The Gasoline Can as a Model of America’s Decline

Guest Post by Freed Radical

As a person of white privilege (but who says I’m white?), I engage in certain white-oriented activities around the house (which house I own outright as an act of explicit racism). One of those activities is mowing the grass. You may be thinking, “lawn,” but my lawn contains too many weeds to be considered a proper lawn. In that one area I fall down as a white privileged suburbanite. But I do identify as a lawn owner, and that’s what counts.

Anyway, I use a CO₂ belching lawn mower that runs on polluting and global warming racist gasoline. I fill my lawn mower with gasoline from what you and I call a gas can. Now I’ve been using gas cans since I was a kid, and my father (possession of which is another indicator of racist white privilege) paid me hard cash to mow the grass, or Coup de grâce, as he humorously put it. We had a gas can like this one:

(image credit: ebay.com via duckduckgo.com)

It also had a little screw on cap for the end of the goose neck tube. There was a paper washer in the cap to prevent gas from spilling or evaporating. If I remember correctly (cue Jeopardy thinking music), our house never burned down and we were never asphyxiated from gasoline fumes, though it is entirely possible some low level exposure turned me into the white privileged racist that I am. Lacking the possibility of a proper randomized double blind study, like they do in all vaccine testing, we may never know.

That gas can was made in America, solid as a rock, and never leaked a drop of gasoline. It was easy to operate, had a strong metal handle on top, and never failed us. As an adult I helped my parents relocate, and that gas can was still sitting in the garage doing its job, safely storing gas.

Gas cans in America have gone through an evolution, and it seems every time I go to the big box store’s lawn and garden aisle the gas cans all look different, and more advanced. The ones I have purchased have all  caused me screaming fits, just ask my spouse. I know they are supposed to be safer, but they are either too cheap to work right, or they don’t dispense gas, or they leak like crazy. Some designers have heard the complaints and changed the designs, but no can works as well as the one pictured above.

For one of the cans I found online, there is a video. Of course there’s a video. I have never used this can, nor am I connected to or promoting the company, products, or services, but I must say they have a nice gas can video.

Hold on, I just want to fill up my mower so I can keep up with the racist Joneses across the street, not watch videos about gas cans. But I watched the video anyway.

The video is instructive, however not just in the operation of this technological marvel, but in revealing the depth of government regulation of gas cans. Just a few seconds in, a long list of legal regulations scrolls by. I looked up the referenced EPA regulations in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 40, Part 59, Subpart F, which runs to over 9,700 words. Now these EPA regs deal only with the evaporation of product from the PFC (portable fuel container). Safety regulations are found elsewhere.

Let’s take a look also at the Portable Fuel Container Safety Act of 2020, referenced in the video, a bill “to require flame mitigation devices in portable fuel containers that impede the propagation of flame into the container…” (We can thank Senator Amy “Nanny” Klobuchar and Representative Mike “Nanny” Thompson for this nanny-state masterpiece.)

Get that? We need a flame mitigation device to prevent flames from getting into gas cans. Not sure how you do that, apart from KEEPING THE GAS CAN DOZENS OF YARDS AWAY FROM FLAMES. But with the new PFC Safety Act, I suppose pouring gasoline out of a gas can in close proximity to an open flame is now safer. Wouldn’t that be your assumption? Otherwise, why do they call it the Portable Fuel Container Safety Act?

Before you laugh at somebody doing something like this, check out this related article, and an account of an adult teen who died in such an incident:

“One of the lawsuits was filed by Karen Kornegay of Louisiana, whose 19-year-old son Dylan died in 2010 after suffering severe burns over 80 percent of his body. A can he had used to ignite a bonfire allegedly exploded and sprayed him with flaming gasoline. While Kornegay acknowledges her son should not have used a gas can to ignite a bonfire — as the container industry warns never to do — she told NBC News she believed the container’s design was to blame for the severity of his injuries.” (emphasis added)

As a parent, I cannot imagine the pain this mother went through in the death of her son. But we learn here that, yes, people do pour gasoline on open fires.

