Headline: Bush warns US of 'oil addiction'
Story: US president warns that the US has become addicted to imported oil
BBC changed the headline later to a less obvious "Bush vows to face dangers head on".
Telling the public they're addicted to a substance isn't as helpful as telling them they're addicted to what that substance does - how it makes them feel.
But then drug dealers aren't traditionally the ones who point out people's addictions.
The idea of Americans being addicted to "imported oil" is I guess distinct from them just being addicted to it any way they can get it - one of the things about addiction that leads to problematic behavior.
You have to figure most of the folks standing at the self-serve don't have any idea where the gas they're pumping comes from, foreign or domestic. And probably don't much care.
But they know they have to have it to live their lives.
The alternative is suffering.
The AA scenario is you wait for them to "bottom out". Until the suffering of continued addiction is worse than the suffering of withdrawal.
But that has a stable society as the assumed place where the bottoming out is occurring. You're not going to wait for your partner to "bottom out" if you're running an ambulance in a disaster zone somewhere. Priorities take over.
And waiting for an entire society to hit bottom seems pretty risky.
So having the President spend his SOTU money-quote on mealy-mouthed doubletalk is disheartening.
At least some of us would like to hear some fiery lashing out, some accusation, grief, rage, that kind of thing. From someone.
Instead we get the bogeyman fear-stick of Iran developing nuclear power, alongside the schizoid suggestion that the alternative to American addiction to oil is - nuclear power.
And the craven linkage of nuclear with the phrase "clean energy" is pure Hollywood/Madison Avenue nothing-up-my-sleeve shuck and jive.
It's one of those "A is for apple" mind-control things they do to him, you can see it.
Placing the food dish, waiting for the drool, ringing the bell. Clean energy - nucular power - clean energy - nucular power.
In that he's like we are, helpless, used, pawed at by madmen who get more desperate by the hour.
But he's the President so it's probably a little worse for him than us.
He has to worry about doing things that will affect the whole world, forever. We only have to worry about - well yeah.
