Consistent Inconsistency

There’s this group of earnest gray-haired women on the corner of 23rd and Union holding handmade signs protesting Bush and US foreign policy. You gotta love ‘em; at least I do.

Here’s what gets me, though: people drive by in their single occupancy vehicles, honking their horns to show their support. But wouldn’t a more appropriate response be to get out of their cars? Isn’t the fact that they’re driving along by themselves a major reason that the U.S., under Bush, behaves the way it does in the world? Wouldn’t our country have been much less likely to invade Iraq if it weren’t for all the oil there?

Or am I just being a cranky and smug bicycle commuter?

I’m not sure how important consistency is, anyway. I think you can drive to a protest against the oil companies if you have to. It’s okay to wear Nikes to a rally against globalism. Smokers can rail against the corporate policies of R.J. Reynolds. I can even—though barely—make sense of a gay Republican.

But there just seems something so oxymoronic about being against the Iraq war while in the driver’s seat of your car. It’s not that you can’t own an automobile and be opposed to Bush; it’s just that at that very moment when you are burning fossil fuel, it seems false somehow, to give a little toot on your horn to show what you believe in—because if you really did, wouldn’t you do something else?

I often pass by a parked Toyota truck with a bumper sticker that reads “Save the Environment.” As long as it’s parked, I believe the owner’s sincerity. But as soon as he fires up the engine and begins consuming and polluting, I’m not so sure. Of course, as far as I know, he may be driving to the forest to plant trees, but even so, if he passed by me on my bike, I’d still roll my eyes.