Universal Mediocrity for All

Here's how you work your magic in a totalitarian society without telling the citizens that they are totally subservient.

First you create a scapegoat. Even better, create a broad range of scapegoats so it doesn't sound as though you are prejudiced. Let's say you imagine that a small segment of the world population which has achieved the benefits of modern technology to raise their standard of living well above the third world, is really evil and their good fortune is cooking the planet.

Build a scenario of global warming (maybe neutralize critics by calling it climate change) and attribute it to overuse of fossil fuels. Don't directly outlaw coal, gas and oil. Simply vilify the by-products of combustion, which coincidentally are by-products of our own exhalations. Bad things should be taxed, so tax carbon emissions.

Condition people to be environmentally friendly. Think green and remember Kermit's warning that it wasn't easy to be that way.

Mandate cuts in consumption. Spend billions on huge windmills but don't notice that steel to build them consumes fossil fuel, trucks to transport them consume fossil fuel, wires to link users with the electricity require manufacturers to use coal and oil, etc. Buy billions of dollars worth of solar panels made in China where they seem oblivious to their own environmental impact. Never allow nuclear energy because it is too fictitiously dangerous. Didn't Jane Fonda nearly glow in the dark in The China Syndrome?

Nationalize a couple of major auto producers so you can shape the products into something no one wants. Regulate, legislate, indoctrinate. Create a clamor for action and pretty soon you get this.

Fifteen Years to 62 MPG AVERAGE Gas Mileage

DOT Secretary Ray La Hood, who gave us lower case street signs yesterday, teams up with EPA chief Lisa Jackson, who you may recall was amazed that crude oil in the gulf was "gooey," have performed what we used to call an anal extraction for their regulations. With no engineering basis for the mandated numbers, they pull some out of their nether regions to shape the car of the future.

With typical ignorance of the world outside the beltway, they create a situation in which working moms won't have a van to haul the kids to daycare and soccer practice. Folks in rural areas won't have a functional pick-up truck to support their occupation, handle chores and haul materials. Those in snowy hill country won't have four-wheel drive to get out of the driveway for six months of the year. In the process we will have little, uncomfortable, low-performing, drab and arguably dangerous econo-boxes.

Can you imagine driving across Texas in one of those? Maybe with a Obama bumper sticker...