Myth

I was watching the NFL on Fox while I cooked breakfast today. Every few minutes it seemed that the Dodge component of Chrysler/Fiat was pounding at us viewers with a couple different, rather long commercials. At least I think they were commercials. They could also have been leftovers from Reagan's morning in America campaign. One would think that if a car company, particularly one which had only recently come out of bankruptcy, would want to present a concrete value proposition with a concrete call to action if it were going to spend all that money on expensive air time. Ford is certainly doing an effective job of presenting compelling messages about cars that look to be of a type that lots of people – not just Americans – might want to buy. GM is trying, but not to any level of effectiveness. But at least they are trying.

Dodge it would appear has decided to take the approach that if it reminds Americans of their long lost and probably mythically unfounded greatness – images of smokestacks long gone, flashes of workers long since de-unionized, and horses running free ( I have no idea what that is all about) - that they can sell a bunch of trucks.

The thing that bothers me about that is not that it appears to be a stupid waste of money. The thing that bothers me is that the images and messages being presented by what was once a great American corporation are suggesting that America should retreat into a dream world of a might-have-been-greater-time for us. The thing that bothers me about that is that it looks to be a great way to let the emerging twenty first century world steam roll right over us as we retreat into a haze of a romantic nineteenth century during which we must have been great and that we will again be great if only we return to those days: imbedded in the acceptance of that viewpoint is the implicit belief that we are losing because nobody is playing fair rather than facing the fact that we are losing because everybody else is playing smart; imbedded in the acceptance of that viewpoint is the implicit belief that not knowing anything about the rest of the world is not only acceptable it's deeply patriotic; imbedded in the acceptance of that viewpoint is the implicit belief that not graduating from high school, or not knowing anything about anything if you do so graduate is an understandable and acceptable state of affairs, and that state of affairs absolutely precludes our ability to play smart like the other guys.