we were SLAVES in BUSH's OIL WAR

[nashville_brook]

I've wanted to go public with this for some time, but couldn't until I was sure my husband was safe. If I spoke too soon, I might have put his escape at risk. What you are about to read could change your life (if you let it). If we can pull this yarn hard enough, it has the potential to bring down the whole damn house of cards. Perhaps, if we had addressed this situation a few years ago we might have been able to stave off any number of disasters including the war -- but that time has passed. Right now the problem we face is slavery.

You read that correctly. Slavery.

This is a HUGE enterprise involving almost every government on earth, a vast conspiracy of capitalists and pervasive mind-control techniques invisible to the uninitiated, but clearly planted everywhere once you know what to look for. As with all conspiracies worth their salt, this one also goes all the way to the top -- to the Bush Crime Family, the Saudi Royals and a secretive cabal of german capitalists, known as the Bavarian Motor Works. BMW.

Once I became aware of what had happened to myself and my husband, I was shamed into silence -- an otherwise intelligent, caring individual -- I had turned against my family and friends and all my upbringing. Even with this knowledge, I found it difficult to escape. That's how seductive a cult it is.

It started out innocently enough many years ago. We were young and idealistic.

My boyfriend was a traveling musician. I was a sometimes art, sometimes philosophy student at East Tennessee State. We courted, driving around in his car. I'll never forget our first date. He took me to see my aunt Kingsport along an old trade road that I had never seen before. It took much longer to get there than the usual interstate buzz, which gave us time to talk.

I use this as an illustration of how driving was always more than a means of transportation for me and my beau. It was a "good in itself." We brought two different viewpoints to our driving. Mine is a long-form activity when done properly, you arrive at the coast just before sunrise. My husband seeks thrill, precision and mastery. He taught me how to "drive." I taught him how "ride."

We rarely had two dimes to rub together, but with the help of our friends, in the form of band mates, room mates, and soul mates, we had a rich life with "nothing to do" in the mountains. Thanks to an insanely cheap cost of living, we could afford lots of spare time, vast quantities of beer and simply amazing old apartments in our depressed little town. If you were to ask yourself the question, "what is the good life," you would be hard-pressed not to recognize some little chunk of it in this. Except for the fact that the East Tennessee mountains are also home to a disturbingly aggressive form of theo-conservatism, and making money was out of the question, it was paradise.

We left the mountains to form a band in Nashville. After an up-close view of the ass-end of the music biz (that's the "biz" part), the band mates settled into jobs and got on with the business of raising families, etc. No family for us, though. As if to fill the void of an empty nest, we got dogs and cars, in that order. And that's where the trouble started.

Until yesterday our primary car was a convertible BMW 323. Loaded. "Nice ride" doesn't cover it. It was crack. A completely irrational, self-propagating addiction. We could afford it. He figured, "why not." I asked, "why?" but still came under its spell.

It was a symbiotic relationship at first, taking me back and forth to my suckass corporate marketing job in astonishing speed, and slicing as much as four hours off my usual 12-hour red-eye to Florida (kids, don't try this). Radar detection wasn't necessary. It could get inside your mind.

For me, the dark side of my addiction took the form of protection -- do anything, just leave me the car.

For my husband, the dark side was competitive, driving everywhere fast, grinding into cloverleaf ramps, and (there's no pretty way of saying this) tailgating. There was an additional effect that can only described as sexual. He'd spend whole weekends from morning to night -- preening, rubbing, exchanging fluids. It was disgusting, his devotion. We had to see a therapist to explain that washing "my" car isn't an act of love.

Then, tragedy struck.

My suckass corporate marketing job was eliminated in a merger. Simultaneously, but unrelated, a condition in my spine began expressing itself chronically, as pain. With a little help from my friends at the pain clinic, I am fairly successful at keeping the worst of the disability at bay and the assumption was I would find another job on short order.

But who would care for the house? I could barely keep up with a 100 percent mobility, and no matter what hubby says about "helping me out," we all know what that means. A new job would mean grinding my teeth, keeping my disability to myself, and coming home to a wrecked house. Weekends would be spent cleaning, doing laundry, cooking for the week and maybe, just maybe getting in a little yard work (the kind my husband doesn't understand: seeding, feeding, weeding, cultivating). The suggestion was made that perhaps we could hire some help for chores around the house.

