The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 564
Bryce’s discourse reminded me of two things: First, the slave owner who says
to his slaves, “What’s the big deal about freedom? If I free you, you’ll just have
to go out and struggle to find a job, then a house, then clothes to wear, and food
to eat. If you get sick, you have to pay the doctor’s bills. Why not stay here and
I’ll take care of those things for you? What’s a little whipping every so often, and
occasionally I’ll rape your wife or daughter or son; but so what? They’ll probably
even learn to enjoy it?”
The second thing concerns those Russians who were unhappy when the Soviet
Union collapsed and they were faced with the prospect of independence and
self-reliance. Between communism and life under the Czars, Russians had
never experienced freedom – I’m talking about hundreds and hundreds of
years. The newly free Russians were lost; they had no direction, they didn’t
know how to adjust to a life where they could make a decision. Of course, those
who had been in the black market had no problem with entrepreneurship, but
they were in the great minority.
Bryce says “Americans are fixated” on the issue. I think there’s truth to that.
However, I don’t think we’re fixated enough on the issue. He makes the picture
look cheerful by telling us that we’re paying less for gasoline now than we did
in 1913, based on adjusted numbers for inflation, improvements in lifestyle,
Gross Domestic Production figures, and other arcane comparisons. He attempts to alleviate our concerns when he writes that oil isn’t the only foreign
product we depend on. And that’s true, too.
I think it’s distressing to know or feel that we are incapable of producing steel
nuts and bolts to build a new SF Bay Area Bridge, and that we need clothing
factories in Bangladesh to manufacture $100 jeans for our malls to sell, and
that we need China to build solar panels that don’t work sufficiently. It’s sad, but
I’m still not getting the connection between our production inabilities and why
it’s okay to be reliant on foreign sources for our engine fuels.
Bryce also reminds us in GUSHER OF LIES that we’re not the only country
enslaved to foreign oil; our two greatest allies in World War II, the Germans and
the Japanese, are also locked in oil chains.
Wait, did I just write “our two greatest allies in WWII, the Germans and the Japanese?…”. Oh, my gosh, weren’t they our enemy in WWII? Didn’t we win the
war and they lost it? Didn’t we spend billions of dollars to rebuild their societies?
Didn’t we get pulled into that war specifically because Japan went on a campaign of aggression to conquer oil-producing countries in the Far East and we
