Brutally Honest Rant - 04/19/06

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Hostile Gas Prices and Angry Liberals
Audio Transcripts
04/19/06

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – "American Idiot Remix" – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening, and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

Well I’ve got two subjects to rant about this week, and they’re both about pissed-off people… and they’re both about subjects that I’ve been ranting about for quite some time now.

First up: gas prices.

Yes, they’re on the rise again. This should have been expected, because it’s getting closer and closer to Memorial Day, when prices go UP every year. EVERY YEAR! And there is a big reason behind it, but I’ll get into that in a bit.

Every time the gas prices go up, we hear nothing but EXCUSES. It’s getting close to Summer… it’s because of Iran… it’s because of Nigeria… it’s because of some stupid additive that needs to be replaced… and then we get the infamous excuse of "because they’re greedy bastards who are fleecing America."

And the sad part is that the latter IS true! The oil companies ARE raping Americans in the pocketbook! They’ve been doing that time and time again, and they’re doing it right now, and they’ll keep on doing it! Do you know why? Because they can! Because WE LET THEM!

And with those higher prices, there comes the usual email scams… and they really are nothing more than hoaxes that are designed to play off our frustrations without really resolving the problem. I mean, come on… boycotting gas for one day or boycotting just one kind of gas station will mean absolutely NOTHING to the oil industry! All you’re really hurting is just the local mom-and-pop gas station owners, who are just the middlemen in this situation.

Okay, so we’re angry! We’re pissed off, and we want something done! But we’re not looking at the right people for that.

If we’re looking at people to blame, I have three groups for you to blame: the US Department of Energy, the US Department of the Interior, and the Environmental Protection Agency. These are the people who came up with the convoluted refining rules for petroleum products and have ensured that we are addicted to foreign oil! THESE are the people you should be pissed off at!

We’re hearing this crap about "summer blends" and "winter blends"… and every time there’s a changeover it costs US money at the pump! Every year there’s a new "refining formula" that costs US money at the pump! Those are ALL the fault of the United States Government! These are things that can be resolved TODAY if Bush Imperium really cared about the high cost of energy. These are things that can be resolved TODAY if the Republican-controlled Congress REALLY cared about the common people! Congress wants to pull some former CEO out to explain why he’s getting $400-million in a retirement package, but they don’t want to pull the head of the EPA out to explain why every year they want to come up with a Rube Goldberg system of refining oil that continues to cost Americans MILLIONS of hard-earned money every six months! They don’t want to pull the Secretary of Energy out to explain why he’s out there pimping the citizens of the United States out like a bunch of crack whores to Venezuela and the Middle East. You know why? Because it’s easier to play the wealth envy card than to do anything that even remotely resolves the problem! It’s easier to demagogue the situation than to come up with a REAL solution!

Now… if you want to REALLY show your frustration with the oil industry… if you REALLY want to take a stand and do something that will REALLY come back to HURT Big Oil and to Big Government… then it rests with two little words that I’ve been mentioning over and over and over again.

STOP…. DRIVING!

I mean it! STOP DRIVING!

Don’t go on vacation. Don’t make plans to go to Aruba or Jamaica or wherever you normally go during the spring and summer months! Don’t make that annual trip to Aunt Betty’s house. Don’t fly, don’t drive, don’t take the bus, and don’t take the train. Put up the boat. Mothball the ATV. Stay at home!

Listen, folks, if you want to make a statement that REALLY expresses your frustration with the high price of oil, then YOU are the one that has to make the sacrifice needed for that statement! YOU DO! You have to take the definitive steps to demonstrate that YOU ARE SERIOUS when you say that the price of gasoline is unreasonable and unacceptable.

And I’ll tell you what, folks… I’VE ALREADY done my part! Last year I moved closer to work. This year my parents are moving closer to their respective workplaces. Everything they will need will be just a couple of blocks away, so no more long drives for them. That’s less money in the gas tank and more money in THEIR pockets! Now, if you think you can one-up that… then I’m all ears! And guarantee that this kind of personal sacrifice will hurt Big Oil a whole lot more than these email scams about one-day "gas-out" protests. The only thing that those phony plans will do is waste your time while Big Oil robs you of more and more money.