Another related article entitled, “Warning: Scientists say gas cans carry risk of explosion” (could these be some of the genius COVID scientists?), gives more information about the conditions under which a gas can could explode:

“The tests show that under certain limited conditions — including a very low volume of gasoline left inside — a flashback explosion can occur inside a plastic gas can, when gas vapor escaping the can contacts a source of ignition such as a flame or a spark.” (emphasis added)

The genius scientists actually ran tests to come to that conclusion! “Lessee… Who’s up today? Stan’s still in the burn unit. Bob, I think it’s your turn on the test range. Here’s your gas can. Good luck, buddy.”

So, let me get this straight. Under certain limited conditions, the vapors in a gas can will explode, like when they come into contact with a flame or spark? Really?

Did you not know this? If not, the Portable Fuel Container Safety Act of 2020 has you covered with an educational campaign:

(A) Education campaign

Not later than 1 year after December 27, 2020, the Commission shall undertake a campaign to educate consumers about the dangers associated with using or storing portable fuel containers for flammable liquids near an open flame or any other source of ignition.

Let’s hope that this educational campaign complies with the newer standards for equitable and inclusive education, including the tenets of critical race theory.

With this kind of brilliant thinking going on in government and industry, can there be any positive future whatsoever left for America?

In between racist mowings of my racist lawn, I was sitting at the bank drive through making a deposit, which means that I have a bank account, again pegging me as a racist. But I digress. Right next door to the bank is a big box gas station, and there was a tanker truck sitting in the lot refilling the underground tanks. No problem with any of that, except that the 35-ish truck driver was leaning on the tanker right next to the filler hose, smoking a cigarette. Needless to say, once I received my racist deposit slip, I high tailed it out of there!

Apparently the danger of mixing open flames and gasoline is not well known these days.

Look at the progression of America as indicated by the evolution of the gas can. In the 50’s, every 10 year old mowing grass for model airplane money knew to respect flammable liquids. He also knew not to put his fingers or toes under the mower with it running, without any safety warning labels. He also knew not to start a bonfire by pouring gasoline out of a can onto an open flame. He knew these things without anybody having to tell him.

He was also confident of his identity.

Today, apparently the Tide Pod generation has no such in-built sense. Is it the lack of fathers, or competent fathers, or has there been some Darwin Awards level genetic devolution going on in America? Has the phytoestrogen soy poisoning of our male population switched off their “don’t pour gasoline on an open flame” gene?

What conformable putty our population has become. The government elites must love it! Look at the citizens’ compliance with sheer stupidity, on par with smoking next to a gasoline tanker:

• • Here, wear this mask which won’t do you any good, and might even hurt you, but do it just because we say so, and love it, and persecute others who disobey. Shoot, wear two masks. And love it.

• • We’ve destroyed your job, but you can sit purposeless at home and play video games all day on us.

• • We’ve destroyed half of local businesses, but you can still buy cheap junk made by Chinese slaves on Amazon.

• • Let us shoot you full of a new operating system, uh, vaccine, in our experimental drug trial against a disease that is no threat to you.

• • Don’t worry about the integrity of the voting system because we are installing the candidates you like anyway.

• • We’re oppressing Christians (domestic terrorists) without due process, but you don’t like them anyway.

• • We’re destroying free speech worldwide, but you don’t like what is being said anyway.

• • Hey, we are looking out for you by putting flame arresters on gas cans so you can pour gas on lit bonfires.

I fear we are too late to turn this around because once the older generations are gone, you know, the ones who are too smart to pour gasoline onto an open flame, we’ll only have idiots teaching idiots, not a lick of sense between them.

When we coddle and baby our men in society, we end up with a bunch of coddled babies. When we remove from life the risks of real life, and replace that with the risk of getting killed on level N in a video game where you can push a button for a do-over, then we spawn a generation of people who cannot succeed in real life at anything that takes real risk. That’s where we are today.

The gasoline can is a model of America’s decline. Citizens surrender their brains and hearts until they are killing themselves with stupidity, engineers and politicians rush to compensate, and the result enables idiots to be idiots while ridiculously complex products clog our landfills, most of them made by slaves in China. Welcome to the 21st century.

It’s up to you to fix this. Teach your kids and grandkids some sense. Teach them freedom, the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail. This may be our nation’s last chance. Or perhaps that already burned to ashes?

I’m going to go finish mowing my racist grass. And buy one of those old gas cans off ebay.

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