Why I drive - thoughts after a road trip

            Recently completed a cross-country road trip, pleasure being ancillary.  My fellow travelers and I were at times outnumbered by hurtling trucks operating under business mandates.  We cast up our exhaust naively, our relation to the greater world intangible to our minds but still deliberately obscured by those operating according to the business prerogative.  We passed or were passed by cars from distant states, the people inside sometimes engaged in happy and animated conversations.  Other outsiders we pass have grim-set faces as though travelling towards some unwanted task.

            Many of the out of state people including us are chasing opportunities, performing business only in a different way than the truckers.

            Consider what is wrought in the name of the auto.  We’ve weaved asphalt ribbons across the country, fetish objects derived from Middle Eastern tars.  The ancients in Iraq used this resource too, ruins today featuring bitumen used as a sealant.  In the open farmland of Nebraska the farms all rely on fossil fuels to run their farm equipment and fertilize their crops.  The landscape could not exist as it does without oil.

            Why question driving?  My Catholic background must bear the appropriate blame: guilt may be the result sundry actions.  The environmental movement is the updated guilt-bringer – perhaps you’ve felt it, the twinge when throwing away (like, in the trash) a plastic bottle or aluminum can.  In eliciting a response the greens are as successful as the Kochs.

            I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea that imperialist hardships imposed abroad correlate to greater freedom at home.  The control and manipulation of other countries has provided an unparalleled lifestyle that feels good to live, though of course I am questioning it – founding something good on a crime is bad.  Ignorance is washed away and no foundation for an argument.  That a crime has occurred is not mitigated by degree of severity and some of the crimes are great.  How do you differentiate between a foreign policy that kills, like pre-2003 sanctions on Iraq, and policies strictly for monetary benefit – well in the case of Iraq our policy to bring Saddam to heel was ultimately related to oil, money and control.

            Driving settles down into the background of our daily lives – traffic conditions are talked about in the breath after an observation of the weather.  Drive times are calculated into many decisions.  When deciding where to work, where to live, where to recreate – perhaps the need to drive, the hassle or potential hassle of it, is an inducement to stay home and watch TV.  Houses have become our “third place” – instead of restaurants or cafes we have our well-equipped and stocked-with-brand-name-frozen-meals kitchens.  Fitness gyms are incorporated into people’s homes.  Most popular and what is most used is the home theater – trips out to real theaters just practice for the appreciation done at home.

            Who would volunteer to be car-less?  Who doesn’t have far-flung family members?  Fuel has proved to be in this case a tax on the human heart – hard to countermand something if it is right on this level.  I will not stop driving.  I will appreciate what it brings and continue to be aware of what goes on in the world to allow for this gift.