The C Word

Chaos, Bush. It's sheer bloody chaos around here. In the old house, boxes everywhere. Stacks of boxes, loaded boxes, overflowing, half-filled boxes, empty boxes waiting to be filled... I've already taken a hundred of them to our storage unit. There are dozens more. Stuff everywhere, piled up, strewn about, waiting to be packed. Plastic, bubble wrap, newspaper. Pictures stacked against the wall, waiting to be wrapped. In the new house, more chaos. Debris from the demolition still filling the garage. Dust everywhere. Sheet rock, broken ends of wood and metal, not a single room untouched. And everything, of course, takes three times longer than expected. I checked in yesterday evening and found that Monday had gone by with scarcely any evidence of progress.

And even so, I keep reminding myself that all this chaos in our life here at home is just a miniature reflection of what's happening out there in the country at large. On the news, I see images of the destruction on the Gulf Coast, the tens of thousands who have lost their homes completely. Not to mention those whose families have been decimated by the storms. Not to mention the chaos further afield... We have to be grateful that our share of the chaos is so small.

But that wasn't that C word that I wanted to mention today. I was shocked, Bush, shocked, to hear you suggesting, in public, that people might think about parking their cars and avoiding unnecessary trips. About using public transportation. About, um... conservation. Should I believe my ears? Admittedly, the word came out reluctantly, but I distinctly heard it. Conservation! Forgive me, I thought we were all about consumption, Bush. About being good consumers so that private enterprise could prosper and the corporations could keep filling their coffers. So that, in turn, the benefits could trickle down to the poor and the middle classes? And don't I remember your Cheney talking disparagingly about conservation, as though the very idea were some quaint aberration on the part of mindless tree-huggers?

Conservation! What a concept! I mean, Bush, wherever did you come up with this revolutionary idea? Could it have been the prospect of the political consequences of escalating gas prices? Of home heating prices rising by, potentially, some seventy percent? That's what I hear this morning on the news. I imagine that even the most avid of your supporters might begin the catch the rank odor of rotting policies once they assess the impact of their energy bills on household budgets. Perhaps even conservatives will begin to recognize the vital importance of conservation. Aren't the two words related? I wonder, then, could this be the silver lining on the dark clouds that we see everywhere today?