In the USA, Infinity corp. and later Clearchannel corp. bought up most of the pop culture programs and talk shows, and then there's Fox network. I asked a number of young men who grew up during this era, who enjoyed shows like Beavis and Butthead, and Dumb and Dumber, about their political views. In a word, fascist. Which in Il Duce's words being the rule of corporations, fits perfectly with Fox, Clearchannel, and Infinity. Some of you folks out there may be believers in personal choice, but I find that the corporations are powerful persuaders, particularly when an all-gas car that got 62 mpg in 1988 now gets about 37 mpg today, in spite of the petrol crisis. We have met the enemy and they are us.
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Hey, he got the trains to run on time! And doing anything on time in southern Europe is a pretty cool achievement. Funny how the UK has become a part of the south in recent years...
I think that any government today is stuck in a hole. There has been such a history of bribing the masses to win the numbers to win the elections that the general good has been blown a long way back down the line. The real cynics are the politicians, all of whom, when in power, commit the same crimes of hubris and swilling from the public trough - a hard act to combine well, but they do it admirably. You see the Mugabe problem in what was Rhodesia, the bread basket of Africa, and you see the total lack of interest that it raises in its neighbouring states. Why? Because in one short leap of political freedom they have all jumped into bed with the same ethic that they see in the rest of the world, the only difference being that it was easier for them to do that where the population had far lower expectations.
The allusion to gasoline consumption may or may not be accurate - I just have no idea - but that´s only a tiny part of the oil problem. All the other things that are oil derivatives add up to make a huge total that even 100 mpg on a water engine can´t solve. Simply put, the world needs it (oil) as much as it does all the other things that go to make up civilized living. In fact, regardless of price, it will be gone one day. Then what? None of the oil billionaires will escape the consequences of that day any more than will the rest of us. Arabs included. Perhaps if we differentiate between the owners of the raw material in the ground, those who buy it as speculation at one price hoping to sell it on at a higher one just before they have to take delivery, and the petrol companies who make the fuel, then maybe the actual gas companies turn out to have been caught in the midle of a bidding war not of their making. As usual, there is always a bloody middle-man somewhere in the bushes. And, of course, a tax man raking in between 65% and 70% of the total take at the pump.
Corporations are not all that clever either. You need only look at the banks and the mess they are in and into which we have been dragged screaming too. That is not much of a sign of brilliant corporate power raping us all: it´s a sign of dumb and greedy people who have reached the same hubris level as the politicians of whom I wrote earlier. The logic of lending money to people that you know are bad risks because they don´t earn enough or are too shady to honour debt escapes me. Hardly corporation superpowers, then!
In the end, that guy in the movie industry who proclaimed "in this business nobody knows anything," might have been speaking for all of us everywhere. In that sense, you are on the money: we are all to blame in one way or another and we are indeed the enemy.
Rob C
