You’ve probably noticed the uptick in media stories about shocked American drivers dealing with the bombshell of a new  energy reality. Open a paper and you’re swimming in adjectives describing consumer astonishment. Drivers are “horrified”, “traumatized”, “outraged”. They’re “shaken”, “stunned”, “dazed”,  “worried” and “seeing red”.

The media are having a field day reporting on car dealerships on the verge of bankruptcy (because they’re overstocked on SUV’s ) and citizens making trips into Mexico to fill up on subsidized gasolina. There are stories of thieves siphoning fuel and commuters buying scooters because they can’t afford another week of filling up their Tahoe, Explorer, or Yukon.

You’ve more than likely been part of some water cooler conversation where an acquaintance has asked “how did it come to this?” and “what will we do?”.

Across the board, The Powers That Be (Wall Street, the Administration, and, yes, the Media) are seemingly astonished. Heck, even the American energy industry is expressing surprise, though they remind me of Captain Renault from the film Casablanca: They’re just shocked, shocked to find that energy prices are high and on the rise in this world. (“Here are your winnings, Mr. Tillerson”)

So I ask: Am I the only one who’s shocked at the shock?

On September 14th, 2001 I escaped Manhattan for Nashville, TN. I fueled my little Saturn off highway 81 in Lexington, VA for $1.09 per gallon. In 2005, I drove to Holland, Michigan from DC and paid $3.20 per gallon because Hurricane Katrina had come ashore earlier in the week. People complained. August, 2006: the price of gasoline averaged $2.50; My business partner dumped his Saab sedan and bought a VW diesel. During the summer of 2007, gasoline prices closed in on $3.00 so my wife and I bought a high mileage Toyota. Today, the price of gasoline in my neighborhood is $4.11.  

Nigeria, Iran, Venezuela; Katrina, India, China and the Middle East. Newspaper articles, TV, magazines and the internet. I’ve never been accused of being the sharpest tool in the shed, but it wasn’t that hard for anyone with basic cable (or 35 cents for the local newspaper) to get the sense—three years, two years, one year ago—that maybe there was a trend here.

Now, we all know that the Media is the beagle of industries (vacuous, no memory, always surprised), but even at their least helpful you can piece together a thread of useful info from what they’re sending out. So why are so many of our fellow Americans unprepared for this new energy reality?  How could they not know? Why didn’t they see it coming? Why have they been so slow to prepare?

Is it our political system, corrupted by special interests, focused on the next election, loathe to speak about hard choices and conscious only of the news cycle?

Is it Wall Street, focused solely on this quarter’s performance? Or, worse yet, led by the decisions of 24 year-old whiz kid traders thinking only of this year’s fat bonus?

Is it this particular Administration, always telling us not to worry, everything’s fine? (“The ship’s not listing, we’re just tilting it to one side so you can get a better view of the ocean”).

Is it K Street lobbyists? Foreign interests? Space Invaders? Really, I’m asking. What could have possibly blinded Average Joe from seeing the coming energy anarchy? Is it some dark,  complex conspiracy perpetrated by Earth’s Global Elite to keep a somnambulant public out of step, unprepared, and pliable?

Or is it something else. Something much more simple.  

Is it that American society…as a whole…bought the idea of what I will call Energy Entitlement?

From the boardroom at GM (a company that  in January, 2008 was unveiling the newest concept Hummer) to my mother-in-law, who I couldn’t—and can’t—convince to get rid of her Jeep Grand Cherokee, our country has lived the “independence” lie: That we could exist as an Island, untouched by events in the rest of the world. We thought we were the Teflon Don of countries, and that no amount of geopolitical chaos or macroeconomic commotion would stick to us.

Leftist dictator in Venezuela? No problem. Unrest in Nigeria? Get that Escalade. Iranian nukes? Whatever.

No matter how much information the media might have delivered on what’s happened outside Fortress America, I don’t know that Average Joe cared to listen. He, and everyone else, thought we were immune to the realities of an interconnected planet.

Americans shocked about what they’re paying at the pump bought the idea of Energy Entitlement from The Powers, happy to embrace the idea of Energy Isolationism. They ignored the world, and the world rolled over them.

And still, politicians, industry and the media continue to sell the lie of “Energy Independence”, a tag line-cum-sound-bite whose cruelty lies in the false hope it fosters. As unattainable  as the lie might be, Average Joe is still buying what The Powers are selling.

So, shocked American driver, “Surprise!” The rest of the world has gotten you a little present. That’s right. The Global Economy got together to give YOU a token of its affliction. It’s no big deal. Just a little something to remind you you’re not alone in the world. It was no trouble at all.  Just a simple dose of reality.  You deserve it.