For anyone curious about what it actually looked like to kill a generation of functioning cars, here’s an actual video from 2009 and brief explanation: The dealer first replaces the oil with sodium silicate solution. It’s a clear-ish liquid that crystallizes under extreme heat. As the engine warms up the solution begins to form small abrasive crystals in the oil system that shred the bearing and score the cylinder walls. Within seconds of starting the car you can see smoke billowing from the exhaust, this is the crystals scratching the cylinder walls and leaving small grooves for oil and solution to leak past into the combustion chamber and ignite/evaporate, producing the white smoke. Pretty soon the entire crankcase is full of crystals and freshly shredded metal flakes, the engine seizes. It took about 40 seconds in this video. Some engines reportedly lasted up to 7 minutes, but all were destroyed. That strikes me as sort of sad in a way, like watching a great warrior slowly lose a heroic last stand. Now, this is the part that gets insanely wasteful. These cars were sent to federally approved recycling facilities where they had 180 days to sell the non-engine parts before they were required to prove that they had shred the entire thing into scrap steel. But, in talking to a guy who ran one such facility at the time, he typically just sent them straight to the crusher. The timeframes allotted weren’t long enough to dismantle all of the cars, and even if you could, the marginal prices of the parts was greatly diminished. You cannot sell 1000 transmissions when only 50 went bad that year, they became worthless. So just like that, in order to increase prosperity and save the environment, 677,000 entire running cars and trucks were turned directly into rebar worth a few cents per pound. The entire Obama administration was like a chapter out of atlas shrugged.

Let me tell you my grandmas favourite joke before she passed. She’d tell it to anyone who would listen. A liberal, a conservative, and an African migrant are riding on a military cargo plane over the ocean. The federally mandated girlboss pilots come on the intercom in hysterics, it’s not looking good. They asked their Snapchat AI to double check their fuel calculations, and it “deadass does not think they finna make it.” They’re going down into the infinite black ocean. The conservative maintains a level head and leaps into action. First asking to see the fuel girlmath that led to this mess. It’s just as he feared, almost entirely reassurances between the female pilots that everyone’s opinions on the fuel quantity were being heard and appreciated, a few emojis, and a comment about a crew member being weird. They were indeed going down. He comes up with a desperate plan and announces it to the crew. “This plane is full of excess. We need to lose weight to extend our range or we will crash. Start throwing things overboard that you think our country has too much of.” The migrant is the first to act, he runs and grabs crates of priceless artifacts. He begins throwing them overboard. The other men ask “why the artifacts?! do you really think we have too much of that back home?!” “Oh yes, there’s plenty, this stuff means nothing to me anyway!” He continues to toss statues, paintings and oak doors off into the inky night sky. Next, the liberal springs into action. He grabs a shovel and begins heaving loads of 100 dollar bills out of the open door and into the unforgiving wind. The other men shout “why the tax dollars?! Do you really think we have too much of that back home?!” The liberal replies, “Oh yes, I’m pretty sure they’re infinite, and I don’t know how to do anything else anyway!” He continues to shovel the money off into the endless blackness of night. Finally, the conservative springs into action. He grabs the migrant and throws him out of the plane. The liberal and girl bosses shriek in outrage “Why the migrant!? Do you really think we have too much of that back home?!” “No, he just raped a 12 year old.”