"Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won't want us to ask 'em. They'll just want us to get it for'em!" (Higgins in "Three Days of the Condor")
Above is the picture of the home of man who is the epitome of middle-class America. A man who says he sick of the War in Iraq and wants it to end; a man who says he believes our current President "W" has been irresponsible; a man who says he wants the troops home - now; a man who says he regrets voting for for the same "W"; a man who says he's not buying anymore new cars.
Take a good look at his home. Count then number of cars in the driveway - don't forget the one on the turn-around out front. If you've counted correctly you should come up with five.
This is a man whose property has an automatic sprinkler system installed. This is a man who has an electronic fence installed to keep his Jack Russell terrier in the yard. This is a man who uses a gasoline powered lawnmower, a gasoline powered weed-whacker and a gasoline powered leaf-blower.
This is a man who travels all over town during the work week and to distant places on the weekends. And in his used Mercedes too!
This is a man who travels in his Mercedes sixty miles to Detroit to board a passenger jet plane just to visit his mother almost as if he were just getting on city bus to travel across town.
This is a man living in a house on corner lot in a cul-de-sac neighborhood along with others of his type. It's an exclusive neighborhood in the sense that one must have at least a six figure income even to have been able to have acquired the mortgage to get a house in it.
This is a man whose life is so built upon the automobile and oil that it takes to run it that the public transit system authorities didn't even consider it necessary to have any bus routes near his home because oil was so cheap and readily available at the time the system was planned.
This is a man whose house is located in the fringe part of his city - a part with special taxing rules that divert real property taxes to the school system of a nearby suburb - making it effectively an adjunct or a satellite of the same.
This is a man who sent all of his children to those economically exclusive suburban schools.
And now this man has one child working in the auto industry building more gas guzzlers; and two children working in their own middle-class jobs in far-flung automobile dependent places; and three others still working out their educations so they too can have that their own middle-class jobs that depend upon the automobile and oil to get them there.
All that this man has; all of his success; all of his family; everything that holds this man securely in his socio-economic class is absolutely dependent on oil.
So, tell me, then, do you really believe him when he says he's against the war in Iraq when without a shadow of a doubt that what this war is all about is to gain control of oil? Those troops there are truly fighting for this man and his whole way of life; yet, this man insists on living in the illusion that he opposes this war.
What this man says and what he does are entirely in contradiction. What this man does is cover himself with a very thin and deceptive veneer - really a web of personal self-delusion. Yet, the truth, though this man refuses to face it, is:
when there's no heat in his house and he's cold; when his engines stop; when he truly starts to go hungry - he'll be right out there with the millions just like him demanding that the powers that be in this land go out and get it (oil) for them no matter what it takes or how many soldiers must die doing it.
'W', Jumpin' Johnnie and Bouncin' Barak all know this too. The first one's got his place set and it no longer matters to him what happens. Like Louis XV of France he can flippantly say "After me, the deluge."
I wonder which of the other two will be stuck telling this man, the everyman of his whole social class, that "normal" has already changed and that trying to "get it for'im" intact is no longer possible?
Above is the picture of the home of man who is the epitome of middle-class America. A man who says he sick of the War in Iraq and wants it to end; a man who says he believes our current President "W" has been irresponsible; a man who says he wants the troops home - now; a man who says he regrets voting for for the same "W"; a man who says he's not buying anymore new cars.
Take a good look at his home. Count then number of cars in the driveway - don't forget the one on the turn-around out front. If you've counted correctly you should come up with five.
This is a man whose property has an automatic sprinkler system installed. This is a man who has an electronic fence installed to keep his Jack Russell terrier in the yard. This is a man who uses a gasoline powered lawnmower, a gasoline powered weed-whacker and a gasoline powered leaf-blower.
This is a man who travels all over town during the work week and to distant places on the weekends. And in his used Mercedes too!
This is a man who travels in his Mercedes sixty miles to Detroit to board a passenger jet plane just to visit his mother almost as if he were just getting on city bus to travel across town.
This is a man living in a house on corner lot in a cul-de-sac neighborhood along with others of his type. It's an exclusive neighborhood in the sense that one must have at least a six figure income even to have been able to have acquired the mortgage to get a house in it.
This is a man whose life is so built upon the automobile and oil that it takes to run it that the public transit system authorities didn't even consider it necessary to have any bus routes near his home because oil was so cheap and readily available at the time the system was planned.
This is a man whose house is located in the fringe part of his city - a part with special taxing rules that divert real property taxes to the school system of a nearby suburb - making it effectively an adjunct or a satellite of the same.
This is a man who sent all of his children to those economically exclusive suburban schools.
And now this man has one child working in the auto industry building more gas guzzlers; and two children working in their own middle-class jobs in far-flung automobile dependent places; and three others still working out their educations so they too can have that their own middle-class jobs that depend upon the automobile and oil to get them there.
All that this man has; all of his success; all of his family; everything that holds this man securely in his socio-economic class is absolutely dependent on oil.
So, tell me, then, do you really believe him when he says he's against the war in Iraq when without a shadow of a doubt that what this war is all about is to gain control of oil? Those troops there are truly fighting for this man and his whole way of life; yet, this man insists on living in the illusion that he opposes this war.
What this man says and what he does are entirely in contradiction. What this man does is cover himself with a very thin and deceptive veneer - really a web of personal self-delusion. Yet, the truth, though this man refuses to face it, is:
when there's no heat in his house and he's cold; when his engines stop; when he truly starts to go hungry - he'll be right out there with the millions just like him demanding that the powers that be in this land go out and get it (oil) for them no matter what it takes or how many soldiers must die doing it.
'W', Jumpin' Johnnie and Bouncin' Barak all know this too. The first one's got his place set and it no longer matters to him what happens. Like Louis XV of France he can flippantly say "After me, the deluge."
I wonder which of the other two will be stuck telling this man, the everyman of his whole social class, that "normal" has already changed and that trying to "get it for'im" intact is no longer possible?
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