Dey
Commin' Fer Yer Pickups!
Once upon a time in a medieval kingdom, a young king is faced with a hostile crowd. Half of them are carrying pitchforks. The other half are carrying torches. They all hate what’s been going on in the kingdom, and they all blame the young king for it.
The young king is scared. He doesn’t know what to do. He wanted to make everyone happy, but nothing he’s done has worked. He seriously ponders stepping down and letting someone else rule the kingdom. He turns to his advisors and asks for their guidance on how to satisfy the mob.
His senior advisor smiles. “My King, I proudly served your father when he was king, and his father before him. Believe me when I say that this gathering is nothing new. Your father and your grandfather both dealt with this kind of unrest before.”
The young king was astonished. “How did they deal with it?”
Before he could finish asking the question, though, the crowd got louder and louder, but they weren’t advancing towards the castle. Instead, they broke up into two groups and went their separate ways.
The advisor said, “The same way we dealt with it just now. We sent someone to the people holding the pitchforks to tell them that the ones holding the torches want to take away their pitchforks.”
“Divide and Conquer” is an old political tactic played by pretty much every group since the dawn of civilization. You tell one group that another group is coming to take their things away. Even if it isn’t true, you now have one group fearful and defensive about that other group.
Conservatives have pretty much perfected the art of division by making a good portion of the populace fearful of any kind of law or regulation or requirement. Except, of course, for the laws, regulations, and/or requirements that they impose.
They’ve long mastered the chant of “They’re coming for your guns!” and “They’re coming for your bibles!” and “They’re coming for your children!” During the global pandemic, they were chanting “They’re coming for your freedoms!” when it came to any kind of mask or vaccine requirement or to try to enact any kind of shut down to prevent people from getting sick and dying. Try to suggest any kind of tax reform that would have the wealthy pay taxes, and these people will get the middle class to chant “They’re coming for our wallets!”
Last year, conservatives went so far as to chant “They’re coming for your hamburgers!” in response to a proposed climate agreement to reduce greenhouse emissions. How they got to that hysterical proclamation required them to take a report from the University of Michigan that had nothing at all to do with anything from the White House and turn that into a scathing proclamation that accused the White House of rationing hamburger meat and forcing people to eat kale.
That’s not to say that other groups don’t play the same game. It’s just that conservatives have been the masters of divisive hysteria for so long that it’s pretty much their go-to now. They’re literally the faction that cried “wolf” for so long that they don’t know how to say anything else. In fact, they were parodied by “South Park” as the group that chanted “They took our jobs,” which morphed into them mumbling “Dey took ur joobs! Dey took ur joobs! Oot-do-doo!”
So now we have what will likely be the next chant from the faction that cries “wolf” for a living...
“They’re coming for your pickup trucks!”
Or... “Dey commin’ fer yer pickups!”
On August 25th, 2022, the California Air Resources Board issued a rule that would end the sale of gas-powered vehicles by the year 2035. It doesn’t prohibit people owning or driving gas-powered vehicles after 2035. It just prohibits them from being sold in California in 13 years from now.
Now, this is California’s decision to make, and they have every right to do so. California makes things legal or illegal to be bought or sold all the time. All the states do that. Some states allow marijuana to be regulated and sold. Others don’t. Some states allow communist paraphernalia to be sold. Others don’t.
And, yeah, I can see other states doing the same thing. I can see states like Washington and New York and Massachusetts following California’s lead. But I can also see many other states with conservative-dominant legislators and conservative governors making proud declarations that they will sell all the gas-powered cars and trucks and scooters and golf carts and boats and lawn mowers and leaf-blowers that people want. I can see good ol’ boy red-hats turning their pickup trucks into smokestacks like they’re extras from a Mad Max movie. Hell, some of them have been doing that already.
Now, personally, this commentator applauds California’s decision, but not for the reasons you may think. I’m not for it to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, it’s from a simple understanding about oil that many people really don’t comprehend, and that it is a finite energy source whose ending will be sooner than you expect.
Let’s get brutally honest here... I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again... there is no real future with oil. It doesn’t matter if it’s diesel or unleaded; at some point, it’s going to run dry. The wells will dry up. All those leases that Big Oil holds will mean nothing. All of that hydrofracking will come up empty. And, while I don’t think we will devolve into a Mad Max society when that happens, I do know that we need to plan for a time when vehicles run on something other than gasoline.
The automakers know this. This is whey they’ve been slowly churning out the all-electric vehicles. Some of them are even powerful enough to power a home in the event of a power outage. The automakers know that there is no future with oil. They know that they will need electric vehicles, cars and trucks, and even electric semis. It’s not just a pet project of Elon Musk.
Of course it’s not enough to have all-electric vehicles. It doesn’t help to get the gas out of the cars when they’re still charging up from power plants running on coal, which is yet another finite fuel source. At some point we will need to come up with something to replace coal as well, and nuclear isn’t exactly it at the moment.
Speaking of which, it certainly doesn’t look good for California’s governor to sign off on that 13-year deadline to go gas-free and then tell people to cut back on electricity now to avoid blackouts. That only shows that California has to do a better job dealing with their electrical grid than they are now, and they have a serious reason why in thirteen years.
Hysteria over gasoline, whether now or in the near future, really does nothing except waste time and show the stubborn ignorance of those who are easily offended. No, nobody is coming for your gas-chugging pickup truck or SUV or souped-up hot rod. You want to keep your chugger, you go ahead. It’s your money to spend on the gas. Just don’t bitch about the price in about thirteen years from now.
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