But few of us are masochists. The simplest, cheapest and most effective way to avoid the hurt is to use less energy. Turn off the lights you aren’t using. Get on the phone or the Internet instead of into your car to go shopping.

Ah, but Americans desperately want a miracle drug to fight the pain. And Congress and candidates, naively thinking Americans still believe them, desperately want to provide that miracle drug.

How about applying some witches’ ointment to your hurt, like off-shore drilling? The Energy Information Administration says off-shore drilling could, in about 20 years, add about two-tenths of one percent to world oil production.

The effect on gas prices, according to the Energy Information Administration? “Insignificant.”

Of course, using more oil would contribute to global warming, which would increase the demand for air conditioning, which would result in more burning of coal, raise fossil fuel prices and increase the hurt.

But that’s business as usual. Forget business as usual, because the future will be a lot closer to Thornton Wilder’s “By The Skin of Our Teeth” than to Mayberry RFD.

In a column in the Washington Post a couple months ago, James Howard Kunstler (author of “The Long Emergency”) made the case that a radical change in lifestyle is the only course ahead for industrialized nations, and pretending otherwise will only hasten the inevitable and increase the pain.

Will they have to pry our cold dead hands off the steering wheel, or will we give up sooner? At $4 a gallon gas we’re starting to loosen our grip. At $6 a gallon, I might trade in my V-8 Dodge Behemoth.

In Barack Obama’s latest TV ad, he agrees with John McCain that the energy crisis has been 30 years in the making. Actually, it’s been longer than that. But as Obama pointed out, McCain has been in Congress for 27 of those 30 years, and hasn’t done much about the energy crisis.

Incidentally, when McCain was shot down over Vietnam, gas was going for 32 cents a gallon. When he was elected to the Senate in 1986, gas was 92.7 cents a gallon.

A million or two dollars worth of oil company campaign contributions later, gas rose to more than $4 a gallon.

Isn’t the American political system great?

Of course, it’s not only politics that has made this country great. It’s our thirst for oil. In his latest ad, Obama talks about dependence on foreign oil. What about America’s addiction to domestic oil? Our addiction to oil, period.

Is heroin bad but cocaine OK?

Kunstler says society can stave off, for a while, the effects of petroleum depletion and climate change only by doing a series of politically unpopular things, things that aren’t a subject of polite discussion, especially in an election year.

I think of the lesson of “By the Skin of Our Teeth” as I pondered all this. That lesson basically is that we humans will persevere. I just wish we could do it with a little less whining and fewer hallucinations about off-shore drilling as a solution to our energy dilemma.

When I finish pondering, I fire up my propane grill and roast some shish kebabs. I’m part of the problem too.

Dear Mr. McConnell,

May I call you Mitch? To quote Patton, “you magnificent bastard”. A stroke of pure genius. Henry Clay would be very, very proud. I know I am. I don’t have to tell you we need to see the RNC run with this and don’t let up for a minute. We need to let the people know where everyone stands. As Ben Franklin feared, we are losing the Republic and it is up to you to save us. I dropped to my knees and thanked the Lord for granting you such wisdom. We are at war with an ideology that is intent on striping every freedom away from us. Freedoms our fore fathers staked their very lives to earn. Freedoms countless sons and daughters have fought and died to protect. You are Our Commander. You know the enemy. Make them cower, like partridges before the hawk. God bless you. And God Bless America.

Sincerely yours.

There is a reason he sits in Henry Clay’s chair which is reserved for the senior Senator from Kentucky.

It can be done. If America can mass produce missiles I believe America can also mass produce electric vehicles OVER NIGHT but of course the Republicans always gotta have their cut through Lobbyists – which we all know are just legal bribes.