May 22, 2009

Obama: Not the First Head of State to Design Cars

 

“Sitting at a restaurant table in Munich in the summer of 1932, Hitler designed the prototype for what would become the immensely successful Beetle design for Volkswagen (literally, the "car of the people"),” says the Hitler Historical Museum’s web site. He then said to the head of Daimler-Benz: “Take it with you and speak with people who understand more about it than I do. But don't forget it. I want to hear from you soon, about the technical details."

 

This week, President Obama imposed on American car manufacturers strict fuel efficiency and emissions standards, to be introduced in 2012. Manufacturers will reportedly get extra pats on the head for cranking out electric cars like General Motors’ Chevy Volt – which will soak American consumers for about $40,000. In other words, they’re going to make cars only hippies want, at prices only CEOs can afford. Don’t like it? Then ride a bike or take the bus.

 

These aren’t going to be Hummers or 4x4s, because the simple laws of physics dictate that the heavier something is, the more energy it takes to move it. These are going to be little bitty cars like the ones I see in Paris, none of which are physically capable of hauling both me and my luggage to the airport. Sure, there are hybrid electric buses around the world that run partly on electricity and can do that – but when they have to keep up with traffic on the highway, that’s when the diesel fuel kicks in and starts drowning polar bears all over again.

 

 “Americans just have to get out of their big cars,” a French friend sighed to me recently. 

 

“Yeah, I’m sure your girlfriends find it really sexy that you can ‘lift’ your scooter into its parking spot and that they have to take the subway to meet up with you on your dates,” I replied.

 

That’s environmental paranoia in a nutshell for you. It isn’t really about the environment, it’s about control. You, too, are going to be forced to look as stupid as the guy pulling 10 canvas bags out of his faux leather man-purse. If you dare show up at any grocery store in Toronto, Canada, without your own ratty, reused bags, you’ll be charged five cents for each one – a tax on your audacity, collected by the city.

 

It’s the same thing in Paris. On one particularly cold day, the Parisian cashier in the Palais des Congres’ Galeries Gourmandes simply assumed that I didn’t require any bags for about 40 purchased items.  When I said, after she had rung me up, that I indeed did, she snapped that it would cost me five cents apiece. I replied (in French): “Oh, here are two Euros, then. Please make it one bag for each item. It’s far too cold outside for this time of year, so I’d like to go home and burn them to do my part in combating climate change.”

 

The UK’s Daily Mail is reporting this week that 17 local government councils have recruited approximately 9,000 “environmental volunteers” – some of the budding brownshirts as young as seven years old – to spy on their neighbors for infractions such as littering, “putting rubbish out on the wrong day” and general “environmental concerns”. 

 

A spokesman claims the program participants “help councils cut crime and make places cleaner, greener and safer.” And more fascist! What better way for a dorky kid to exert some power over his enemies than to become a certified ratfink for the State?

 

And it’s the dorks who are most obsessed with control, in whatever way they can get it. How does Obama fit into this? Well, did you see him riding that bike in his blue jeans during the campaign? Obama is a dork, pure and simple – and now he’s going to impose all his control games on society at large.

 

Meaningless control games based on rules of the dork’s invention are at the very foundation of the dork existence. That’s why every accredited nerd is obsessed with war games or Dungeons and Dragons, or some other make-believe time-waster that gives him the opportunity to exert his dominance over other nerds. Now, the public at large has been yanked into these games by their heartstrings.

 

Climate change is the pretend cause, and cap-and-trade is the new game. This week, Obama’s Democrats introduced new legislation in Congress that would start the ball rolling on this new MMRPG (that’s Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game, for the non-nerd uninitiated) whereby pollution “credits” will be bought and sold, with the leftists in Obama’s government in charge of the rules, naturally. If they were truly capable, they would have found something meaningful to run before now, rather than some sort of Ponzi scheme involving air.

 

You know who else will be allowed to play that game? The car manufacturers! And they’ll be given extra credits for building cars that Obama really likes – like the shiny new electric ones which, with a top speed of 100 mph, would lose in a game of pedal-to-the-metal chicken to a 13-year-old on a 10-speed bike. And when General Motors declares bankruptcy, a Reuters news report suggests that its viable assets could be sold to Obama’s government – something even the European Commission ruled unfeasible for auto manufacturers in December of last year, when the question was posed to them: “In the current financial and economic crisis, it seems difficult to reconcile public interventions in order to support failing companies or firms in a sector facing difficult times ahead, with a market economy investor behavior.”

 

Europe might just be thinking about the last time a head of state dabbled in car design in their backyard.  It didn’t turn out too well.

 

I am not saying that Barack Obama is Hitler, just that they have a similar propensity for vehicular design.