| Monday, November 22, 2004 |
09:45 - Puritan libertines
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/22/BAG7S9VIKS1.DTL
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These guys are generally thought of as having freedom and personal liberties at the top of their priority lists, right? The overriding reason why "liberals" call themselves "liberals" these days, isn't it, is that they're fighting for people to be able to do whatever they want with their lives—whatever kind of sex they like, whatever kind of drugs they want to take, whatever kind of dogma they wish to entertain?
Well, if I didn't know better, I'd say these folks were aspiring to inherit the mantle of the Puritans. We already know what they think about whether we should eat fast food, whether we should eat meat, whether we should breathe the words "Merry Christmas" around the Winter Solstice, whether we should say the wrong thing about the wrong race or sexual subgroup. And here's what they think about our freedom to drive the vehicles of our choice:
Amid hundreds of new cars, prototypes and sparkling antiques, the Hummer SUV was the center of attention Sunday for a group of zero-emission supporters at the 47th Annual San Francisco International Auto Show.
Carrying signs that read "Dumm and Hummer" and singing songs like "Drive a Hummer, What a Bummer," about 60 demonstrators gathered outside of show at Moscone Center to demonstrate against American dependency on oil.
"I'm doing this because I have a 15-year-old son who I don't want to send off to war just so that someone can drive a Hummer," said Kirsten Moller of San Francisco.
Even beyond the pathetic and dogged adherence to the "blood for oil" argument, even at this late date where all that stolen oil still hasn't driven down gas prices much that I can see, the underlying self-righteousness of this action and the insatiable need to make everything into another example of war and oppression and environmental death is just really starting to grate. We can't even go to a car show anymore without having to entertain these people's fantasies.
How is it that we can live in the age of the least human suffering that there has ever been in history, the most wealth spread across the globe, the best race relations, and the smallest gap between the richest and the poorest living conditions, and not only does chronic outrage among the perpetually angry not evaporate, it gathers to itself new strength every day?
Yeah, I know the academic answers to this question. We've spent the past three years rubbing our chins over it. But, you know, damn. I always considered myself a righteous environmentalist atheist intellectual, pretty much all my young adult life. But these people make me want to burn a tree for Christ.
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Brian Tiemann
