David Roberts, dark-sider who posts at the Gristmill blog - sometimes seems to almost rise above his biases and activism to reason in good faith. Almost.

Bush's SOTU statement that "America is addicted to oil" was treated as the Big News of the speech, as though he'd admitted to some deep dark secret. . .

But it strikes me as an extraordinarily poor way of describing the problem. . .

The subtext of America being "addicted" is that the American people are somehow fallen and weak.

But America does not rely on oil by virtue of any moral failing. It is not a weakness. It's simple prudence: For quite a long time now, oil has been an incredibly cheap, incredibly concentrated source of energy.

It turns out that burning it is screwing up our atmosphere, and it's going to run out soonish, and it props up politically detestable regimes, so yeah, we need to start phasing it out. Circumstances changed. You can't say the same about, say, heroin, which was never a smart choice.

It's funny the way that the oil addiction idea, used with abandon by Bush critics for a long time, is suddenly not so attractive. It was fine before the speech but has now lost its luster.

In truth it was never fine, it was always stupid and mean spirited, but Bushaters liked it anyway. Now it is tainted since the most important thing is to oppose Bush and he's saying it too.

It's imprecise in a way that serves Bush's interests in subtle but important ways.

When Bush talks about "addiction," the subtext is always his own carefully constructed personal narrative: The youthful alcohol problems and the redeeming power of Jesus and the love of a good woman. In Bush's campaign story, he was spiritually redeemed; he shook off addiction by improving his character. . .

while it's certainly true that individuals can reduce their oil use at the margins, real, substantial cuts will arise from public policy and corporate commitments.

What's stopping that public policy and those corporate commitments? It's not "America." It's a finite, identifiable set of financial interests and the politicians that serve them.

There are bad actors here. The vague "addiction" metaphor seems designed to smoosh out responsibility to the point that it ceases to adhere to anything.

Too predictable, too kaleidoscopic. And wrong. The US uses oil just as all other countries do - capitalist or other - because there are no better options. There are hints and hopes, maybes and somedays, almosts and not quites, but no better choices, not yet. It isn't a political problem though political activists, like Roberts, exploit the problem for political advantage. Well, they try to but aren't doing very well. Politics is stupid.

Update:

MacLeod ruminates about progressive rage:

Anti-semitism, said Bebel and Engels, is the socialism of fools. . . If anti-semitism is, in an important aspect, a rage against the machine, against progress, is there an opposite rage: a rage against reaction, a fury at the recalcitrance of the concrete and the stubbornness of tradition? A rage against what is sacred and refuses to be profaned, against what is solid and doesn't melt into air, against ways of life that resist commodification, against use-value that refuses to become exchange-value? And might that rage too need a fantasy object?

I think it has one. Bush. Bushating seems to qualify as the progressivism of fools. This may not work so well for Brits like MacLeod or progressives of other nationalities. Local fantasy objects may be required.