Who's Behind the MiniCar Mania?

by

Ronald Harris

Thou tyrant, tyrant jealousy,
Thou Tyrant of the mind!

John Dryden
1631 - 1700

Let's get something straight: Those whose primary language is Arabic, Ebonics, or Liberal Euphemism may have to read this twice. Further, readers should know that we drive a new Chevrolet Suburban 3/4 ton, 4X4 with big mud and snow tires and large Vortec engine and would have nothing else. This is our third Suburban. We've learned that for us, lesser vehicles are inadequate.

We've also learned we're philosophically and intellectually beyond the pale of the "Politically Correct" hogwash fed to us by those who control the socialist propaganda media machine. We're proud to be here, safe from their unguiculate grasp.

We therefore feel charged to respond to the oceans of agitprop with which todays news media is awash, including the tsunami of reactionary hyperbole bathing us in specious reasons one ought not to drive the normal size vehicles now known by the faddish acronym SUV - Sport Utility Vehicle. (Those over thirty will remember when these cars, station wagons and trucks were called, simply, cars, station wagons and trucks and no Leftist Thought Police denigrated their use.)

How do they hate us? Let us count the ways.

1. "I'm terrified", whines a lady journalist of The Arizona Republic, "when I see one of those mammoth behemoths in my rear view mirror!" She doesn't say what minicar she drives, or how she feels when a schoolbus, dumptruck, fire engine or eighteen wheeler full of refrigerators follows her down the interstate at 75 mph three feet from her rear bumper, but worries about a woman in a Tahoe full of groceries.

The fashionable snivel is that SUVs and pickups are "too big", "outsized", "huge", etc. Most complainers aren't old enough to remember what real cars were like before the nationalization of Mid Eastern oil and the early seventies jump in gasoline prices. They assume people should hustle about our overgrown cities crammed into tiny tinpots, shoulder-to-shoulder, knees under their chins, bumping along on little scooter wheels, saved from themselves by federally mandated armor, airbags and nylon webbing. These minimobiles are depicted in TV commercials dashing about like NASCAR racers, full of screaming juveniles who wriggle like spastics and never is mentioned the notion of safe, responsible driving.

In truth, full-sized cars, trucks and so-called SUVs are not too large or heavy or tall: The tiny "minis" and "compacts" are just too damned little, low and fragile. And this includes the silly new mini "SUV"s brought out to placate the bellyachers.

2. The next assinine allegation leveled at SUVs is that they are somehow more prone to roll over when desperately oversteered by a driver speeding around a tight corner, or braking too hard while turning too fast or when distracted by phone talking or cigarette lighting or CD changing or, of course, driving while drunk, stoned and/or asleep.

This foolishness, authored by no less a politician than Jeffrey Runge, ramrod of the august National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is already being withdrawn. Apparently someone explained some principles of physics to Mr. Runge. He should better vent his spleen on amphetamined eighteen wheeler pilots who speed down the interstates side-by-side far over the legal limit, their front bumpers inches from minicars whose drivers appear oblivious to the danger.

And if Mr. Runge or the liberal news talking heads have mentioned safe, attentive, sober driving as a way to avoid rollovers and other types of roadwrecks, it has gone unrecorded. But here's the fact of the matter, folks: Any vehicle - ambulance, police car, Indy Car racer, soccermom minivan, schoolbus, dump truck or motorcyle - can be rolled over. The chief cause of rollovers and all other wrecks is speed and/or reckless, inattentive driving and no combination of seat belts, helmets, bags of air or roll bars answers the problem. Safe, sane driving is the only remedy, no matter what one drives.

3. Full-size vehicles are gas guzzlers, charge the citiots from their shoesized freeway cramming imports. "They're using up all my oil!" they scream. This from drivers of miniature cars streaming along bumper-to-bumper with one person within, usually driving dozens of miles to and from the workplace on freeways meant for one tenth the number of vehicles they carry. Most of the long drive time is spent inching along or at standstill, idling away fuel and polluting what air is left and scowling self-righteously at the SUVs going by in the HOV lane, carrying five to nine and their gear.

Listen carefully, boys and girls: It isn't the brand or style or cost of a vehicle that raises the world's overall consumption of oil, be it foreign or domestic. It is the epidemic, ever growing numbers of people and vehicles of all kinds! Increasing oil consumption, like the consumption increase of all commodities and resources, is a function of population numbers which is, in turn, a function of many factors including immigration, birth and death rates and excessive travel and shipping due to globalization. Until we face these facts and consider the critical numbers involved, of both people and vehicles, we are hell-bound to continue our overconsumption of oil and all else we mine, harvest and pump from our rapidly depleting planet.

4. "How To Protect Yourself Against A Monster Vehicle" shouts the hyperbolic headline in The New York Times Sunday Edition, tons of which are delivered around the country in huge, top-heavy box-like trucks weighing multiple tons themselves. The screed promotes a stupid new concept born of our tragic cult of victimhood, the gist of which is that all vehicles ought to be "compatible", that is, no car or truck should be larger or better built than any other so that one can't do more damage to the other in a wreck.

Read this: Marriage partners might hope to be compatible, or business partners or pets, but vehicles are inanimate objects designed and built for various different purposes. An eighteenwheeler cannot be made to be "compatible" with a Honda Civic; little but a baby carriage can. The answer to a perceived disparity between full-sized vehicles and dangerously small ones is not to minimize the larger machine, but to enlarge the tiny one and build it stronger. Must we always cater to the lowest common denominator?

5. But the most egregiously offensive allegation hurled at those of us driving sensible vehicles, the charge to which we should all respond in the most immediate and vehement manner, is that by buying and driving our full-sized cars and trucks we contribute somehow to the mass murdering Muslims of al-Queda, the Hitleristic machinations of the so-called "Nation of Islam" and the insane suicidal terrorists of Palestine.

This latest slander, promulgated by columnist Arianna Huffington and the whiners of the Utopian Left, is but another expression of the rampant xenopetrolophobia, (fear of foreign oil), to which so many leftists subcribe even as they demonstrate for peace at any cost, including our national security and the redress of the murder of our innocent fellow Americans. We must not suffer these fools, or their insults, so gladly or any longer. They are the Quislings, the Neville Chamberlains, the Benedict Arnolds of our time.

The Muslim terrorists, like those who, for whatever reason, can't or won't invest in sensible cars and trucks, are insanely jealous of our American freedoms and lifestyles. They will take funding for their mad mayhem from any source, including countries like France and Germany, regardless of what we Americans choose to drive. To acquiesce in any manner to these bedlamites only signals our weakness and submission to their evil demands and besmirtches the memory of the innocents they slaughter to terrorize us into conversion to their primitive cult.