I bet Rush Limbaugh loves his black Mayback 57S. I bet he can't help unconsciously beaming like a kid at Christmas whenever his mind wanders and suddenly he's daydreaming about the feel of it's hand-wrapped leather-clad custom steering wheel in his hands as he's sitting at a stop light waiting for the light to change green so he can thunder off down the road leaving a gauntlet of KIAs and envious eyes behind.
I'm sure both Koch brothers, David and Charles, have their favorite luxury or sports car waiting for them in the most meticulously cleaned spots inside their multi-car garages at home. Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn have probably spent years one-upping each other in Las Vegas with their latest acquisitions that rumble and purr when they aren't roaring down the Strip towards the latest hotspot that sells a hundred dollar Kobe beef burger and fingering potato fries.
These cars are expensive.
Driving them costs a fortune in gas, cleaning and detailing them can be as big a financial drain as the cost of housekeeping the manor, and, most of all, maintaining them so that they don't break down is never, ever a modest matter of business. Sometimes you come into an Italian red devil that is destined to spend six months out of the year in the shop no matter how precious you drive it around or you baby it when it's idle.
It would never, ever, ever occur to any of these people that it was not only a good idea, but that it was also the best way for them to save money and keep their beloved cars on the road possible at the same time, to simply refuse to ever maintain them. No oil changes. No tune-ups. No elite gas formulations. No visits to the local luxury garages and the experts that toil within them at all.
Beat 'em like rented mules, or better yet rented KIAs, and just assume that will never break down because that's how you roll. Why not act like you own the only magic Ferrari or Bugati or Lambo in the world? Like swapping out break pads and belts is only for the little people, the suckers who don't own the only immortal luxury and sports cars that are out tooling around like golden chariots of bulletproof fire down the road?
The reason they don't treat their cars this way is because if they did, then their engines would seize, and their beloved million dollar rides would be utterly ruined, and then all their fun would be over. It would never happen. Because it would be like wrapping elite and expensive (not to mention illegal) Cuban cigars in damp old Wall Street Journals and tossing them into some freshly emptied Jimmy Choo shoe box in lieu of spending the money on a proper humidor and assuming they would keep.
Middle class and working poor Americans are, have been, and will be no more magically able to endlessly sustain serial abuse and keep cheerfully carry on carrying on no matter what. Vital social maintenance being deliberately withheld with malice and premeditation is just as insane as abusing the engine of any sports car and assuming it will run forever is. We can break down. Our great society can, and eventually will, seize like an abused engine will if you don't take care of it, and we can lose everything.
But you wouldn't know that to look at what is happening in State Legislatures and Governor's mansions manned by Movement Conservative pols all over America today, nor would you know that by listening to their big echochamber media apologists and stooges, or to the very Oligarch Express members who are the only people who could underwrite making the utter destruction of the engine of American society possible.
Movement Conservatism is the only flavor of conservatism in America today, and it means getting to legislate as if nothing ever breaks or breaks down, but if anything eventually does, it's not your fault when it happens because nothing is ever your fault. First, because only liberalism and government is ever wrong, and second, because conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. If the middle class suffers, it will just adapt to the new reality. There will be grumbling and then acceptance, and in the end nothing will change.
That's government by gold-plated social suicide bomber, and the irony is that it's all being done 'to save money and bring fiscal sanity back'.
Well, if you break the public schools, and eliminate the 'educate all comers' mandate, you will not save money. If you get conned into bombing other nations based on scare-mongering, bullshit, and lies, so that you are bleeding blood and treasure, you will not save money. If you dump millions of middle class people into dire poverty, you will not save money. If you eliminate the social safety net, you will not save money. If you dissolve the EPA and eradicate all regulations, you will not save money. If you let Wall Street rule Mainstreet, and you will not save money.
Why?
Because a seized engine is never a cheaper and more cost effective outcome, let alone a pleasurable and peaceful one. We are all going to pay, and through the nose, later on for the short-sightedness of the slighting maintenance as if it's a form of fiscal prudence. Taking that kind of thinking to its logical extreme, you can save money on healthcare, shelter, food, and clothing by killing yourself and removing the source generating all the burdensome costs and expenses.
I bet Rush Limbaugh loves his black Mayback 57S, I only wish that he loved his country as much as he loved that car and realized that you have to maintain both to keep each of them from seizing. The same goes for the rest of the Oligarchy Express and their minions in the Movement Conservative Right. If only they loved America as much as they love their rides. It's not cheaper to rebuild a broken society than it is to go about maintaining a healthy one with a robust and expanding middle class to fuel it.