Buying Used Cars Over the Internet? Really?

What could possibly have happened to America's youth?

When I was a kid the thing we lusted after most wasn't Little Suzie, who lived next door, but a License to Drive.  With which I could take Little Suzie to the drive-in.  And do all sorts of unmentionable things.  

To, and with, and for, Little Suzie.    

When we turned about 14 back where I lived, and our chemistries began to change, all we wanted was four wheels and some of that Freedom!  To go and do and be!  Wherever, whenever we wanted!  Because we were 'Muricans!    

Those of us who lived in town were so very jealous of our buddies who lived on farms because they'd get to drive tractors, and trucks and combines and other motorized vehicles.  Almost from the time they could walk.  And getting our ticket to take the wheel was on the tippy top of our list of things to obtain.  

Or at least it was on mine.  And everyone I knew...

But then the good ol' Army snatched me away from my blissful existence playing pool for $Big Bucks and drinking cheap beer and racing cars and playing poker, and romancing Little Suzie, and forced me to accept that others weren't like me.  Many others, as it turned out.  

Like my wife-to-be when I learned she was 25 before she got her D.L.  But then again, she was from New Yawk City, where you could take the train or a cab or even walk and get anywhere.  Unlike moi, who lived in a farming community.  Where everything was way far away from wherever you happened to be.  So she was forgiven.  Because she had other redeeming virtues.  

Ahem...

But then the Internet introduced us to tens of millions of those "Gen-Z" people throughout our Fruited Plain who not only didn't have drivers' licenses...but had no intention of acquiring one!  

And worse yet, we learned that people were actually willing to consider buying a car from over that same Internet!  Without first seeing it!  And touching it!  And kicking the tires!  They'd fork over $Tens of Thousands of borrowed money for a car from way far away!  From sites like Cars.com.  And Autotrader.com.  And Vroom!  Even as several of those used car sellers were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.  

Buying a car from over the Internet?  Really?

And how about this?  People who are dumb enough to give Elon Musk $100,000 of their money for an electric car, have been willing to give him another $15,000 for its "Supercruise" feature.  This enables their car to operate using GPS to take you to your destination using a satellite.  From 435 miles up in space.  So you don't have to drive at all!  You can take a nap!  You can knit!  You can do the N.Y. Times crossword puzzles!  

If you're dumb enough to buy the N.Y. Times, that is...  

Or you can simply bow your head in prayer and hope that God will get you through this life and softly into the next, even though you're dumber than a bag of rocks!

P. T. Barnum once said that "A fool and his money are soon parted."  I'm guessing good ol' P.T. must have known the Internet was on the horizon.  And that those caught in the throws of "Gen-Z" would become a marketplace for the slimiest underbelly of our culture; used car salesmen (and women, and now thanks to Taxifornia, "others").

Musk can be forgiven.  Even though he's sold some 2,000,000 of his growed-up golf carts, mostly to inveterate idiots in Taxifornia, at least they're new.  Time will tell whether his early-adopters of plug-in electric cars are complete, unmitigated, insufferable idiots (as I would argue).  But we can know for sure that those willing to send off a cashier's check to somebody somewhere they've never even met, for a used car, A FRIGGIN' USED CAR, should be forcibly removed from the gene pool.

Nothing personal...