A more measured argument

Thanks to Mandy for bringing this article on the SUV debate in Europe to my attention.

Apparently several European countries are using underhanded means to control their citizen's lust for fuel-inefficiency and neuvo riche exhibitionism. These range from name calling (London's Mayor called SUV owners "complete idiots") to higher fuel taxes on prices that are already around three times what Americans have been complaining about. Most drastic, Sweden is considering "taxes of up to $20,000 per vehicle on SUVs by 2006." SNAP.

A Porsche spokesman had an interesting take:

"Do you call 4.6 million people (SUV drivers) irresponsible, or are the car manufacturers irresponsible? Or are the people trying to create an issue irresponsible? Take your pick. We're not a socialist society. We're a society with free choices."

There's that word again. Free. I won't bother with the falsehood of equating socialism with authoritarianism, which is a rhetorical tool made popular during the Red Scare, because he's fundamentally correct, this is an issue of freedom.

This is part of a larger war of attrition in Europe about just what's defined as a freedom. Freedom, in this case, is used as the more rhetoric-friendly synonym of inalienable right. It's like this: In America, as the report stated, people like the unrestricted, selfish freedom of being able to do whatever we want. We like big ass cars and big ass plots of land. We don't like to be stacked on top of each other and we really don't care how much habitat we have to destroy to give every man, woman and child their own fenced-in back yard. But large, landscaped properties and gas guzzling cars have price tags that aren't only burdens on the owner's bottom line, they contribute significantly to the degradation of this planet as a viable habitat for all animals, humans included.

I think the question needs to be addressed in this country, and not just on the issue of cars, but of lifestyle in general--urban sprawl and sustainable resource use--at what point does one person's freedom of consumption and possession begin to infringe on another's (possibly generations in the future) freedom of life and health? When will we stop focusing on immediate gratification and unrealistic creature comforts and begin looking forward to the type of world our actions [and automobiles] are creating? Humans are intelligent creatures, we have the unique ability to project forward and extrapolate the consequences of our actions. It's odd, then, that Humanity should be so horribly short-sighted.

Something else the report stated was right on point. The weight of SUVs is a problem we fail to recognize in America. Roads aren't invincible, they eventually break down. The rate at which they break down depends on the speeds allowed and the weight of the vehicles that travel them. In Europe this is a huge problem because often, in older city centers the roads are still cobbled. But even in America, residential and surface streets take a pounding from heavy trucks and SUVs. This is a huge civic cost that taxpayers ultimately pay for. What's wrong with making the culprits pay a proportionate amount of the repair costs? I think it's a good idea to have a rolling vehicle registration fee, not based on a car's age and price, but based on the amount of damage it does to infrastructure annually. This will obviously be seen by some as an affront to freedom of choice. Maybe it is, but only if you confuse liberty with having no obligations. That's more akin to anarchy. For citizens of democratic republics, freedom is not without responsibility.

Trucks are more excusable because they have valid functionality, they do work. Fine. They have the ability to do work. SUVs really only serve a valid purpose for a very small cross-section of Americans. Call these the REIers. For the rest it's variously window dressing and the false security of driving a big-as-hell rig. This is epitomized in the oxymoronic Luxury SUV class. For most Americans, SUVs have very little utility at all. Unless you need a Safari Snorkel and are often in real danger of getting eaten by something big, you don't need an SUV.

But it's still nice, you know, to have that freedom.

I once watched a Toyota Landcruiser in Florence negotiating about a 9 point turn. The long wheel base cut a yawning though interrupted arc on the narrow street. Forward, reverse. Forward, reverse. Nine times. It finally commandeered the sidewalk to complete the maneuver.

This was in the centro, the building I was coming out of was twice as old as America the nation, and the roads have remained pretty much unchanged since the Renaissance. This Landcruiser, struggling as it was, wasn't making a u-turn, or pulling out of a tight parking spot. It was just turning right. That's the most salient image I have of the absurdity of SUVs.

Read the full thing here.

Well, it happened

Hummers. I hate them. Not only do I hate them as vehicles, I hate them as a militarist/consumerist concept. I hate, most of all, the fact that when someone buys a Hummer, it's not because they want a rugged automobile that can be outfitted to slay humans in jungles and deserts, it's because they've bought into that concept as one that is meant to bring meaning and importance to the lives of human beings with testicles--and a select few with ovaries.

The Hummer engine injects gasoline and exhausts masculinity. It's a military vehicle. It's for killing people. In certain situations when people to be killed aren't around, it acts as a support vehicle to aid in the killing of people elsewhere. My friend is in Korea. He spends his days in a Hummer relaying cell traffic so that our ground troops can kill people in more coordinated ways. Is there anything more masculine than killing people? Yes, killing them with highly efficient troop movements and big, high rate-of-fire weapons. The Hummer can do both. The H2, while sissified somewhat, still carries the deadly name recognition.

The Hummer, and its cuter sibling, the H2, are built without a second thought to practicality. This is understandable in the original, which was built as a multi-purpose military vehicle. Price tag and gas mileage is of no consequence to the military or to Arnold Schwarzenegger. In buying the original, the consumer makes an implicit statement that neither price nor mileage bothers him/her either. The H1 is dogged proof of your incredible buying power. The H2 offers less of that proof, but in a more aesthetically pleasing facade and shorter wheelbase.

