Behold energy enemy in the mirror

Road rage is merely ugly.

Pump rage, now virtually all the rage, is grotesque.

Low-paid convenience-store workers didn't raise the average U.S. price for a gallon of regular gasoline from $2.57 in 2006 to $2.79 in 2007 to more than $4 today. But they catch rising grief for that alarming — and persisting? — ascent.

Roberta Adkins, a traveling manager for Circle K stations, recently told our Chase Purdy: "It is not all that uncommon for people to come in upset. They scream, they holler, they cuss." She added: "I actually think the more money they have, the worse they can be."

Maybe that's because "the more money they have," the more likely they are to drive huge SUVs and mega-pickup trucks that go fewer than 300 miles on gas tanks that cost more than $100 to fill.

Some of those rolling, thundering behemoths even look like military tanks.

So lots of Americans who drive small, efficient vehicles have been filling their Schadenfreude (German for the feeling of pleasure from others' misfortunes) tanks with the high-volume steam emitted by gas-guzzler drivers who resent the smug sanctimony of not just compact drivers but bicycle riders.

Full disclosure: My Toyota Corolla gets more than 40 mph on the interstate, 33 in town. That socially enlightened, fiscally savvy car choice shouldn't fuel gloating over the plight of those getting half that mileage — or less.

Then again, we little-vehicle drivers are routinely bullied out of our rightful lanes by big-vehicle drivers who — frequently while yakking on cell phones — hog not just gas but the road in massive metal-and-glass monstrosities that could kill us with sudden-impact bumper shots to our heads.

Thus, the gas-price horror-show plot unfolds as dark tragicomedy, with Americans acrimoniously divided on casting the villains. And the people behind the wheels of those incredible hulks of the highway aren't the only perceived heavies. A limited list of some other usual suspects:

Republicans, Democrats, Big Oil bosses, environmentalists, Arabs, Persians (Iran's dominant ethnic group), Chinese, Indians (from India, not the U.S.), Russians, Palestinians, Israelis, and, of course, dastardly commodity "speculators."

But don't expect others not to fully exploit their natural, financial, technological and innovation resources just because Americans don't. Do expect air fares to soar even higher if commodity-market "reforms" require "speculators" — including airlines — to put up bigger down payments on "futures" purchases.

Too bad the public didn't rally behind our president's State of the Union appeal for "a full-scale effort to provide for our energy needs, not only in this decade but through the 21st century."

He set a decade-ending goal that "the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need to provide our jobs, to heat our homes, and to keep our transportation moving."

He laid down this gauntlet: "America performs best when called to its biggest tasks. It can truly be said that only in America could a task so tremendous be achieved so quickly, and achieved not by regimentation, but through the effort and ingenuity of a free people, working in a free system."

Sounds familiar. Though that call to energy arms was issued long ago (Jan. 30, 1974) by President Nixon, each subsequent commander in chief has played variations on that theme.

Yet more than three decades after the Mideast oil embargo, we import a higher percentage of our oil now than then, have gone more than 30 years without building a new oil refinery or opening a new nuclear plant within our borders, and finally raised, for the first time in a quarter century, mileage standards on U.S.-made vehicles only this year.

Nixon's not the one to blame — he lost his White House job scarcely six months after that speech. His successors — Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II — aren't among the primary perpetrators of our protracted gas pains, either.

We the people are.

We want "energy independence" pitches from politicians. We just don't want to swallow the bitter medicine that could cure what ails us — what Bush II, in his 2006 State of the Union speech, aptly called our "addiction" to oil.

When did conservatives abandon the conservation concept that a gallon of gas saved is a gallon of gas earned?

When did liberals abandon the poor folks they supposedly champion, the folks hit hardest by foolish restrictions on domestic oil production and nuclear power?

When will we all demand more aggressive alternative-energy development?

And when will we catch on that we're all in this energy mess together — and that we're all to blame?

Frank Wooten is associate editor of the Post and Courier. His e-mail is wooten@postandcourier.com.