…and like all addicts, we want to blame someone else for the problem.

I’m sick of people complaining about high gas prices. I’m sick of people complaining about gas companies making record profits. Exxon and Chevron and their ilk are sitting on top of an increasingly scarce commodity. Lucky them! If I was a crack dealer, I’d sell for the highest price I could, too (Remember, only the first hit is ever free). It’s not Conoco’s fault that we’re all deciding day in and day out to be oil junkies. And it’s not George Bush’s fault either. He’s not twisting our arms to go out and pour money into gas company coffers. He didn’t show up with gun and put it to my head today and say, “Son, you need a second car. And make sure it’s damn big.”

I just watched a (politically liberal) woman drop her kid off at day-care with a Chevy Suburban. Her and her three-year old. 5,000 pounds of metal, seating for nine, crummy gas mileage, and all so that she could move one 30lb girl.

We’re getting exactly what we deserve.

Note to self: Buy a scooter. At 50-80mpg, it really doesn’t matter if gas goes to $15 a gallon. Or buy a house near public transit, or (gasp) close to your job. Ride a bike and work off some of the fat from your American tush. Use a push mower. Every dollar you spend at the gas pump goes to global warming and gas company P.R. campaigns designed to make you feel good that someone else out there is going to solve your problems. BP, anyone? (The green gas company! They’ve even got a CO2 calculator on their website’s homepage). Newsflash. They haven’t stopped selling gas. And that’s because you keep giving them little green dollars. Pavlovian response. You wave money at them, they drool. Stop waving money at them.

Bitching about our poor pitiful selves is America’s new pastime. When did we become such whiners? Senators (and not just the Republicans, mind you) want to give us a tax holiday from gas? As though the tax is the thing that’s making gas expensive? (try a gas tax in Europe if you don’t like America’s low low prices always) and some have proposed giving us a $100 gas rebate… if we drill for oil in ANWR. When did our senators become such pandering idiots? Oh right, when we started only voting for the ones who made us feel safe and warm and promised us that we could have anything we wanted: a painless war, a big car, a 3,000 sq. foot house, cheap fuel, great highways… and a tax break! Everything’s free! Don’t worry! This is the Land of Do As You Please!

Hardly any of the rhetoric from either side of the political aisle demands responsibility and thoughtfulness from America as a whole. Drive less, drive slower (Jimmy Carter, we miss you so much!) get a small car, give up on the family drive to Yellowstone and the 70-mile commute to the latest megamall, and the five-acre ranchette thirty miles from the nearest town.

Wake up, America. Deal with the fact that sometimes life provides less rather than more.