With the advent of the H2 Stretch limo, often seen navigating the steep and narrow streets of Seattle's Pioneer Square, jumping curbs and taking up multiple lanes, you get that feeling of consumer clout back, along with the obstinate assertion that you just don't give a fuck about anyone else. That's power. Make sure you get back in your limo to hit the next multi-tiered, trance-thumping, $12 cover hell-hole, regardless of how close it is. In fact, to achieve maximum clout, never leave the H2 Stretch at all, just park and party in a high traffic area.

Men. Fellas. Compatriots. Hombres. Can't afford a Hummer? Not even an H2? Maybe even a little short when the H3 drops next summer? Don't worry. Got 32 dollars? Now, for an unlimited time, you can get a little hunk of the Hummer's death-rattling, conspicuous-consumption vibe for a little over 1/2000th of the price. That's a 99 percent savings.

How is this possible? Glad you asked.

Hummer. A fragrance. For humans who like to kill and spend money men.

Read the full thing here.

Fairly Vain

Mira Nair's Vanity Fair is a lush, dazzling moving picture with sound. It's an aesthetically beautiful film. Despite devoting two and a half hours to getting to know it, I can't say much more than that. Nothing really happens in this movie.

Becky Sharp is an orphan. That puts her pretty far down the ladder in 19th century British society. But she's a cunning creature--and purty too--so she sets about finding herself a suitable man. That is to say, finding herself a man with money. Sound like any other books/movies about British society? All of them? Right.

To begin, She spends about a half hour gazing decorously at a chubby colonial magistrate when people are about, then flashing her devious and sultry smile when no one's looking. Food literally falls out of his mouth from astonishment each time she does. He gives her a parrot. I think he represents Stupid Affluence.

There's a character for Piety, who never has a chance, and several characters representing the Status Quo, whom of course want nothing to do with her at first, but who gradually accept her.

Unfortunately, one of the Status Quo's makes stupid affluence think better of marrying a governess, and stupid affluence ambles back to India.

She next meets up with Dashing Husband Type, whom she actually connects with on some level, but really loves for his title.

Unfortunately, Dashing Husband Type actually turns out to be a hard-gambling Roustabout who has little money of his own and forfeits his inheritance by marrying Becky.

Things happen, roustabout has a winning streak followed by a losing streak followed by more gambling, interrupted briefly so he can go command some troops at the battle of Waterloo.

Another man enters Becky's life, she likes him for the same reason she liked Roustabout and Stupid Affluence.

Meanwhile there's been a subplot about Becky's friend representing Virtue, who marries for love and is God and society's punching bag from then on.

Then there's a non-climax and a fakenouemont (denouements require climaxes) involving a bit of redemption for Becky, then it ends--two and a half hours later.

There's a problem here, and I don't know whether this is a problem with Thackeray's book or the adaptation. Books (and presumably their movies) from this genre are supposed to be about growth. The name for the genre is German. Translated it means "novel of development". Dickens and Austen were masters of this. Thackeray and/or the half dozen screenwriters who collaborated on this are not masters. They don't even seem to get it. There is no development in Vanity Fair. Becky Sharp begins life as a perky, cute social climber and ends life a perky, beautiful social climber.

Her comeuppance doesn't come up. The movie ends exactly where it started. Good prevails for others--kinda--but by then the movie is deep into wrap-it-up mode.

Even if it wasn't meant to be in the Austen and Dickens vein, which I think it most definitely was, Vanity Fair still falls short because, without a plot to speak of, movies like this must rely on good characters. Vanity Fair has none. They're poor representations of archetypes and ideals, not real people.

By the end of the movie, we've learned exactly two things about Becky Sharp: She purty and she's down to slum, as long as there's money involved. That's really all you need to know.

Read the full thing here.

More violent fundamentalism

Thank God these guys aren't better organized (intrusively detailed registration required).

In the Aryan Nations, we have a Christian identity movement strikingly similar to terrorist groups found in Islam, who have corrupted religion to give deeper resonance to what is essentially areligious hatred. This group is just one of the more prominent of hundreds of pseudo-Christian factions in the US. They're getting more numerous and increasingly violent.

I wish more people would see the parallels here, that no one religion is more or less susceptible to this murderous mentality than any other. I find the idea that Christianity is somehow immune to this--that westerners are the sane ones--so odd.

It's often [usually?] white, Christian, westerners on the killing end of the stick (See: Crusades, See also: Holocaust, Trail of Tears et al). This is a function of religion in general, not one religion in particular.

Religion is terrific for doing two things: creating cohesion and unity amongst people of vastly different backgrounds and upbrinings and for appealing to that-which-is-greater than ourselves, which often is the impetus for blind obedience.

This is certainly not the chief goal of religion by default, but it is at least an effect of a dogmatic indoctrination that makes the act of faith, no matter how perverse, exceptional at uniting people.

When that unity and zealotry is under a banner of hate, it doesn't really matter which deity is lending his/her endorsement, the effect is powerful. I'd say even that the that-which-is-greater is often simply the power of the group itself. In that sense, anything conveying a feeling of community and communion with something larger than oneself can confer the same effects as this religiosity.

It's God so frightening fascinating how close religious fervor often borders on mob mentality.

Read the full thing here.