(Clip: "I’m as mad as hell…")

But speaking of anger…

The next group of angry people that I want to talk about tonight are the "angry blogging left".

Or at least that’s the gist of a recent newspaper article in the Washington Post. It seems that the air-fluffed members of the media have discovered that people on the left side of the outdated two-dimensional political spectrum are pissed off, and they have taken their anger online.

Gee… and here the media thought that all the Internet was good for was child porn!

Okay, quick quips aside, this is really a non-story. I mean, the liberals have been pissed off for quite some time now. They were pissed off back in 2000 when they lost in the Presidential Fiasco and they carried that anger with them through the 2004 Election and on to today. I mean, if they WEREN’T angry after all of the crap that’s been going on especially in the last two years, then I’d be truly concerned about them!

And being angry and online isn’t anything new either. I mean, come on, the thorn in Bill Clinton’s side in his second term of his regime DID NOT come from just talk radio! It came from angry CONSERVATIVES who were online and spreading the word of their anger and rage. Well now that the neo-cons and theo-cons have their wildest wet dreams fulfilled with the Bush Imperium, it’s the liberals who are now online and angry.

But let’s get brutally honest here… the ongoing problem the "angry blogging left" is that it’s not enough to just be angry! The liberals were angry in 2004 and that didn’t help them win the election! It just made them look even more bitter and pathetic.

Look, if you want to be angry, then you have to be angry not just at the Bush Imperium and at the cons and neo-cons and theo-cons, but you also have to be angry with a purpose! You need a direction to move people towards. You need something that has been sadly lacking in the ranks of the liberals… an actual alternative!

And even that is not enough! Once you have that alternative, that goal, that direction to move people towards, then you have to make sure that everyone’s on that same page. And here is where the liberals have ALSO failed to do their jobs, because the Democrats have not been able to mount a successful resistance against the Bush Imperium. The cons and neo-cons and theo-cons have all got their act together, and they damn well know it! When one of theirs go out of bounds, they get called on it! If they drift too far to the left, the GOP attack squads start painting them as "Republicans In Name Only" or "Closet Democrats". The liberals, meanwhile, are afraid to go after their own. They’re afraid to hold anyone’s feet to the fire. And when their efforts are sabotaged from the inside, they don’t call anyone on it. They just get mad and they just start brooding away.

Listen, guys, you need to take a page from the moralists and the theocrats. They don’t just rage against they dying of the light. They get people mad and then get them to DO something about it! They give them something to FOCUS their attention on and to give that rage of theirs a sense of PURPOSE. That’s how they got to where they are. And if you’re going to BEAT them, then you have to play the game like them.

(Computer – a nice collection of anger-related clips that you have to listen to)
(Fade Music In – "Skylight" by Overseer)

Both of these subjects deal with anger. Now, some people think that anger is a bad thing. But the truth of the matter is that we NEED anger to focus our attentions. It motivates us! It DRIVES us to action.

But there are two things that are truly more dangerous than just anger… the first is anger without a direction. It’s rage that just builds up and up and it’s packed in without any kind of release or any way to focus it. That’s when people really self-destruct.

The second thing that is more dangerous than just being angry… is being apathetic. The person who is angry at least knows that something is wrong in this world, even if they don’t immediately act on it. The apathetic person, however, knows that something is wrong and they just don’t care, even if it’s done against them. In that regard, they are truly the most amoral people in the world!

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a whole nation of pissed-off people than those who can’t be inspired to do anything. Anger at least can be motivated into action. Apathy, on the other hand, is nothing less than an indicator of stagnation. It’s the ROTTING of a community… and sadly, there’s way too much of it going on here.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production, all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/"End of Recording")

[End of program]
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