#92 Outrage-sourcing

We are such lemmings. Day after day, year after year, I’m led further and further into despair as I see how people cling to their prejudices and continue to blame the easy target for their woes. It was once said, hundreds of years ago, that there are only two things one can depend on in life, death and taxes. Back then, reasonable people shrugged their shoulders and went on about their business. Of course you can depend on death. None of us gets out of here alive. And of course you can depend on taxes. No society and/or government could exist without them. If you don’t think that’s true try getting a bunch of your neighbors together to repair that pothole in the road in front of your house. Better yet, try enlisting their aid to build a road in the first place.
So it has been a wonderful tactic of one of our political parties to frame every question of public policy as a “the government is trying to tax you to death” question. Meanwhile completely steering us lemmings away from asking why it is that some people are making huge amounts of money hand over fist and others are barely scraping by. The scrapers must be lazy, of course. I mean just because both of you parents are working and you each have two jobs and you have to drive around in an old gas hog cause you can’t afford a fuel efficient Civic and you don’t have health insurance because each of your part-time employers keeps you under 20 hours a week while they weave their golden parachutes and you live in mortal fear of a major health crises that could wipe out what little savings you have and totally max out your credit card which you can’t declare bankruptcy on any more cause the congress just passed a law protecting the bankcard companies from frivolous health-crises-engendered bankruptcies but if you’re Kmart you can still go belly-up any time you want and reorganize and pay one cent on the dollar for your debts and go on borrowing till you’re blue light special in the face. Yep. You poor people are lazy. And I’m working real hard holding on to the pile my grandfather actually earned two generations ago.
So I was a little baffled by this car salesman I ran into yesterday who was outraged because the democratic legislature in our state put a four cent a gallon tax on gasoline to help pay for fixing our crumbling highway infrastructure. And he was mighty miffed let me tell you. He actually turned a little purple. I can afford it, he proclaimed, but my kids aren’t as well off as I am. How dare the legislature raise taxes four cents a gallon. Um, I said quietly, I agree that high gas prices disproportionately hurt the poor. But I guess I understand the four cents. Who made gas prices go up 30 cents a gallon last summer? He suddenly became that rarest of beasts, a silent car salesman. Cause you know, where is the outrage? 30 cents a gallon last summer, 25 cents a gallon this last winter, who knows how much higher it will go this summer, did we get any new roads out of that deal? Did any ordinary American get anything whatsoever other than an emptier pocket and more hardship? It’s pretty easy to jump on the bandwagon and bitch about how the government is screwing us. But next time the bandwagon is sunk to the axles in a pothole maybe we ought to question the driver. Look him in the eye man, and say dude, whose side are you really on?
America, ya gotta love it.