A wag once said that the opposite of progress is Congress. If you’ve lived long enough, you know that the statement is more true than amusing. But there comes a time in the lives of all men and women when a moral stand is called for. And there also comes a time in the lives of men and women when we must force Congress to act. That time is now. In the face of a slew of injuries and murders too numerous to count, it’s high time to call on Congress to do something instead of its usual nothing. All of us–Conservatives, Liberals, Independents, the Green Party, and now, apparently, Communists-cum-Marxists–it’s time to act. We must all march together and call on Congress to make good its first obligation to protect its citizens.
It’s time for Congress to ban cars.
The reason for the call to ban is obvious, but to adhere to the soritical approach to ratiocinative imbroglios, as the philosophers might say, let me filter this argument into the social, moral, environmental, psychological, cultural, and physical.
Owning a vehicle is a social imperative. Almost from the moment of birth, owning a car becomes an obsession, a malignant, magnificent obsession. We must show it off to friends and neighbors; we must parade it about before our peers. And while comparisons may be odious, when it comes to vehicles, we are more than willing to be both odious and obnoxious. And to what end? So that we can lord it over anyone who happens to be in our ken of acquaintance? This cannot be healthy. And it certainly cannot make us more productive.
The moral imperative is obvious to everyone. How many proms have been ruined
in the backseat of a vehicle? How many marriages are ruined owing to an orgulous and ill-advised
tryst? Vehicles are the means by which we wreck our moral fiber. We spend exorbitantly to secure
one, and then, when we wreck it, we wreck our futures, our happiness, our finances. The
impertinence of the loss sparks within us such a grievous de profundis of the soul that we can
hardly bear it. Families are torn apart, children are deserted, lives are upended. And all for the
orgasmic desideratum of a ton or less of metal? It’s as if we found ourselves in the midst of the
Houyhnhnms and saying that which is not!
I am almost persuaded to pass over the environmental argument since it is so obvious, but let us
proceed apace. The Green Party has been onto this for decades now, and it is time for the rest of
us to catch up. Vehicles pollute the environment, no matter what their configuration. If it isn’t
the evil of coal or oil, it is the evil of batteries and Elon Musk. I’m not sure about the Musk part,
but it is always part of the Green argument, so there he is. In any event, whether hybrid,
electric, or gas-powered, cars are a menace, a terrible menace. Not only must we drill for oil and
wreck the environment in the process, but we must also mine for minerals for the batteries. I
cannot begin to explain the logic of this. It is where we are and why we must band together to
ban cars.
The psychological argument is more subtle yet still powerful. Why are young people depressed
with suicide rates at skyrocketing levels? Why are parents overwrought, why are grandparents
awake at night, wondering if junior made it home after all? All because of cars. We are obsessed
with them and possessed by them. We cannot escape from them. We even make movies about
them, some for children, and most not. Cars are at the bottom of our psychosis, its beginning and
its end. Our only salvation is to ban them forever.
Culturally, cars have become status symbols. For men, they have replaced one envy with car-
envy. They are not sine ira et studio, but cum ira et studio, with anger and bias, with fury and
frustration. If the Joneses have a large car, then the Smiths must find a larger one. Our
apperceptions have become metallic, with heated seats. It’s no good to have a reasonable vehicle;
we must have a better one, a best one, and only then can we be satisfied—until the next model
comes out.
Finally, there is the physical. Cars have been disastrous. More people have died from vehicular
deaths than all the world’s wars, and yet we still churn them out by the thousands. In 2024, for
example, injuries and deaths rose to nearly 50,000. Since we have added texting to the mix, cars
and so-called car-phones are one of the leading causes of death, especially among young people.
Cars are used to traverse the country to kill others, to rob banks, and to run amok when
inebriated. We would be better off issuing everyone guns!
We do all of this for convenience, but stop and think about what we once had. Transportation by
cars has destroyed communities. Do you know your neighbor across the street from you or on
the next street over? No, of course not. Before cars, we knew all our neighbors. We talked to
them, worked with them, plowed fields with them. Today, we whizz by them never thinking of
the fields or the neighbors. And aren’t they called neigh-bores because we once visited them by
horseback?
Last year, deaths and injuries by horseback may, may, have reached 100. Deaths by cars, 500-
fold more. Transportation by horseback meant that we travelled less, travelled nearby, and got to
know everyone in the community. Meanwhile, we have lost everything to cars, especially our
communitarian sense of amity. We pave streets, erect bridges, add toll lanes, and worship Ford,
Chevrolet, Chrysler, Miata, Honda—well, you get the picture.
So, for the love of cars, we have given up everything, lost friends, ignored our neighbors, fought
with those who have better cars than we, driven—pun intended—ourselves to distraction with
car-envy, ruined our environment, put everyone in jeopardy, all for the love of Hot Wheels.
It’s time for us to band together and call on Congress to ban cars. There is no Constitutional
amendment to fight over or try to overwhelm. Cars are a convenience, a distraction, a
merciless parasite on our psyches.
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It’s time to ban them because of one important fact.
People don’t kill people; cars do!
