I think you misunderstand Isreals role in the region, as far as US politics is concerned. As long as Isreal is a viable force in the region, They are seen as a knife at the collective Arab/Iranian/Egyptian throat. They act as a US proxy providing a counter weight to other regional powers. I’m no defender of Isreal, there actions, or Netanyahu, just providing another point of view.

This is the solution. The bite is that politicians know it is incredibly unpopular, and in America penalizes rural voters who have to drive farther. Ideally, it would be assessed annually when you renew registration and amortized out as monthly payment (or possibly an option to pay a lump sum). Based on your cars mileage for the last year, so it would be a post paid tax. However here in Texas, we just got rid of inspections that verify your mileage, so it would be left to self reporting, which is notoriously unreliable.

I think you and I may have discovered the film at the same time, or nearly. I think I probably saw it on an illegally descrambled HBO sometime around 80 or 81. Also an awkward kid in a small Texas town. I didn’t dive headlong into the hippie thing (that was already taken by the weird Beatles obsessed kid), but the impact of those songs and the messages stuck with me as well. Even though I’m losing mine, I still love the song Hair, in all its glory.