SUVs

Tonight sitting at a neighbor's while they waited for the new season of West Wing to start (we're three seasons behind because we're restricted to whatever is on DVD or video...) we were talking about the fact that, likely as not, with the polls as deadly close as they are, we may be looking at (take a deep breath, calm, focus, breathe) four more years of George W. Bush - a four years that will likely be far uglier than the first given the fact that he will have been given a "mandate" and that he will have nothing to lose. So I thought - you know what - something is starting now - clearly this election is mobilizing liberals and it's about damn time, and we're not going to let a little thing like a lost presidential election get in the way of continuing to stir things up. And one thing that people forget is that politics begins at a local level. As misguided as I've always believed my parents might be, they've always understood this one thing.

So this got me thinking about something I had mentioned to another friend a few weeks ago, that I really, REALLY REALLY wanted to make a bumpersticker that said "I SUPPORT TERRORISM" that could be slapped on random SUV's parked on the street. Well, she thought that was a bad idea for a number of very good and wise reasons and I guess I was forced to agree. But she mentioned that in fact there is a great site called www.runningonempty.org that has tickets that you can order or just print out that can be placed like a real ticket under someone's windshield wiper - they're civil, informative, well-made, and pointed, and best of all if you start papering SUVs with them you can't get arrested for vandalism (or beat up by pissed-off SUV owners).

SUV's by the way are a perfect metaphor for people's belief in this current administration. People have a conception, because SUVs are BIG and threaten by the simple assertion of their mass to roll over everything in their path, that they are therefore safer on the road, but nothing could be further from the truth. They are in fact badly designed for the most part, are far more likely to rollover than smaller cars, and worst and most dangerous of all, because of their weight, are almost impossible to stop quickly when sudden unexpected obstacles place themselves in the drivers way. Accident statistics prove again and again that they are nothing but death traps let loose on the road compared to smaller vehicles. So people psychologically imagine that they are better off, when in reality - just like with the Bush administration - they are actually far more likely, driving an SUV, to end up in an accident, and far more likely, in case of an accident, to experience and/or induce worse injuries and/or fatalities. They just don't make sense, safety-wise, ecologically, economically, politically. It's time to stop supporting a bad habit... And in any case, whatever kind of vehicle we drive, we have to start remembering that oil is a gift, a gift with a time limit, it is not a birthright, and we have to start treating it as such. And we have to begin to remind others about this as well.