It's hard not to avoid the arguments, especially when they come hot and heavy by all of our progressives friends, the price hikes are, in part, because of our continued dependence, so allow me to fix the situation from this perspective... tax tax tax. Did you catch that? The part about the part? Sure our dependence on oil is PART of the problem and curbing that dependence is PART of the solution. But it fair to say that our only action should be relegated to a part of the problem or be part of the solution?
You can't fault the logic because it's clear as day and all the charts and graphs illustrating this just preach ever louder to the clamoring choir but it is still, and will always be, a part of a whole, one where the size of that part is debatable and the impact of acting on that part shrouded in supposition. While some like to preen and posture that the devil is in the mirror it makes little political sense to do so. Sure, it makes us feel good about our open mindedness and our ability to question ourselves but it does little else to assuage the fears of those without the luxury of political forethought like the delivery driver forced to nickel and dime his tank to fill orders of people nickel and dimed too much to leave a tip. He could care less about our part of the problem because our part is unavoidable and his virtue will not feed his family. We talk a lot about the luxury of our lifestyles, well, we should also talk some about the luxury of our cognition and potential.
I spent the past weekend in a rural part of Texas known for their conservatism, as defined by the Republican party ideology, and was taken aback at the news reports of people guarding their gas tanks with firearms and hoards flocking to pawn shops to get enough for one more fill up. I was disgusted, as was my Republican father in law, at the entire ordeal as it unfolded. We don't talk much about politics, mostly we talk about fishing and hunting hog, but this was the issue that he felt we COULD talk about, and we subsequently agreed on. It was a breakthrough, and it felt good.
Sure people need to be less dependant on oil, it's not a particularly profound idea anymore so lets quite thinking it is, shit, even Dumbya said we are addicted to oil. But as of now people are bent over a post by the whims of speculative doomsayers and, besides having less power and options, they now have to be told it's their fault it has to be like this and that the solution will require more from their dwindling less. They know, and understand the ham handed dialogue and rhetoric, its insulting to think otherwise, and no one likes a know-it-all, and they like an arrogant one that preaches their wisdom at a time of peril worse.
Our consumption is part of the problem, I agree, but that doesn't excuse the whole sale plunder of hard working American pocketbooks. Oil is plentiful, refineries are operating nominally, and even OPEC is skeptical about the price of crude, these are the facts in most working Americans minds, and the price hikes do not, to them, indicate an evolution of continued reliance, but instead reek of predatory capitalism, and there is merit to this belief. It is said that liberals are out of touch with mainstream America, they are wrong of course, but there is a reason this idea is pervasive.
I pitched a gas tax idea that weekend in red Texas and in return I got blank stares and outright hostility, it was political suicide, not because of the merits or logic of the claim, because its valid, but because of the epistemology it employed. If there was one impression I got from the idea it was that I was out of touch with those that didn't have the luxury of such a solution, and I can't say I disagreed. So if it makes you feel good to argue for a gas tax as a solution to this problem of ours, then I bid you good luck and good will, because that self righteous good feeling will be the only political dividend such a methodology will afford you and if they label you out of touch, don't say you weren't warned.