Silence of the Gnats

My wallet stays thin these days. Any extra cash goes into my gas tank. Recently I was at the gas station once more, filling up, and I heard an annoying sound. It buzzed closer but I still didn't see anything. Then I caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye -- an annoying gnat. I swatted at it but it just drifted there, taunting me, knowing that I couldn't hurt it. Then he's joined by his brothers and sisters and there is a whole cloud drifting around my head, buzzing my ears, even getting in my mouth. Ptooey. I finished filling up and sought the safety of the inside of my vehicle. A few gnats made it in with me but I blasted them with the air conditioner fan. Peace at last but I'm still poor.

Our politicians are like gnats when it comes to the current energy crisis. They buzz around, some times singly, sometimes in crowds, always on the move but somehow only being an annoyance. I hear pie-in-the-sky ideas about how to solve our rising gas prices but since gnats live in the sky I know they can't pull anything from it. I just hear the buzz of more empty or unrealistic promises: solar and wind mostly. Neither of these produce even a fraction of the daily energy generated using oil, coal, and natural gas in America. But they generate a lot of buzz.

Gnats can't solve problems, they can only be annoying. Our energy problems cannot be solved by an ineffective government, they must be solved by average citizens and private enterprise. Government can help best just by getting out of the way. The West wasn't won by the government, no one in Texas shouts, Remember the government! America has the most creative population on the planet. We can do anything if we put our mind to it. History clearly shows this. So why aren't we doing something now? Where are our leaders? Where is the vision? Where is our next privately funded Manhattan project? Why is it that all we have is a cloud of buzzing gnats and that we seem to wait for these gnats to do something? They're just gnats. We need to make our future ourselves like our forefathers did. We have the substance of liberty in our hearts and in our spirits. We have the ideas and the wherewithal to get them done. We beat the Brits in the Revolutionary War. Do we not have the cajones to solve what may be our largest challenge since that time? If we do not solve it, we will no longer be a great nation. We will become the buzzing gnats instead. We will have shown that we have no substance.

That gnat that flew into my mouth wasn't tasty and sure didn't provide any sustenance. Neither will all of the buzz from the politicians about alternative energy. We need the energy now but all we get is buzz. Buzz won't fill up my gas tank. Actually, no buzz at all would be nice. I could use the silence to think about ways to help my country become energy independent once more. Find your own silence of the gnats.

Take your medicine. It's good for you.

CodLiverOilGuy