| This George Will screed against...er, Portland?...is a prime example of the lazy, selfish, and slow-thinking elements that are dragging this country down.
The money paragraph:
Once upon a time, government was supposed to defend the shores, deliver the mail and let people get on with their lives. Today's far-seeing and fastidious government, not content with designing the cars Americans drive to their homes and the lightbulbs they use in their homes (do you know that, come 2014, the incandescent lightbulb will be illegal?), wants to say where their homes can be. And to think that Republican Ray LaHood, Secretary of Behavior Modification, is an enthusiast for this, well, cozy relationship between Washington and Peoria, and everywhere else, too.
What a friggin' ridiculous argument. What, George, do you think our highway and street system is made out of sparkly unicorn pellets?
Believe it or not, George, the midcentury urban flight of middle-class white families was paid for by the American taxpayer. And, yes, George, we still pay for this outmoded, mid-20th-century transportation system with our hard-earned US dollars, even if, say, we bike or walk everywhere or use public transportation.
That's the thing. Many folks simply do not have the option to choose alternative transportation. Bike lanes are often nonexistent, communities surrounded by a grid of highways, housing far-flung from the basic amenities they depend on, isolated from necessities by antiquated zoning laws that were designed - ironically - to protect them. And worse still, those that want to escape from their grandparents' infrastructure still pay for the street grids that imprison them. George, your view of "normalcy" is suppressing the freedom of millions of Americans to choose how and where they live and commute.
I'm not surprised Will doesn't get this. We're talking about a man who pines for an era before anyone wore jeans. It's obvious he doesn't muck around in places like Peoria - the town Will marks as a good ol' American city that doesn't want to be Portland, thank-you-very-much - or else he'd have discovered Peoria already has a pretty damn good network of bike lanes and some of the best mountain biking in Illinois. But then ol' George was never good at research and fact-checking.
And ol' George's views represents a slice of Americans who feel so oppressed by common-sense regulations or government spending that DESTROYS their LIVES! Like, say, a law that makes your dishes not so sparkly! Never mind that the phosphates used to make sparkly dishes have massive negative impacts to the environment and human health. And never mind that dish soap companies can make sparkly dish soap without phosphates but never got around to it before.
No, my friends. The United States is not in a state of decline because we like to shag for fun, or because we wear too much denim, or because of the Intertubes or television or hip-hop. The end won't come about because people dare criticize their government for torturing or starting unnecessary wars, or they don't worship at your church, or because of the designated hitter. If there's anything that symbolizes the sorry state of the country, it's this: Americans are destroying rare and irreplaceable ecosystems so they can have soft toilet paper.
So while ol' George et al bluster and rant for their "freedoms" and prerogatives - never mind ours, mind you - the world disappears up our *sses. |
