Who’s Responsible for the American Car Industry’s fall?
December 12, 2008
Salaroche

Can anybody give me a plausible reason as to why are we placing all the blame on the Big Three for the American Car Industry’s impending demise? Can the Big Three be the only culprits in this affair? Aren’t the Big Three deeply American companies after all? Wasn’t a larger portion of America involved in all of this?

Many Republicans aren’t wasting any time and are already pointing their fingers at their usual suspects: Any Labor Organization. But even if the UAW’s influence on the whole thing had anything to do with it (which it probably did), is the American Car Industry the sole culprit in this unsavory affair? Aren’t there supposed to be two sides to any coin? Isn’t there supposed to be at least one buyer for every seller?

Without a doubt, the Big Three have been shoving gas-guzzlers down our throats for the past several years, but are Americans supposed to buy anything anyone wants to sell them without questioning the long-term consequences of their buying it? Aren’t Americans supposed to know what’s good for them and what’s not?

Anyone would be right in saying that “yes, most Americans are supposed to know better, but they don’t want to know better, and whenever they know any better, they refuse to abide by what they know.” As the sub-prime loans stupidity shows, most people don’t want to look at the long-term effects of their actions. They just want to look at the immediate effects: The acquisition of things and the easy accumulation of wealth.

But weren’t we Americans supposed to be the pragmatic guys in the world neighborhood? Weren’t we supposed to be the practical ones? Cause and effect, remember? How could we have fallen this deeply in debt without knowing it? What was going through our minds?

And here’s where the wonders of salesmanship come into play.

As many of us know, subliminal messages can often be more powerful than evident ones. So, what subliminal tactic could the American car industry have used particularly over the past decade that fooled us so blind? Well, they just took advantage of the falsely-inflated wave of patriotism sweeping the nation after 9/11 and they tied the acquisition of SUVs to the feeling of being a “True” American.

As simple as that.

As I remember well, there were times between 2003 and 2006 when criticizing SUVs would attract the evil eye from many or most of your colleagues at work. On the other hand, it sometimes felt like if praising an SUV was an indirect way of stating your support for the troops in Iraq. There was a strongly-insinuated tie between loving America and loving SUVs during those years. Americans loved those behemoths and the more you loved them the more you were vested with the feeling of being a true American.

The truth is the Big Three are not alone in their lack of vision and irresponsible behavior. The American people have a big share in this whole thing. The American people bought those gas-guzzling SUVs and Trucks and intentionally invested their hard-earned money or their not-so-hard-earned credit in buying them. But, most of all, the American people invested their totally misguided nationalistic pride in buying those vehicular dinosaurs.

So, if the American public can be said to be equally responsible for the American Car Industry’s present sorry state, why are so many Republican Senators balking at the idea of helping them out? The obvious answer is that they refuse to bail the Big Three for purely pig-headed, dogmatic, unrealistic, ideological reasons. When will those Republican Relics learn that we no longer live in the by-gone era of the early 80’s?

But let’s keep things in perspective. I’m not here to support the incompetence of the Wagoners and the Nardellis and the Mullalys, just as I’m not here to support whatever excessive concessions the UAW may have extracted from them across the years. But I’m neither here to support any pig-headed bunch of backward Republican Senators who refuse to put the wellbeing of the American people first and the defunct ideology of their political party last.

So who’s responsible for the American Car Industry’s fall? America is. The whole American business culture is. And the American consumer owns a large chunk of that responsibility too. So it’s time for the American government to step in and help solve the situation in as wisely a manner as possible.

Salaroche