Their reaction will be to blame Obama. So it really won't make a difference to people this stupid.

The thing that makes it a "great hope" is that I'm not so sure the 40 or so years on average I have left will be long enough to see it. For all we know, there could be a future president hill-people hate more than Obama. Maybe in 20 years we'll have a president who is openly atheist or gay.

Perhaps they're protesting on behalf of all the studies that found the Prius to be one of the least environmentally friendly vehicles on the market, despite it's much-touted gas mileage and aggressively Green branding?

I bet this guy is just saying, Hey! Joe! While it may seem counter-intuitive, given the technology currently available, diesel engines are more environmentally friendly than hybrid ones! Hopefully this shot of billowing black smoke will make you reflect on my arguments, and encourage you to visit my blog, hosted by CalTech, in which I present my undergrad thesis: painstakingly and independently ranking every major vehicle in the country based on their carbon footprints, total-life-cycle economic efficiency, and cost in terms of social capital!

I bet that's what this.

I'm sure if we could look into the heart and mind of this man, we would see that his reason for protesting is: "STUPID FAGGIT CAR FUCK IT WOOP WOOP YA'LL!"

Fun fact of the day: cars aren't actually more fuel efficient than 20 years ago (okay, fine, they've gone up about 0.2 MPG). Marketers just realized that because people who buy cars don't know what good fuel ratings are, but want to help the environment, they can print terrible numbers on a vehicle advert and people will assume that it's not a bluff.

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2012-03-16-20120315graph675x4 85USE.png

That's basically it. They're not protesting anything; they're just attacking a rival clan.

Why do you think reaction against any form of gun control is so vehement? It's purely a tribal initiation fetish. You're not in the tribe unless you own all the accountrements of the tribe. Taking away the dagger from the Sikh would have the same results, although a Sikh's dagger is only fractionally as likely to result in the massacre of a kindergarten.

Also meant to aim this to respond to SPK.

All kidding aside, it's class antagonism. The working class resents the lifestyles and attitudes of the middle class, in much the same way that the middle class resents the lifestyles and attitudes of the moneyed class. This is basically the beer-and-truck-nuts-community's version of our own community's "issuing deaththreats via blogosphere against lion-hunting cheerleaders".

because so many middle class people wait at bus stops looking very black.

They're just racist, stupid rednecks. Trying to cover for them makes you almost as bad.