There is a lot I can understand

about our culture, but come on, we are nuts. I thought it was dumb enough

when the lady came up with the failure-free gym program. For example,

so kids wouldn't feel failure during skipping rope, she had them remove

the rope. That's right, they have two kids simulating turning the rope

and the child in the middle is jumping up and down.

There are lots of other stupid

things we do in the name of "civilization," but nothing has

reached the ridiculous myopic heights as our SUV wars. Other people in

other countries battle over the right speak their mind or make the simple

choice of how to live, but we spend our time clashing over miles per gallon

and carbon emissions. And I don't mean a fun, healthy debate. Recent confrontations

have reached Bull Run-like proportions.

We as a people once fought

a civil war over the most important of human rights and now? We have the

4-wheel drive. Where we once had the Lincoln emancipation, we now have

the Ford Expedition.

I have often made fun of SUVs

and such in my columns, but I never thought Americans would commit terrorist

acts in the debate. I never thought people would spend hard-earned dollars

running ads saying people who drive SUVs support terrorism. Where do people

get this non-sequitur logic?

Arianna Huffington, the Zsa

Zsa Gabor of the news world, is leading this campaign with some other

friends called "The Detroit Project" in linking the SUV to terrorist

support. Huffington says the ads don't intend to demonize the drivers

but only the SUVs. I don't support her views in any way, but her logic

is like saying guns are the cause of murders and not people.

The issue, though, is not the

SUV debate, it's just that we have no cause bigger to fight about. Even

after the largest wake-up call in our nation's history at 9/11 we continually

redefine petty as even a less petty than the original petty. And Americans

pretty much invented petty.

So, we can forget the poor,

the hungry, the tired. We are all gonna rally together and stop the production

of the gas-guzzling faux-4-wheel-drive! Now that, that's a mission for

life! It's no wonder we are laughed at by people in other lands. Our reasoning

and moral sense has become about as skewed as a Clinton confession.

My biggest fear is, where do

we go from here? What will follow as the next big "revolution"?

Will there be rebel forces gathered to denounce the condiment selection

at McDonald's? I can see it now, "The Bottled Water War," Americans

committing acts of violence against each other because some like filtered,

some like mineral.

I think it's time "Gulliver's

Travels" was required reading for all. Seems to me, as a youth I

laughed at the war the people were fighting over which end of the egg

should be broken open. Only now in our situation, we are the ones who

are cracked.