It was right about here that my head exploded.

I come from a family of servants. It's not insignificant, psychologically, to be a servant -- and the one thing my family hoped for me was to BE FREE of serving others' interests. But, who am I, to "hire help," if not someone else's slave? Oh sure, the obvious thing is "hiring help" makes you the Master, but that's the mistake the SUV-driving restricted-community dwelling reptoids make. They think a "a good life" is something your BUY. The good life has a dollar value. There is a universal symbol for happiness and it is "$."

What value is a home-life when no one is home? After your 30-45 minute commutes (depending on traffic), who wants to cook dinner? You might have a newly renovated kitchen that you rarely have the energy to cook in. Maybe your ideal life includes kids and a dog? Does it also include your dog pooping on the rug while your kids play video games? What value is a life that you are not FREE to live?

Outsourcing your life is not an answer -- it's a symptom. Employing servants doesn't make you free, it enslaves you to your master: The suckass corporate marketing job.

Right now, there are real revolutionary messages coming from the most unlikely places -- Martha Stewart, Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson -- stay home...enjoy your life...cook some more. It got so bad they had to put Martha in jail. How different would your life be if instead of two incomes, you lived on one? Could you "almost" do it? What if you downsized? Do you have too much house? Too much car? Too much bullshit entirely?

Sickened at the thought of hiring someone to come and live my life, we made the decision to "support my being a modern housewife: working on a dozen personal projects, while keeping up a complex and difficult routine of home economics. These things that would be outsourced -- light cleaning, yard work, small maintenance -- this is what life is made of. My life, at least. The paper shuffling, presentations, paychecks -- they are a means to an end.

I began to identify ways to simplify our life. The car was an obvious target, but neither of us could pull the trigger. As we dragged our feet I wondered:

What does this car represent?
Why has it inspired such passion?
What impact does it have on our life?
What is the meaning of this car?

Every way I looked at the issue I got answers I didn't like:
It represents status.
It inspires competition.
It siphons family resources.
It is enslaving us.

Shopping at Publix became an exercise in self-hatred. I couldn't allow the sweet older gentlemen to help me out with my bags -- why the fuck is someone's grandfather hoofing groceries -- it felt beyond sleazy to ask someone's grandfather to load the trunk of such an obvious symbol of his oppression. It doesn't matter if it bothers him or not. It bothers me.

On my way back to my inner city neighborhood I would pass somnambulant SUVs with magnetic "Support The Troops" ribbons and W stickers designed to look like restricted-community insignia. "Those bastards with their hubris -- getting 10 miles to the gallon in their land-yachts; hardly able to park the damn things; while proclaiming they give two shits about kids dying in the oil war. Can't they see they are lining the pockets of the enemy with their flamboyant consumption?"

Oil is "the enemy's" only product. If the world weren't upside-down there would be an embargo against Saudi Arabia. But there isn't. If the world weren't upside-down, the most rabid patriot would be walking to work; driving a hybrid; and demanding alternative energy sources. The money used to fund terrorism doesn't come from oranges or textiles -- it comes from oil. That's what they sell. That's what we buy.

As I cursed the SUVs, I realized the Bimmer (or the "Bummer" as the child I mentor says) gets only 25 miles per gallon. There's plenty of four-cylinder SUVs that get that milage. I might have a smaller footprint, but I suck up just as much blood in my oil as they do.

Recently my husband spent a weekend with his brother in Johnson City. On the visit he found out his brother had harbored a deep mistrust of us, judging from our car. He said he never came to visit because he figured we lived in an uppity gated community where he and his electric-powered bicycle wouldn't be welcome. My husband laughed and said, "oh no! we live in 'the hood.' We haven't completely sold out."

Not completely?

The car made no sense in our family, and yet we kept it -- feeding it the premium gasoline it craved and all the special "spa treatments" it requested through computerized symbols on the dash. Driving with the top down I could feel disapproval from economy cars, and worse -- the reptilian envy of gated community-dwellers who would have one of their own, if it weren't for those damn kids.

The car endured in our hearts, pushing out family members. It sucked our resources dry and damn near caused us to outsource our home-life. It separated us from ourselves, and disconnected us from our heritage. In short, we were it's slaves.

