as goes gasoline, so goes the nation

let us pause to remember $20-a-barrel oil prices.

the last time gas prices went ballistic on the poor sheep of the USA, if you recall, was back in 2008, a bit before the great economic collapse that is known as the great recession -- which is only a marketing ploy to disguise the true nature of the catastrophe.

when people in the US see video of street scenes in europe, the gasoline prices they see advertised are in liters instead of gallons, so many of my poor, clueless fellow citizens think there's a rough parity in prices. or, if they realized that other people around the globe pay much more to run their far-less-numerous automobiles, it's with the same disdain they feel for anything foreign: "poor dumb bastards."

the fact is, gasoline prices in the US are heavily subsidized in order to drive the economic suicide machines that is carrying the nation off a scenic cliff during a stunningly photogenic sunset.

this is the truly exceptional nation that was built around the notion of cheap and plentiful natural resources, chief among them petroleum. the nation has secured the resources that allow for sprawling exurban lifestyles at a high price in terms of human suffering around the globe, in exchange for cheap gas here in the homeland.

now that the US global hegemony is being threatened by the unraveling of friendly regimes in the middle east and north africa, the markets are reacting with anxiety bordering on panic. the reasons for this are multiple, but at their heart the powers who suck the marrow out of the international economy have no room to talk: this is the invisible hand at work, and the magic of the marketplace extolled by ronald reagan showing the true nature of its exuberance.

in short, the bets that the banks through their instrument the FED have made vis a vis inflation and interest rates are now going monstrously bad, and instead of only shaking down the little people through their bailout regime and interest-free money, they have to contend with forces that will seriously test their ability to control a world that is rapidly becoming adversarial rather than complicit in this dirty game.

i just paid $3.50 a gallon for my weekly 9-gallon fill-up. i drive a 20-year-old car on a 50-mile-per-day commute. while gasoline prices continue their record march upward, people like me have been living on stagnant wages for several years now. when news reports of rising income come across this desk, i can only wonder which workers in which cities and industries are actually seeing upward movement in compensation.

instead, while the papers assure us that "core inflation" is holding steady and well within the bernanke FED's "target," there is no such steadiness at the grocery checkout. any item in your cart could be fifty cents higher this week than last -- indeed, a great many of them are. ditto with any other goods and services: the prices of things we need and buy every day continue to rise. when gasoline, the true lifeblood of the american way of life, reaches $4 and $5 a gallon -- which seems to be inevitable now -- watch the anger and anxiety in the already agitated public to reach the breaking point.

indeed, if there's any one thing that assures that the oligarchs can keep the lid on popular discontent, it's that gasoline that fuels the 50-mile-a-day commutes that many of us rely on. i'm one of the lucky ones, in that i'm not involved in a love affair with my automobile, and drive a clunker -- the exact type of car the government tried to take off the road in the corporate giveaway (aka "stimulus") called "cash for clunkers." (it was incredible to me that the law mandated that any vehicle cashed in under the program must be destroyed, and not resold. i couldn't believe how wasteful and opportunistic this was, as it took affordable used cars off the market and deprived the lower classes the opportunity to own a reasonably priced vehicle.)

when the last "gas crisis" was fresh in the collective memory, the government mandated certain fuel-economy regulations be applied to the automakers' fleets. while at the time the concern was with supply rather than the environmental consequences of all the carbon emissions, things like fuel economy standards and lowered speed limits suggested to the public that there were limits to our collective profligacy.

enter ronald reagan, and exit anything but a collective frenzy of consumption with a distinctive "me-me-me" flavoring. along with the solar panels from the white house roof, among the casualties of the renewed belligerency and consumption fever were the fuel economy standards. as with most of the stratagems of the free-marketeers, the movement was incremental rather than directly storming the citadel of common sense.

the automakers in this case exploited a loophole in the fuel-economy standards that existed for a class of vehicles called "light trucks." these were intended to apply to vehicles used by small business to carry people and equipment to job sites and customers, but instead the highways and byways of american were overrun with SUVs and minivans of all sizes and configurations. for most of us, this is typified by the suburban housewife in a land yacht, with several kids in the back seats, each watching a small video screen, while mom gabs away animatedly on her smartphone -- and every other driver lives in fear of being crushed by this lumbering behemoth.

this trend ultimately crested with the hummer H2, and as with all wretched excess finally doomed the very industry that spawned it -- taking the big detroit automakers down for the count (only to be resurrected by pure taxpayer cash infusions, no interest and no liability).

everyone know that after the gas-price frenzy, the great collapse of 2008 seemed to come out of nowhere and suddenly everyone was caught shit-faced at the prospect of all these giant wall street investment banks on the brink of insolvency -- and needed billions of dollars of mainline cash infusions to be brought back from the brink of destruction.

we all should know this part of the story, since its still practically as fresh as today's headlines. governments have loaded down their balance sheets with all the fraudulent investments these criminal enterprises that own the politicians made. the government, in its utter subservience to powerful and wealthy interests, is being crushed by the weight of the debts it incurs to finance the military establishment that ensures cash flow to multinational energy corporations, and industrial and weapons manufacturers on the one hand; on the other, it staggers under the weight of all the worthless paper taken on from the bankster conglomerates.

after all this very public larceny and malfeasance, which is perfectly well-known and understood, you might expect some remorse and penance from the malefactors, but you're barking up the wrong tree on that, buster!

no one is guilty, no one is punished. instead, the taxpayers are left holding the bag for all the bad investments they neither made nor profited from. in fact, many lost homes or their retirement savings, but are now expected to bear the brunt of this new artifice from the ruling elites called austerity in order to repair the wreckage of the system.

had the status quo prevailed in the mid-east and north africa, and not put too much stress on other clever schemes contrived to siphon the remaining wealth of the working classes of society, the elites might just have pulled their grand scheme off. the 15 percent of our wages we've been paying for the entirety of our working lives might have been forfeited to the banker class to satisfy their need for more and more wealth before dumping the US for more lucrative markets.

now i'm not so sure. when you start to muck with their gas supply, this is something that can cause serious dislocations in the political calculus that drives the debate in america. you cannot blame gas prices on mexicans or gay marriage. no one will give two shits about where the president was born, and they sure as hell won't want to hear a bunch of contrived nonsense about how he's channeling his late father's anti-imperialist tendencies.

there's nothing good or noble about the american people. they are about and selfish and barbaric as any nation you can name in any era of history. they are quick to name scapegoats, and will lash out at convenient villains at the drop of a hat. most of all, they'll be out for blood, and it'll be crazed and irrational demagogues they'll seek and follow, as they begin a crusade of folly to restore past greatness.

and it just ain't happenin', dude. there is no going back. this is a country that has collapsed in on itself, a grandiose cluster-fuck of self-indulgence and self-righteous entitlement. that's the whole story of american exceptionalism, delusion on a grand scale about stealing everything in sight to have it all for oneself without really deserving it. that's the name of the game, and that'll be the epitaph.