A bizarre and nearly inexplicable trend is spreading across the country, and it’s destined to deal a blow to progressives and environmentalists throughout the U.S. It’s known as rolling coal, and it might the dumbest protest movement in the history of our great nation.
If you’re not familiar with rolling coal — and let’s be honest, most of you probably aren’t — it’s the process in which the owners of diesel-powered pickup trucks outfit their masculine machines of doom with chimneys that spew plumes of black smoke, on demand.
Why would anyone waste precious fuel to emit pillars of black smog into the clean, pollution-free air?
They don’t like electric-car-driving, Obama-voting liberals who are destroying a country built on oil, gas and other petroleum-based products. That’s why.
Yes, we’re living in an age in which a few thickheaded individuals feel that their voices can only be heard through the roar of an engine and a fog of pollution, not at the voting booths.
Honestly, who can blame them? Voting is so passe, and when you can outfit your Ford F-250 with chimneys spewing death clouds into the air, do we need any other form of free expression?
It seems truck drivers finally discovered that the U.S. is now among the most oppressive countries on the planet.
Between the government’s attempts to lower levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and efforts by some to cut their own carbon emissions by driving hybrid or electric cars, we’ve obviously gone over the cliff, and freedom has died an awful, horrendous and grisly death.
The coal-spewing trucks — that would not look out of place in the post-apocalyptic Mel Gibson movie “The Road Warrior” — are clearly the best way to protest the freedom-hating agenda of those wanting to live on a cleaner planet.
Satire aside, it appears we now live in age of endless narcissism, in which the needs of those alive at this very moment outweigh anyone or anything that will inherit Earth once we’re no longer around.
Are we really that narrow-minded and self-obsessed that we must react to those attempting to save the planet by generating additional pollution?
Ironically enough, around the same time Slate published the story about rolling coal, Congressman John Lewis, D-Georgia, posted a picture of himself on Facebook. This was neither your typical selfie, nor was it Lewis sitting in the driver’s seat of a raised pickup truck, rocketing smoke from phallic-shaped chimneys outfitted on the back of the truck’s cab.
The picture was a mugshot of Lewis from 1961 after he was arrested for using a whites-only restroom.
Throughout his life, Lewis has been arrested 45 times for various offenses, typically stemming from his protest activities, as he fought — and nearly gave his life — for civil rights.
We live in a great country that allows us to protest environmental regulations by vomiting a gaseous plume of death into the sky, but we need to get our priorities straight.
Let’s be real: Rolling coal is not the same fight for freedom and civil rights that killed people like Harvey Milk and nearly killed John Lewis.
You’re more than likely a privileged, white male who somehow can afford to outfit your pickup truck with the most unnecessary car accessory to hit the streets since “Pimp My Ride” was a hit show on MTV.
If you don’t like environmental regulations, spend the time, money and effort you would use to roll coal on electing a candidate for public office who’s a pawn for the Koch brothers, BP and Halliburton.
When that happens, you might finally have the pollution-filled, freedom fest you’ve always wanted, cruising down a highway devoid of electric cars and other anti-American vehicles.
Rolling coal might sound cool, but it’s time to pull your head out of your chimney.
[Joel Mendelson is a UF graduate student in political campaigning. His columns appear on Thursdays. A version of this column ran on page 6 on 7/10/2014 under the headline "Truck drivers need a chimney sweep"]
