenting on the high gas prices and was asked to what he attributed them. His answer? Pretty much what I and many of my conservative pals have been saying for as long as I can remember:
- Extremely high world demand
- Speculation
- Lack of refinery capacity in this country
Interestingly, he didn't consider other factors like the war on terror or Iran's desire to extort us while they develop the capacity to anihilate our allies (and possibly many of us), he pretty much stuck to those three.
And then it hit me: Those who would love to blame Bush, or blame Hummer drivers, or blame the U.S. oil and gas industry executives for the high price of gas are gigantic hypocrites. They are missing the irony that they are approaching the problem as if we in the U.S. are not only the biggest consumers of oil on the planet (which by the way is no longer true--China is right there with us), but also the ONLY ones affecting gas prices here! They act as if--despite the fact that most of the oil we use comes from other countries, has to be pulled out of their ground, transported to a refinery, made into gasoline, then shipped or trucked to our gas stations--all of it is well within OUR POWER to control.
My my, how interesting. I guess that means they think we should use our formidable geo-political power to what, force these other countries to do what they do for less? Or should we force them to sell the bulk of their product to us, even if there are other even higher bidders? Should our government tell oil speculators to go find another way to make a living? Or should we nationalize our oil and gas industry (halting all exploration and innovation in the process)?
Exactly HOW should our government "make it all better" (waaaaaaaaaaaah! *sniff*)
I don't know about all of you, but I find it fascinating that our government is blamed for NOT "doing something" to change what is essentially the WORLD's problem (kinda like the environment, but that's another topic for another day), but when we step in to do something about what we consider to be OUR problem alone, we're terrible, nativist, nationalistic, jingoistic, empirialistic, fascistic tyrants.
What's the message here people? You deserve cheap gas in your cars, but Iraqis don't deserve to even TRY democracy of some sort or other? We should accept that we're not alone in the world, that we are merely "citizens of the world" when trees, wildlife and greenhouse gasses are concerned, but when it's gas? Well, then we ought to throw our weight around as much as need be because God forbid people pay as much for gasoline as they pay for their Starbucks double nonfat iced caramel macciado drinks!
Posted by insomnomaniac at June 7, 2006 2:49 PM | TrackBack