Could there be anything less American than driverless cars? I suppose sexbots might quality but certainly driverless cars are right up there.
Seriously, driverless cars have no place in the land that practically invented the open road, hit-the-road-Jack-never-come-back motif. And Michael Walsh agrees:
…these vehicles are emasculating, imprisoning, anti-American, and inhuman. And now, in the wake of the first fatal accident involving an “autonomous vehicle,” they’re deadly as well.
Whence comes this rush to robot cars? Did the public demand it? Or have our betters in the tech industry and in the bowels of the bureaucracy taken it upon themselves to correct our lamentable human failings and, in the name of “safety,” shove these vehicles down our throats?
He also touches on how the fear of terrorism has led to the trashing of the Fourth Amendment. Citing how we’re all subject to government overreach, unreasonable search and seizure at airports and “legal” snooping via your computer, phone (and bank records) he wonders “why would you climb into a robocar and take yourself hostage on purpose?” And notes that convenience “is no reason to voluntarily surrender your personal autonomy to something that will, by definition, be subject to close governmental scrutiny and control.”
All of which seems self-evident to anyone of a certain age. Not so for Millennials – many of whom didn’t even want to learn how to drive – who have been conditioned by propaganda to embrace mass transportation, Ubers and Zipcars. Not only do they feel they are saving the planet by not owning their means of transportation, it allows them to forego yet another right of passage to adulthood: the assumption of responsibility for owning and operating a set of wheels to get them from where they are to where they think they want to go. They’ll never appreciate that joie de vivre kindled simply by listening to a “road song” written to celebrate freedom and mobility – both euphemistically and literally. Pity, really.
Here’s just a partial list of my best ‘Hit the Road’ songs, feel free to add your own:
The Beach Boys — ‘Little Deuce Coupe’
Ronnie and the Daytonas – Little GTO – aka the “The Wah Wah song”
The Stills-Young Band — ‘Long May You Run’
Janis Joplin — ‘Mercedes Benz’
Wilson Pickett — ‘Mustang Sally’
Willie Nelson — ‘On The Road Again’
The Doors – Riders on the Storm
Prince — ‘Little Red Corvette’
Tracy Chapman — ‘Fast Car’
Don Henley — ‘Boys of Summer’
And of course the ultimate Motown car song, Aretha Franklin’s Freeway of Love (in her Pink Cadillac)
Mr. Walsh concludes his analysis of driverless cars with this:
But that’s what the land of the free is rapidly becoming: a nation of passengers, without even enough gumption to be backseat drivers. Enjoy the ride.
They once said “as GM goes, so goes the nation.” I say “no” to gray, soul-less, driverless cars. I say let’s make Motown great again and see how it works out for the rest of the country.
So let’s hit the road, Jack (and Jackie).
Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!
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