[rrpjr]

You had me until the socialist-capitalist balderdash.

I agree on your first count and moreover find SUV’s objectionable on the face of it. They are swollen, steroidal automotive mistakes. At a time when technology is the art of contraction and efficiency, these things are explosions of pointless excess. Is this intelligent, appropriate and socially responsible design?

As for the accommodating socialist and grasping capitalist equation, nice try. My sister the socialist drove without regard to life or limb, her own or others, and my friend the anti-communist Gulag survivor and Nietzsche-quoter drives like Jeeves. I get muscled around all the time in LA by numberless SUVs that continue to sport those winningly blue “Kerry for President” bumper stickers ("War is not the answer", except on the roads), and my tigrish-capitalist friend the real estate broker pokes her car around the streets with the prudence of a mother pushing a perambulator. As you see, I can generalize, or particularize, with the best of them. If you want to buy the leftist as cooperative claptrap, don’t join a college faculty and don’t drive in San Francisco or Berkeley. It'll bust your illusions wide open. Nope, opportunism and bad behavior on the road are apolitical.