What made cars so central to being an American? I work from home in a rural area, and I need a car. I can’t walk to the grocery store because they built it too damned far away down a dangerous road. So what could I walk to? “Convenience” stores owned by the same companies that run the grocer except it’s all marked up for the convenience. And My employers downtown office doesn’t make business sense for the one time a month they make me drive down there, and the easiest solution, obviously, is to give me a few days notice that I’ll be in office indefinitely.
From then on there’ll be nothing more American than wasting my life on some stretch of highway with parked cars for miles in front of me, waiting to get to the same exit as everybody else, and then waiting to get through the same lights as they are, so I can get to my house that’s one street away from where they’re going.
Maybe we should critically re-examine what our parents were advertised into believing is the most American thing ever. Before the environmental collapse, please.