According to the Center for American Progress, lower- and middle-income households spend more on transportation than any other item except for housing. The guy driving the least efficient vehicle on the road today -- the Hummer -- gets a $25,000 tax credit. Compare that to the guy driving the most efficient hybrid -- a $2,000 deduction, tops. Add to that, in middle America, we don't have the option of mass transit to get off of the oil teat. If we want to get to work, we get in our cars and drive. If gas hits $5 a gallon, we will still have no other option but to drive. This is to say nothing of the "bad air" warnings frequently posted on electronic highway signs when there isn't an Amber Alert; or the time we lose in traffic; or the road rage.

And, where does the money go when we swipe our card in the gas pump? We hear that oil companies are having record profits, and boy, that makes us mad. We also hear heated discussion about something called, "peak oil," but no one seems to agree on that, so we don't worry. We might even have vague memories of the last oil crisis and be quite sure that eventually all the oil will dry up. But we'll all be driving Back To The Future Reactor Cars -- that's where the money is going -- R and D. Surely they are researching new technologies. Right?

Wrong. As The New York Times reported in February:

Thanks to crude prices that averaged $41 a barrel in New York last year, the world's 10 biggest oil companies earned more than $100 billion in 2004, a windfall greater than the economic output of Malaysia. Together, their sales are expected to exceed $1 trillion for 2004, which is more than Canada's gross domestic product.

But even as fears of shortages grow throughout the world and prices remain high, the cash-rich oil companies are not pouring a large portion of their money into their basic business: drilling for oil. Indeed, oil executives, in their second straight year of rising profits, are finding that too much money is chasing too few oil fields. Instead, they are giving much of their cash back to shareholders.

So, when I pay $2.50 a gallon for gasoline -- a full dollar more than what I was paying when I bought my last pair of Birkenstocks -- I AM PUTTING CASH MONEY INTO THE HANDS OF TERRORISTS (i.e. the corrupt regimes and oil companies responsible for the war, the Patriot Act, the Bush Crime Family). This weekend we learned that the oil wars are going to expand to Iran and will most likely involve a nuclear attack. As Bush vacations for the next in month in Crawford (the illegal Western White House), you can bet he will learn all about of this next phase of his "war presidency." To say the stakes are high, just doesn't put a fine enough point on it.

So lets attach a dollar amount. If gas was a buck-fifty five years ago, and I filled-up my 20-gallon tank twice a week to drive to my suckass corporate marketing job, I spent 30 bucks a tank of gas, and 60 bucks a week. Last week that same tank of gas would have cost me 50 bucks, or 100 bucks a week. That's a DONATION OF 40 DOLLARS A WEEK to their oil war. You got that? What can you do with 40 bucks a week? 160 bucks a month. Approximately $2,000 dollars A YEAR. Who wouldn't love to have that money back at the end of the year? 2,000 bucks. What's that? a vacation? tuition? or is it the difference between being able to afford your healthcare costs? Credit card bills. How about your mortgage?

At a time when the buzzwords on energy in the press are "peak oil," "100 dollars a barrel," and most frighteningly, "petro 'euro" -- the energy industry isn't even bothering to explore new fields, new technology or alternate fuels. I am right now at this moment listening to a discussion on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" concerning "energy independence." The discussion is that people don't have good choices. I'll agree with that to a certain extent. I would love to walk to the grocery store, ride the rail to see relatives and telecommute.

But in the meantime I do have one choice that trumps them all -- the CHOICE NOT TO BE A SLAVE TO MY CAR OR MY JOB. It's about me, my life and how I will live it.

Against this backdrop, we sold the BMW.



Take that Dick Cheney. I'll keep what's left of my freedoms and my 2,000 bucks this year. I know some people who need it more than you.

And to the working world that requires participation in my own enslavement: you can have me back when I can telecommute. You've heard of email, haven't you?

[wiggs]

1. Kudos for helping stop the insanity and for touching on something...

...really important. We are shaped from childhood to spend, consume, waste, work, buy, upgrade...even when we can't really afford it.

Something else interesting: the money we spend goes to fewer and fewer people. Consolidation, parent companies, downsizing and outsourcing, fewer and fewer large stockholders... all mean that wealth and power are being concentrated. This is not accidental.

As you did, we all need to turn down the volume a little and realize that there are many important aspects of our lives that don't revolve around consumerism.

