Protest or wait?

What surprises me, and probably a number of other Americans, is how immediately people in other countries have taken to the streets in loud and raucous protest against rising oil prices, fishermen and truckers in Europe for example. Why do we not protest? Are we so timid, divided, and sold to or put down by the government and capitalism that we refuse to use the threat of force in order to gain what we want or what we "need" (or in other words to control the means of production)? Or are fuel prices just so exorbinantly high in other countries that people are willing to fling their bodies into harms way? Of course, there are stark cultural and socio-economic differences across seas and boundaries that influence this contrast. Perhaps when oil reaches $200 a barrell many of us will also take to the streets. But what are we fighting? Who are we fighting against? Obviously, many Europeans are demanding that their governments lower fuel taxes. We on the otherhand will demand what? Again, who will we fight, what will we fight? We may view ourselves as battling the Saudis, we may request that they increase oil production, but what leverage do we really possess? Will we eventually use the threat of force? This dependence on oil is partially of our own making. Thus, when we protest and complain, we essentially should fight ourselves, our own government and other groups that perpetuate this quagmire. Commodity markets are not a legitimate scapegoat.

I sat here, thinking, pondering this whole issue, and reached the conclusion that what we need to do, of course, is reject oil all together, reject plastics, reject our dependence on this finite fuel source, even within the limits of our finite lives. Fuck it and walk away. This isn't a unique opinion. What, again, we really should portest, violently and destructively even, is for the government to reallocate funds, subsidize organic-local agriculture and food processing rather than industrial agriculture, end subsidies to large oil companies, and rapidly increase funding for research of renewable energy sources. Perhaps we should even, as Dr James Hansen suggested, immediately impose a carbon tax with 100% dividend. Or should we simply wait for market forces to influence our decisions...like we always do?