Caffeine & Gasoline

Two stories on tonight's news seem, oddly, connected. President Bush chokes out the conservation word, and a caffeine-laced drink is being marketed to four-year-olds. I write this to try to identify that connection I feel.

Common sense, and the lack of it? Only now does the Leader of the Free World discover what his parents should have taught him when he was knee-high: that when on a budget (as most of us are) one conserves.

But this common sense is appealed to only in time of extremity. It is reasonable, in this world, to expend any resource as if it were infinite. It is reasonable, in this world, to sell speed in juice to children, for the sake of profit. And it is possible, in this world, to persuade the insensible citizen that these acts are reasonable.

We pretend that the health of the planet, that the health of the children, or the poor, or the other however we define them, is of no consequence to us. That we can use, abuse, and exploit them with no harm to ourselves. That there is no connection among us all.

But the planet shakes, or the water comes over the wall, and we are reminded that pretense does not stand against a true storm.