By this point in American culture, you either hate SUV drivers or you don’t. If you do, I don’t need to explain why. If you don’t, I’m not going to be able to convince you. I’ve always been in the “hate” camp, but hate is an ugly and self-destructive emotion, so I’ve been trying to come to a new understanding of the situation, and I’ve just had a little revelation.

So, for the haters: Don’t you wish you could just slap a big fat fine on the fuckers? Hit ‘em in the wallet, right where it hurts. Just POW! “You are hereby fined ten thousand dollars for being a timid, self-aggrandizing, selfish little bitch.” Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Then I realized that it’s already been done. Those things don’t come cheap. The low-end SUVs, what we’ll call the “peasant” models, are $30K to $40K. Those are the ones that are most likely to be put to be use in either their “sport” or “utility” capacities, hauling lumber or off-roading. They are not the focus of The Hate. The luxury SUVs, the ones that are just for taking the kids to soccer practice and impressing the neighbors, those are more in the $55K to $70K range: The Lexus LX 470, Lincoln Navigator, Cadillac Escalade, Hummer H2.

A car is a car. It gets you from point A to point B. You can get a new, perfectly functional car for under $20K. Even if you need a wagon for the kids, you can do it under $25K (and you can even get some mini-vans in that range).

On top of that, you’ve got taxes, or at least we do here in Virginia. (For you non-VA people, we have lower state income taxes, but we pay a personal property tax on cars that works out to about 1.5% on the first $20K, and 4.5% above that.) On a $20K car, that comes to about $300 a year. On a $60K gold-plated bling-monster, it’s somewhere north of two grand.

Then there’s gas. The H2 gets about 10 mpg. 15,000 miles a year at 10 mpg and $2.50 a gallon comes to $3750. Any other self-respecting car will get 25 mpg (and those cute little hybrids can double that). That’s $1500. Not exactly free, but there’s a significant gap there.

So all in all, we can safely peg the fine for being an arrogant, self-absorbed asshole at $30,000, plus $4,000 a year. Well, that pretty well satisfies my sense of justice. I’ll sleep easier now. And when I’m out driving around, I won’t get angry anymore. I’ll just be thinking, “You poor suckers…”

The other part of this is that I used to think of the SUV manufacturers as part of the problem - greedy, heartless corporations fueling this automotive gluttony. But from this new perspective, Lexus, for example, is more like a socialist charity for automotive workers, playing on the insecurities of rich suburbanites to swindle them out of vast sums of money. I’m cool with that.