American Cars

Hello dear readers,

I didn’t send out much in June. My intention is still to send out a newsletter every week, and I’m slowly planning and assembling some whoppers.

Things are still extremely hectic and busy, but for the first time in I don’t remember how long, it’s mostly in a really good way. I’m working on a few articles about the enfolded social and ecological crises in the Chesapeake Bay, on a grant application for a solidarity project that might actually come to fruition, and on several other big things that have to do with abundance, stability, and the dissemination of radical ideas.

I don’t want to let another week go by without a newsletter, so I’m taking a break from one of the articles to write a short rant. In honor of this glorious holiday weekend, to pay my respects to the innermost heart of this great nation, it’s about cars, or more exactly, driving.

If you don’t like the evil vibes of a rant, you don’t need to read this, it’s okay. Newer subscribers might be interested in newsletters from earlier years that they missed.

Here’s some ethical/political analysis that still feels relevant:

and here’s a more sentimental travel narrative:

many of my newsletters aren’t particularly time sensitive, so if you ever want to scroll back and check any of the old ones out, remember that you can always just go to the website: petergelderloos.substack.com

So I guess I’ve spent a lot of time driving. My current job is driving old folks, and two of my prior waged jobs involved driving a dump truck and driving box trucks. Back in Harrisonburg, I drove a taxi (before the idiotically myopic, naïvely techno-optimistic scab culture of the United States allowed shitbag companies like Über to drive the taxi companies out of business, contributing to the progressive railing of professional drivers in this country and the spread of surveillance infrastructure). I’ve also had points of comparison, living in Catalunya for 16 years, seeing how Germans drive, spending a significant amount of time in South America. And just a few weeks ago I drove down to Virginia to do some more research for the articles, visit my mammaw, see some dear friends, and show R my old stomping grounds. Oh my gawd is there any swampy creek more enticing than the ones you’ll find on the Northern Neck? Any place more