I love the 70s (not really)

There is a new and, for a change, semi-interesting program airing in television land nowadays. It airs on CBS at the golden 21:00 hour (9 pm for you uglo-Amerikans) on Thursdays.

(Check your local listings for the name of the program. I am not a television network message board or rolling advertisement.)

I watched the premiere last week, intrigued mightily by its portrayal of that somewhat forgotten and much maligned era in which the story is set, the 1970s. Does it bring back some memories. Yeah, I know it's just a stupid TV program, and a blatant ploy for summer ratings at that (open marriage, anyone?).

Yet like I have mentioned before, I am a sucker for all things 70s. Don't get me wrong, folks. The 1970s sucked. War, inflation, terrorism, public corruption, bad TV and films....whew, glad we don't have to worry about those things today (end sarcasm). But don't you too get the impression that the era was somewhat more innocent? (That is, if you weren't part of the highball culture of sexual and moral perversion which defined the "enlightened" dickheadery of that period.)

For a not so intelligent person such as myself, it was certainly easier to live during that time. You didn't have to press twenty buttons to activate your stereo, you were free of the constant menace that is the mobile phone, and petrol sold for 99 cents a gallon.

The good with the bad, though. The 70s was the period in which most of our current social problems originated. Class warfare, welfare babies, white flight, neoconnism (FYI, most neocons got their start in the Nixon administration), etc. - all got their start, or were aggravated intensely, by the events of that decade. If any of these trends had been nipped in the bud, existence would be much more tolerable today. Instead now we have Emperor George II and his passel of loyal heel clicking Praetorian Guardsmen with an iron grip on the State, working mightily to pervert this land into a fascist dictatorship. To a great extent, they have already succeeded.

So nostalgia has its place....but don't get too lost in the past, else you might not see the hammer back in the present rushing forward to crush your skull.

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Back to the future...If you are looking for the cost of petrol to decrease to its 'normal price', or pre-2003 level, or whatever, dream on. Understand that once the sellers of petrol see that the Amerikan consumer is willing, in its sheeplike monotony, to shell out over $4 for a gallon of petrol, then what is the incentive for the price to decrease substantially? They can command a high price for all eternity in this situation.

Sure, there will likely be some momentary downward fluctuations of petrol prices, within a narrow range of 30 to 40 cents or so. The price of oil is certainly overvalued, and its current expense is not due to peak oil or some mysterious force, but because the Middle East is currently embroiled in a little unfortunate violence, which serves to reduce output and devalue the increasingly worthless coin of the Imperial realm. But as long as this course of events continues, expect to pay more and more for less and less.

Fascism, after all, is its own reward for the power elite.