Death Trap

“My point is, with Hillary Clinton, we know what we’re getting — a corrupt war-mongering, duplicitous neoliberal Wall Street shill posing as a progressive. With Trump, we get a narcissistic businessman posing as a fascist. Neither one as president would actually be what they are pretending to be during the campaign.” David Lindorff

The letter from Honda was alarming. IMPORTANT SAFETY RECALL  (in red typeface).  “Honda has decided that a defect which relates to motor vehicle safety exists in certain 2007-2011 model year CR-V vehicles.”

And in bold typeface this: “The defect in these vehicles could kill or injure you or other people in your vehicle.”

Wait a minute...Honda has decided? What about Honda has discovered or determined or learned? Decided?

It gets even more macabre: “Specifically, in some vehicles, the driver’s front airbag inflator could produce excessive internal pressure upon deployment. If an affected airbag deploys, the increased internal pressure may cause the inflator to rupture (break apart) and deploy abnormally. In the event of an inflator rupture, metal fragments could pass through the airbag cushion material possibly causing serious injury or fatality to you or others in the vehicle. Past ruptures like this have killed and injured vehicle drivers.”

But the best part came next. “The remedy parts needed to conduct driver’s airbag inflator recalls will become available in the Summer of 2016.”

So, if I understand this correctly, my family and I should continue driving our potential death trap until Honda has enough parts available to conduct its recall. Happy motoring from now until Summer 2016, which means what, exactly? July? August? Early September?

Honda is rather blase about the possibility of my or my family’s potential death or dismemberment. Play the odds, take a road trip, avoid rear-ending someone…

Honda’s recall took my attention from the presidential election and the terrorist attack in Belgium. Knowing the American corporate media will draw the wrong conclusions about Brussels, I avoid the news. I still believe that the vast majority of the world’s Muslims are peaceful people who want the same things Americans, English, French, Spanish and Africans want: to exercise some control over their own destinies, to raise their children, to work, play, travel, and worship. All the reasonable human expectations. Extremists, whatever guise they wear, get the attention, and Islamic extremists motivate Western nations to wage war endlessly. Don’t misunderstand -- attacking innocent civilians is barbaric and cowardly -- but so is launching laser-guided missiles at a wedding party from a remote-controlled drone. Both acts terrorize the innocent; both acts stoke the fires of vengeance.

And let’s not forget or ignore root causes. Who mid-wifed the birth of ISIS?

The Dance of the Phonies staggers on. Cruz and Trump and Hillary. Bernie Sanders is still in the race, though you’d hardly draw this conclusion from the mainstream media. Hillary is awful on the stump, wooden and pedantic. Little of her hubby’s magic rubbed off. All Slick Willie had to do to make audiences swoon was start his lower lip quivering. Try as she might, and try she does, Hillary cannot convince the masses to like or trust her.

We trudge toward our Hobson’s choice. Dear voter, how would you like your death, brutal and quick, or less painful but more drawn out?