The Big Lie isn't the biggest lie.
The biggest lie is MAGA, an imagined past.
People believe lies because they want to believe them.
Guest Post by Rick Millward
It’s a guy thing. An older guy thing.
American automobile manufacturers marketed their products relentlessly in the post WWII era. The goal was two cars in every garage, and we started seeing houses built by the millions that could accommodate them. As the 50s and 60s progressed car designs became sexier, engines more powerful, and Americans completely succumbed to the call of the highway, with 50,000 miles of interstate built during the period.
For many young men during this time it was a rite of passage to get one’s driver’s license and eventually one’s own vehicle. For most of us it wasn’t a shiny new Chevy or Ford, it was a used car, a little beat up but running ok. What we did to jazz these old jalopies was to add decoration to make them look fancier, and buy parts to “soup up” the engines for more power, starting with a louder muffler, (or removing it all together). In those days school letting out was a cacophony as all the boys peeled out of the parking lot and roared off to the Hasty Freeze. Good times.
Most of us couldn’t afford a new car until much later, and usually it was our first experience with credit. Even so, it wasn’t the Corvette or Mustang we pined for as a teen, more likely a sensible Honda. As time went on, depending on how our finances and careers progressed we moved on to nicer models, but with an emphasis on comfort and practicality, not flash.
Fast forward to the present. What we find with many “boomers” is now that they are at a point in their lives with some disposable income and free time, the mobile passions of youth actually never completely faded. Cars from the 50s and 60s are highly desirable as collectables and there is a multi-million dollar industry restoring them to their showroom glory. The price tags for these old babes can hit six figures, and the market is robust.
It’s a testimony to the power of marketing, that decades later the message still has resonance and can motivate behavior. It doesn’t matter that there is virtually no substance in it. To some it’s a bit sad to see an older gent cruising down the road to the Rite-Aid in his chrome encrusted status symbol, seemingly entranced in the distant past.
Yet, I have to admit I feel the same pull, the adolescent yearning shaped by all those ads and even though I can see how silly it is, and have been able to resist the urge to fulfill my own hot rod fantasy, sometimes I still push down just a bit harder on the gas pedal of my sensible sedan and marvel at how susceptible we can be to a lie we desperately want to believe.
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9 comments:
Drove by a 57 Chevy Bel Air yesterday with pristine paint job and shiny hubcaps driven by a man my age. I gave the old guy a quiet honk and a thumbs up as I slowly went by. He smiled back at me. Do what makes you happy.
FJB
MAGA is a lie without a definition. What does it even mean? What makes America great? Some think it’s our wealth and power, but that is in the hands of so few! I’m afraid that too many MAGA hatters look back nostalgically to a time when a white man could beat his woman, shoot an Indian and lynch a black with impunity.
I think what makes America great is that in spite of our history of slavery, genocide, racism and oppression, we now have every race and religion represented in this country, living in relative peace…or at least we were before Trump. Perhaps he was just the impetus we needed to take our next faltering step toward true equality and justice.
An evocative piece, from Mr. Millward, thanks. So much is imprinted when the sap is rising, in those days of splendor in the grass and glory in the flower. The beat-up used cars mentioned were in turn, in their day, the shiny wish of young men too. Jan & Dean happily drove to Surf City in a '34 wagon, a few months before Jan almost killed himself on Dead Man's Curve in his brand new Corvette.
Setting political worldview and stock partisan opprobrium aside for the moment, the real test for analysts of history, including of "greatness", or lack thereof, is the ability to discern what is merely cyclical, the same with a different name, versus what has truly changed in absolute terms, and to what effect. Maybe it's our view of human nature, the possibility of progress, that's crucial.
The Democrats can only “win the culture war” if they avoid going all the way off the cliff. When they deny that there are any differences between trans women and cis women, denying the scientific facts of biology, they are like Wile E. Coyote, suspended in the brief interval before gravity takes effect.
Wet blanket here. My grandfather told me when I was young teen,"Don't fall in love with it boy. Cars are built to get you from here to there, and they all wind up in a junkyard."
In Surf City it was two to one. Two girls for every boy.
Natalie Wood was so beautiful. I was maybe 17 when I saw it. It was an adult-ish film. Splendor in the Grass. The sap rose.
I grew up when Los Angeles had electric trains and because of big oil tore up the tracks and installed diesel buses. Then came smog and car after car belching out at 20 to 30 cents a gallon petroleum forever. My Dad sold Buicks and put every Pentecostal preacher in Los Angeles into one. My son has two car lots, one in Medford and one in Grants Pass. So as a family we are really contributors to the global warming race to the bottom. My first car was a 42 Buick painted turquoise, with a ding dong bell and spinners on white sidewalls. Nothing sexy nothing fast until my Dad let me take a Buick Century out on a date. The chick and I cruised Bob’s Big Boy in Toluca Lake and challenged an Olds 88 to a jump out at a signal , I got the ticket and a suspended license as he showed me the car club plaque hanging down off his back bumper.
Dynaflush against Hyromatic? No way.
I got my first ticket in Grandpas 57 Super 88, southbound on I5 right under the then unearned RV RV Manor. Kept my license, but paid a fine and had to attend traffic School.
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