Americans are cars

 I've been thinking this concept over for a while, and over the long term it holds up very well. Americans are cars. 

Someone online did a whole run-down on this; the point that stuck with me was that Americans think of their cars as their bodies. This explains reading all the time things like, "I scraped my oil pan" or "my girlfriend needs new tires". 

It also explains why, when say a bicyclist is bothered by a driver or even lightly bumped, and hits or slaps the car, it often results in an angry chase, the driver getting out to start a fight, etc. 

It explains why Americans are so averse, as a group, to exercise and health. Who needs those when all you have to do is press a gas pedal? 

It explains why Americans are LOUD. It's been observed that cities are not loud, cars are loud. American cities by definition are for cars, not people, and are full of them. Hence American cities are quite loud, and so are Americans. Louder is better, and this is why the quality of music is based, here in the US, by how loud it is as much or more than any artistic merit. 

It's why a friend of mine down in Los Angeles bragged to me about buying a new Rivian, possibly one of the ugliest vehicles ever devised, as if it's some life-changing event. As if I could give a damn what the guy drives.  

I follow Reddit sup-reddits like r/homeless r/povertyfinance and so on, and I read every day how people who are very poor, which it's very easy to become here, are killing themselves to keep one or more cars going. 

I wonder if this is yet another arrangement encouraged by the small-hats since if the US were not so car-centric, we'd not need oil from the Middle East so much and we'd not fight their wars for them. 

I think it's likely also a big thing with Boomers because the Greatest and Silent generations would have grown up with cars, but also many forms of public transportation and also, walking, bicycles, etc. 

The people = cars thing may have gotten a big boost in WWII because an army fights a lot more effectively if you can put your soldiers in vehicles vs. doing everything on foot or even by horse, which the German Army for all their neat tanks and so on, was very much horse and foot propelled. 

So the Boomers would have grown up with parents who were very pro-vehicle. And during the "golden 30 years" from 1945-1975, it was pretty affordable to exist so that you were only a person if it was you + a car. 

My older sister, born in 1957, one told me how rough her life had been, that she only had a small car when she was first out on her own. Somehow I bit my tongue, as I didn't have a car at all, and wouldn't until I was almost 30. 

I was 12 at the end of the golden 30 years, and ended up very skeptical of cars. A car was a thing that sucked up any money that was around, so that my mom's boyfriend had money to try to fix whatever car was sitting on our lawn at the time, but we kids didn't have food (unless I went out and earned some by weeding someone's lawn or something). So from my formative years I was car-skeptical while also yearning to have a car and hating that I had to take the bus, walk, etc. 

I like to think people younger than me are even more skeptical.