[nashville_brook]

2. we don't even have kids -- i simply can't imagine how insane

my life would be. it makes me dizzy. seriously, i think i just had a panic attack. :)

[julianer]

3. Well done!

You are Spartacus :D

[nashville_brook]

7. i don't know what that means, but i like it

spartacus! spartin' down the road...

[julianer]

9. It's from the film 'Spartacus'

with Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis and Peter Ustinov. Spartacus is the Roman slave who leads a slave uprising.

The famous saying comes at the end when the Romans are trying to find Spartacus to kill him, but everyone shouts 'I am Spartacus' to stop them finding him.

[nashville_brook]

10. very apropos -- thankyou!

[wiggs]

4. I have two 16 yr old girls. Talk about good consumers! nt

[nashville_brook]

5. do you know the cell phone commercial with the teenage girls

where the tagline is "we're good consumers." ? that commercial is really scary.

[Karenina]

11. It is the "new reality"

Great piece!

[nashville_brook]

12. thanks -- i'm editing it down...

will post a condensed version later...

[nashville_brook]

8. i'm not there yet -- this was may be a small victory, but it's still

a consumer move.

in a way, i like that, b/c it's something everyone is already good at (buying shit). just make sure it's good and it makes sense.

[nashville_brook]

6. fyi on the tax deduction:

this came up on LBN re Toyota sales of hybrids. check out how confusing this is! look at the very last part where you are instructed to just "write it in" to tax form. wow.

How to Claim a Clean-Fuel Vehicle Federal Tax Deduction*

If you purchased your new Honda Civic Hybrid or Insight vehicle in 2004—or an Accord Hybrid, Civic Hybrid or Insight in 2005—you may qualify for a one-time $2,000 clean-fuel vehicle federal tax deduction.

For detailed information, please review the following IRS guidance and consult your tax advisor:

1. Press Releases
If you purchased your Civic Hybrid or Insight vehicle in 2004, please visit the following: 2004 IRS press release and the 2004 Honda press release.

(and you go here and you get this)

More Honda Vehicles Certified for Clean-Fuel Vehicle Deduction
IR-2004-16, Jan. 29, 2004
WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service has certified the Honda Insight, Model
Years 2003 and 2004, and the Honda Civic Hybrid, Model Year 2004, as being eligible
for the clean-fuel vehicle deduction.
<blah, blah blah>
Under current law, the clean-fuel vehicle deduction will be reduced incrementally until it
expires beginning in 2007. Purchasers of IRS-certified cars will be able to claim a
deduction of $2,000 if the vehicle was placed in service on or before Dec. 31, 2003.The
$2,000 maximum deduction will be reduced by 25 percent for vehicles placed into
service in 2004, by 50 percent in 2005 and by 75 percent in 2006. No deduction will be
allowed for vehicles placed in service after Dec. 31, 2006.

then you go to the IRS website and there's this:

Note: The clean-fuel vehicle tax deduction and electric vehicle credit were originally scheduled to phase out starting in 2004. However, the "Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004" has extended the maximum incentive amount through 2005.

and this:

Other Incentives
Some state and local governments also provide incentives for alternative fuel vehicles, so you may want to check with your state or local government. The U.S. Department of Energy's Clean Cities Vehicle Buyer's Guide for Consumers may also have useful information on state/local incentives.

and this:

Qualifying electric vehicles and clean-fuel vehicles (including gasoline/electric hybrids) purchased new are eligible for federal income tax incentives.

Clean-fuel vehicles: One-time tax deduction up to $2,000
Electric vehicles: One-time tax credit up to $4,000 per vehicle
The maximum incentive will be reduced to $500 in 2006 and will expire at the end of the year.

Note: The clean-fuel vehicle tax deduction and electric vehicle credit were originally scheduled to phase out starting in 2004. However, the "Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004" has extended the maximum incentive amount through 2005.

and this:
Other Incentives
Some state and local governments also provide incentives for alternative fuel vehicles, so you may want to check with your state or local government.

and most weirdly
How do I claim the deduction?
Whether you itemize or take the standard deduction, you can still claim the clean-fuel tax deduction. Unless the vehicle is purchased solely for business use, simply include the deduction on your 2004 1040 tax form in the "Tax, Credits, and Payments" section. Enter the amount of the deduction and the words "Clean Fuel" on the line next to line 35 and include the deduction in the total.


who'd thought you could do that? just write it in!