Good Riddance To The Hummer And – Hopefully – Everything This Monster Mobile Stands For

By Doug Draper

If we need one more reminder that the party is over for all the relentless binging aging baby boomers like me have been on for everything from pet rocks to big, bloated vanity homes for just two boomers with no kids, consider the news last week that General Motors is at long last closing the curtains of its show rooms on the Hummer.

Seems GM could not find another buyer on the planet for this gargantuan, gas-sucking pig of a vehicle – not even from auto manufacturers in China – and had no choice this March but to shut the “brand” down.

And thank whatever god you and I pray to for that!

There are possibly few more conspicuous symbols of the ‘no-holds-barred, let’s-live for-today’ drive to consume almost anything and everything we boomers can grab on to, regardless of the consequences, than the Hummer.

There was something very obvious about the Hummer and many of the larger Sport Utility Vehicles (more infamously known as SUVs) that spoke to a culture – pre-soaring oil prices and 2008 economic meltdown – that said; ‘We who drive this car couldn’t give a damn about energy conservation, air quality or anything else. … If we happen to get in a collision and you are driving a smaller car, we’ll just brush you off the grill and move on.” 
“We are driving high and mighty, and the rest of you are nothing.”

And let’s face it, that is the essential statment those driving the Hummer and other vehicles like it meant like it intend to make. Why else would you need something that was originally built for rugged terrains in combat zones to drive from a home in the suburbs to the shopping mall to buy socks?

What is so sad about the state of humanity today and why I have all but given up on believing any rational thought will come into play when it comes to carrying about the quality of the air we breath or any other resources that sustain our lives on this planet, is that the only thing that killed the Hummer and any sons of the Hummer was the soaring price of gas over the past two or three years to do. There is no indication it had anything to do with any rational thought around conserving energy, hard-to-breath smog days during the summer or anything else.

One of my most unpleasant encounters with a Hummer was on a trip down to Maryland to visit some friends in a suburb of that state outside Washington, D.C. beltway. It was 2002 and just a few months after the U.S. Bush administration invaded Iraq, claiming that the country had “weapons of mass destructon” and not minding allowing a lot of American citizens to believe Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks on the NYC trade towers and Pentagon – two notions that could not be backed up with real facts at the time and to this day, still don’t hold any currency outside the dangerously delusion worlds of Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin, and their millions of tea-bag followers and fans.

The guy driving it passed me on a six-lane road coming into Rockville, Maryland, and all I had to show on my car was an Ontario license plate that didn’t help since our government had decided not to join the “coalition of the willing” for the Iraq invasion. The sneer on the Hummer’s face was potent as he passed and I looked up and saw ‘old glory’ flying above the cabin of his monstor. As he sped on, I spotted a ‘Support the Troops’ sticker on his back bumper.

I thought at the time, if you are really that patriotic and support the troops so much, why are you driving something that pumps up enough gas to keep you dependent on oil from Saudi Arabia, where most of the 9/11 terrorists hailed from, at least until the end of the Bush administration. But any kind of a conversation like that would not have mattered to this Hummer driver at the time. He was driving high and mighty, and in his mind, he was right.

Interesting to note that about a week ago this March, after GM pulled the pin on the Hummer, a paid ad began appearing on CNN and other cable channels in the U.S. by a coalition of U.S. soldiers from the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns called ‘Operation Free’, calling for an end to dependence on Middle East oil.

The ad features Christopher Miller, a Purple Heart veteran of the Iraqi campaigns, pleading with any of us out here who will listen to do what we can reduce our dependence on Middle East oil because the petro dollars heading for Iran and other countries in that part of the world are paying for the manufacture of the IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) killing U.S. troops. That includes Canadian troops in Afghanistan, by the way.

Like I say, good riddance to the Hummer. And anyone driving around in other larger SUVs with a ‘Support the Troops” sticker on the bumper doesn’t have a clue what they are trying to tell us.

(Click on www.niagaraatlarge.com for Niagara At Large for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater binational Niagara region.)