Give me liberty

The Devil comes in the form of a car. He seduces in a voice chosen to stir the hearts of patriots. Freedom he says. Independence he says. See the USA in your Chevrolet he says. And like the good salesman he is, he doesn't talk about the price. If you have to ask, you can't afford it. But there is a price and you have to pay it.

You become indentured. You borrow so you can buy the car. You drive the car ever farther so you can get a better job to pay for a better car. The bank owns the car, the car owns you. But your identity becomes intertwined with that of the car. It's how you display your social status, your power, your worth. Your car becomes the outward expression of everything you want the world to think you are. Even if you are not.

Your Devil box liberates you to behave in a way you never would if others could look you in the face; shouting profanities at strangers, cursing fellow citizens, cutting in line because you paid more than they did. In short, you become an asshole. The tool, after all, shapes the hand that wields it.

Your car forces you to refashion your community in a way that alienates you from your neighbors. Parking lots. Garages. Big box stores. Super highways that divide the rich from everyone else. You live in ugly, impersonal, inefficient neighborhoods that crush the civic motivation to build a better society. You pollute and degrade the land, air, and water and ultimately threaten the sustainability of human life itself.

Your car ruins democracy, America and ultimately Earth.

Freedom, as my gun-toting buddies constantly remind me, isn't free.