SUVs, Scooters and Survival

GM cut 15,000 jobs this week. Said nobody wants to buy sedans any more. That’s why they’re closing factories in Michigan and Ohio and Ontario, Canada. They have no market for their Impalas, Volt, etc..

Ford Motor Company is also getting out of the sedan business. They have no market for the Taurus, etc.. 

People want to drive big SUVs, built on truck chassis, and pickup trucks have always been a staple down here in Texas. 

I see a lot of super-clean pickup trucks—Ford F-150, Chevy pickups and Dodge Ram pickup trucks. These pickups with not a single scratch in the bed and a pristine paint job indicate a lot of white collar guys with no calluses on their hands buy pickups. Many of these wannabe cowboy wish to stay connected to their salt-of-the-earth roots. Just an observation…

But, now it seems soccer Moms need to a SUV to ride high and have enough steel to make mom feel safe. Kind of like the Cold War weapons escalation from the 1960s. Soviet Union has 50 nukes, we Americans need 100 nukes. 

Translate the Cold War to the Car War escalations of today’s consumer. You get a big car, I need a bigger car, now I need a truck (SUV).

However, I do seen sedans on the road—and most seem to be either European of Japanese. Toyota sells tons of cameras. High end sedans still have appeal. Look at all those Audi and Lexus sedans zipping down the highway. GM and Ford do not bother to address this side of the equation. Their strength is building pickup trucks and SUVs and they are sticking to it.

The scooter phenomenon is a counter-weight to the rise in truck popularity. The city streets are now littered with scooters—magically arrived from some corporate source—ad placed on the sidewalks for all to consider. A credit card app gets the scooter moving. The brave then stand astride the scooter and take their chances on transportation sans protection. 

This very interesting scooter development parallels the increased use of bikes, also a risky pursuit, on our fast-moving public streets. Bikers mostly feature helmets and some use proper illumination at night. 

Scooter and bike people may be making a grand effort to save the planet. They will give you alternative explanations but I think the core idea, “let’s pollute less,” exists behind their transportation choices.

The New York Times has been tackling global climate change as a major target of their publication. I immersed myself in the recent article, “The Insect Apocalypse Is Here.” 

Here is the link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html

Do not let the title fool you—this is a human apocalypse, generated by mankind and foisted on all living things. The numbers of insects has declined significantly. Many other species have declined also.

The decreased insect population saddened me. We have all experienced the plenitude of nature. Maybe you have been in an apple orchard at harvest time? I have seen massive pecan crops on good years in Central Texas. 

Nature is no respecter of modest bounds. The California wildfires show us Nature’s limitless strength. Yet we have managed to throttle nature and toss it into an emergency state, a state with the intensity of cars racing headlong down the freeway, hell bent to get to work on time.

Mankind’s ambitious, restless personality, set on survival and prosperity and domination, has dwarfed even the Eden we were born into it. Look at Mars for alternate housing. Not good!

If you love the planet and share even a modicum of goodwill for all the other species, the Times article should get your attention.

Friday Night Lights: George H.W. Bush vs. Michael Dukakis

The passage below, from Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger’s excellent book on high school football in West Texas, reveals much about the American heartland voter in the 1988 Presidential election. Bissinger’s insights to the blue collar voter in the election between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis could just as easily be applied to Donald  Trump vs. Hillary Clinton (2016).

Friday Night Lights

by: H.G Bissinger

Da Capo Press, 2000

(p.177)

When George Bush came to Midland-Odessa he didn’t go quite that far, but it was the family and school prayer and allegiance to the flag that he highlighted  over and over. As historian Garry Wills pointed out he seemed as closely linked to Pat Robertson as he did to Ronald Reagan, and it was a strategy that worked brilliantly.

Dukakis forces thought they could win the state on the basis of the economy. They thought that the issue of gun control and the Pledge of Allegiance were fads that would quickly die out. They never thought that Bush’s rhetoric, a kinder, gentler version of the “Morton Downey Show” would have much lasting effect. They patiently waited for the campaign to get back to the greater good of forging practical solutions to massive problems, but that shift never took place.

Perhaps just once Dukakis should have left the rarefied atmosphere of Boston and Harvard that seemed to entrap him wherever he was, hopped in a car by himself, and taken a drive to one of those lonely, flat-as-a-pancake roads to the gleaming lights of a Friday night football game. As in ancient Rome, any road he took would have gotten him there. He could have pulled down his tie and unbuttoned his collar. He could have gone to the concession stand to eat a frito pie and a chili dog and then wash it down with one of those dill pickles that came carefully wrapped in silver foil. Instead of keeping track of the score, he could have sat in a corner of the stands to listen to the conversations around him as well as take note of the prayers both before and after the game. He could have seen what people were wearing, observed how they interacted with their children, listened to the songs the bands were playing, watched those balloons float into the air like doves of peace and let the perfume of the Pepettes and the Golden Girls flow sweetly into his nostrils. He could have counted how many blacks were there, and how many Hispanics.

There was a heartbeat in those stands that dotted the Friday nights of Texas and Oklahoma and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida and all of America like a galaxy of stars, a giant, lurking heartbeat.

Michael Dukakis never heard that sound, and, even if he had he would probably dismissed it as some silly tribal rite practiced in the American boondocks by people who made no difference. But his opponent didn’t make the same mistake. He had been down the lonely road to those games, where the heartbeat had resonated more spectacularly than in the healthiest newborn. He knew it was still strong as ever. He knew what kind of values these people had.