Remember when Energon was 79 Cents a Cube?

Many Allegories have taught us lessons and changed our ways of life in the United States over our history. These little tales based on real situations often receive pounds of praise for their artistic construction and entertainment value, but very little credit for the changes in society they inspire. The Wizard of Oz changed the way the United States values it's money. Animal Farm outlined the flaws in Soviet Communism and The Transformers demonstrated the futility of maintaining the status quo and fighting over resources. What? You didn't realize the Transformers were created to teach us of the errors in our ways? Sadly, we still haven't been swayed by the teachings of the Heroic Autobots and Evil Decepticons. Perhaps it's our heroine-like addiction to energy consumption and financial greed, or maybe we just haven't been exposed enough to the Transformers' story since things turned bad. We can hope this summer's movie will bring it all to our attention.

"More than meets the eye." They said it right in the tagline. Two political sides left their energy depleted home planet of Cybertron, and after crashing on earth reformed themselves in the images of earth machinery that corresponded to their US political parties' most powerful machines. Now remember this was initially set in the early 1980's when you recall your childhood memories and picture this in your mind. The Decepticon's (Deceptive-Conservative) Leader was a confident, charismatic commander in chief who could rally the troops behind him, much like the US President at the time (The new republicans then, or Neo-Cons.) Decepticon Leader Megatron, when not ruling as a robot, would transform into a gun, and the President at the time was Ronald Reagan (Pronounced Ray-Gun.) Coincidence? You may say Reagan wasn't so openly evil, this is true, but he was also a better actor, just by a bit. The rest of the Decepticons all were military based machines like fighter jets, representing the Neo-con's desire to take their energy by force. They were lead by second in Command, the power hungry, always pushing for combat and demanding unearned respect, Starscream (Rumsfeld?) Not to mention their political Spin Master, walking tape recorder Soundwave, who would launch vicious recordings from his tape player that would sabotage and rip apart the Decepticons' enemies, like today's Neo-con strategist Karl Rove.

On the "Good" side of the invading Transformers, their leader Optimus Prime also had the Reagan like qualities of being confident and inspiring the average Autobot to follow and give his all, much like Reagan inspired Americans to change from their ways of energy reduction during Carter Administration to the consume consume consume ways of Reagan's 1980's. Prime was modeled in the image of the staple of American interstate commerce, the 18 wheeler. How else could we all enjoy our modern luxuries without the high speed, relatively efficient method of transportation to move our goods and money around to all of us commoners? The 18 wheeler rules all of our American lives and the rest of the Autobots were like the rest of us, just wanting to do good and try our best in the situation we were in without hurting anyone. However, as high end sports cars, SUV's, and helicopters they were guzzling away the resources to support the standard of living they were used to. One was even a whole power thirsty city! The only exception to the rule was Volkswagen Bug Bumblebee. Though less of a guzzler, the old bugs are still sold as cheap unclean vehicles in third world countries and were designed by a man who supposedly had good intentions, but missed the mark a bit. Though docile, respectable and hard working for good purposes, never once did you see an Autobot looking for an alternative to energon, they just lived on scraping by burning fuel and battling the evil deceptive conservatives.

It is clear, The Transformers is an allegory about the Western World and our selfish overuse of our resources and our invasion of other lands to support it. Both The Decepticons and Autobots are responsible for draining their home planet of it's energon as we did with the oil in our own land, and now they have moved on to earth's limited supply like our move to the middle east. As well at the same time their Robot In-battling is hurting the humans who get in their way (or the Middle Easterners in our way.) We should see that the Neo-Con's financial greed, draining the middle east of it's resources and upsetting their people's way of life is not a sustainable path (and don't we all have a problem with the inflow of aliens to our neighborhoods in the US? Imagine those immigrants with a government behind them and guns!) At the same time, the common American Worker (Generally the more liberal and caring Democrats) shouldn't be just going along, pointing fingers at the "evil ones" and then driving around in gas guzzling SUVs. Though "good" as opposed to the evil, they also are not "doing good.".

As the transformers showed us the battling between sides never accomplished anything, we should see our Democrats and Republicans should either together or separately look for alternatives to make invading and draining other lands both less profitable and unnecessary, Perhaps now nearing the end of the fifth Neo-Con term in office, with the situation getting worse across the ocean and the price of fuel weighing down on us hard working Americans, we will start to see the point. With the new Live action Transformers movie later this year, (ah CGI, true Cybertron!) this story will be more clear to us, and like The Wizard of Oz, could inspire us to stand up, abandon our petroleum dependence and turn our attention from the perpetual distraction across the ocean inward to our own abilities and innovation to make the needed changes to our world.