These devices can actually be used for transportation.If you want to strike a blow against the oleaginous tyrants in the Middle East, without firing a shot, here is an idea: this week, and every week, do one errand on foot or on a bicycle. Using less oil, tainted by blowhards straight out of the Middle Ages--except for their Swiss bank accounts--is the best thing I can think of to help America and the world rid itself of those bad guys in the stupid hats.
Where is the leadership in America that might ask us for such a tiny sacrifice?
Winston Churchill inspired his country to take up small deeds like this to fight the Nazis as did FDR.
My Grandmother Mary Chapman and her Victory Garden in Homewood, Alabama, 1943. On the back my wry Aunt Helen has written; "I hope victory is not dependent upon our Victory Garden." JFK had lots of inspirational ideas--from "getting this country moving again" to the Peace Corps. Have we grown so sloppy and slobby that we like being in the debt of dictators who use the jets they buy from the West to strafe and bomb their own civilians?
Walking and/or riding a bike to run an errand would strike at least a small blow for the good guys. It would also be good for the waistline. If enough of us do it, it might serve to stabilize the price of oil. It would help the GNP to have fewer dollars going out of the country and into the pockets of Emirs who like to hire Beyonce for their birthday parties.
Or would we rather just keep sending our "all volunteer army" over there to get blown up? Blood and treasure in exchange for our right to drive SUVs?
Nobody seems excited about the prospect of digging more wells in America and off its shores. Nuclear power--which may have been ready for a renaissance, because so few other options remain--just took a serious public relations and environmental hit in Japan.
In Israel they are aiming at having an all-electric automobile system within the next decade. Their desire to thwart the oil rich neighbors who want to obliterate them is obvious. But they have a tiny country--such a system would be problematic in a country the size of America.
I'm a firm believer that the brainiacs doing research in labs across the U.S. will one day come up with a substitute for the petroleum upon which we've become hooked, like heroin addicts.
But in the meantime why not join the geek protest movement and hop on a non-cool bike and pedal to the library or the bank or the store to get that quart of milk? Or go "Shank's mare" as my father's generation would say. (You can look that up.)
The lives you save might belong to America's sons and daughters--or to those striving to unleash their bonds on distant shores.
The economy you aid will be our own. The weight you lose--hey, that will just be an added bonus.
