I have seen the face of the enemy, and it is us

Gas is hovering at the low, low, low price of $1.50ish right now in Utah, and I have never been so pessimistic about it.

A controversial subject hovering on the political blogosphere is the fate of the Big Three, those clunky American auto industries which have been the bedrock of our economy since who knows when according to some, and who have mismanaged their funds and marketing so badly that they now come begging for money at the stairs of the Capitol, flying in on personal jets and do not deserve a bailout whatsoever.

There is a vast double standard in how we treat the auto industries and their financial sector brothers, almost akin to the double standards feminists accuse men of holding on women. Never mind that the financial sector mismanaged trillions of dollars selling God knows what that had no real worth or value whatsoever. Never mind that the car industry actually makes, you know, things that we use every day. Never mind that both flew in on private jets, never mind that we gave the financial sector a slap on the wrist and handed over sums of cash that would make Scrooge McDuck green with envy, whereas we tied the auto industry leaders to proverbial horses and dragged them through town.

We blame our leaders for this (oh, how we blame our leaders!): the bufoons hanging out in Congress, an inept and now political neutered president who has never looked so happy to leave his current job, the stock brokers and traders, the CEOs, the captains of industry, the Masters of the Universe, or whatever title you wish to give them. We point our fingers, we gnash our teeth, wail out loud, smear ourselves with ashes and rent our garments, bemoaning how our leaders have betrayed us, how we have been deceived, and look at the mess that they (never we) have got ourselves into.

How quick, then, we are to turn from the fact that we pride ourselves in American democracy, that we are the true masters of our fate, that the power lies within us, and it actually does. We pull the strings, and while we may have become demoralized and pessimistic over the years, we still pull our politicians' strings, and as McCain showed in November, there are peaceful concessions and transitions of power reflecting the will of the people.

And we are the ones to be blamed for this mess.

We complain that American cars suck, and that's why they went out of business. Yet quietly, consumer guides told us that American cars held their own against foreign cars in quality. We jeer that the American car companies never got on the "Prius bandwagon," and lament how they have low gas mileage - yet last November, as this whole controversy was going on - the Ford F-series (a line of gas guzzling trucks) sold the most, while the Toyota Prius lay on the measly bottom, forgotten by all but the most hardcore environmentalists.

We complain that the Wall Street mongrels sold toxic loans for bad mortgages - ignoring the fact that we were pulling out those mortgages, making risky bets on a completely illogical presumption of housing prices never falling. We moan about how Wall Street had no idea what they were doing, all this derivatives and security trading nonsense, and how they destroyed so much wealth with speculative trading - yet have multiple channels that broadcast nothing but stock information and market trading, which many watch obsessively. We whine about how decadent their lifestyles are, their huge houses, lavish parties and obscene amounts of hubris that follow obscene amounts of wealth. Meanwhile, MTV has finally canceled its last show that actually shows music videos, instead broadcasting asinine reality shows about - guess what? - ridiculous sweet sixteen parties and spoiled young people who complain about nothing.

We worshipped what they produced - big, manly cars that drank gas like an alcoholic chugs mouthwash; wealth beyond imagination and the mismanagement thereof; arrogant lifestyles on Wall Street; the promise of easy money that involves making dangerous risks. We strived to be like them, we wanted to be like them. We bought what they gave us, fawned over it like a girlfriend desperately trying to keep together a crumbling relationship.

And then when our consumerist culture collapses on top of us, we scream innocent.

The truth of the matter is, none of us really are that innocent. I'm a Seattle expatriate, keeping some of the traditions, favoring walking, biking and public transportation over cars. But I still find myself driving whenever gas prices drop, while hunkering down during the gas price spikes and lamenting about how slow the world is to catching on. Though I've always been trying to detach myself from the rampant consumerism that surrounds me, it's still hard not to buy things, to fill our lives with stuff to become more happier. I need that awesome looking teapot, I need that awesome looking book, I need that awesome looking paint set. Even though I realize the need for civic community relationships to work together to solve problems, I have a hard time getting involved and always seem to have excuses of why I can't volunteer. Even though I try to break away from playing keeping up with the Jonses, it's hard not to daydream about the day when you will make so much money you can buy anything you wanted - that really nice house, the expensive car, the beautiful garden, that epic computer. And it's especially hard to not live the mantra that with money, you can buy anything in this world, while ignoring the real good that regularly surround us in our lives. These are hard habits to break from, and really, anyone who says he or she doesn't have a weak spot in any of these areas is lying.

And so as Rome burns around us, we, the true emperors of this nation, play the saddest song in the world on our fiddle to try and console ourselves. As Moses pleads freedom, we, the true pharoahs of this nation, harden our hearts and refuse to let go. And as the history books are written about us, how we had wholly embraced the self-destructive culture that our leaders created, we will cry we've been misaligned, that nobody understands us and how, of course, we did nothing wrong at all. It is always somebody else's fault. We whisper the lie to ourselves over and over again: They made me do this.

Yet if everyone would be totally honest with themselves, they would realize we are the ones to blame. It's time we stopped blaming our leaders and instead, roll up our sleeves and go to work. Rather than finger pointing and crying out foul, we should work together in trying to patch this economy together and push it in new directions. I hate Phil Gramm for all he's done in dismantling much of the New Deal guardrails and helping in moving us into this mess, but sometimes, I can't help but agree with him. Have we really evolved from the Greatest Generation on earth to a generation of spoiled whiners?