Two/Ideology and the Right Brain (continued)

You know, I've seen a lot of people walkin' 'round

With tombstones in their eyes
But the pusher don't care
If you live or if you die
God damn the pusher.

- Hoyt Axton

The list of violent crimes committed by the automobile industry is long and ugly. The civilian Hummer, a suburban war machine for wealthy paranoids and California governors; the cooler-than-a-minivan Explorer, with its magically disappearing tires and dramatic rollovers; the Pintos, Mustangs, and Chevy pickups that turned into funeral pyres for their drivers on impact, and the Police Interceptor rolling coffins that immolated cops called to those gruesome scenes11—all were ghastly affronts to refined sensibilities. But none was as brutal an attack as the one perpetrated by National City Lines, the syndicate made of Firestone Tire, Standard Oil, and Mack Truck, under the command of General Motors and its chairman, Alfred Sloan.12 From the 1920s through the 50s, this group "invested in" and then destroyed the streetcar, cable car, trolley car, and all other rail-based mass transit systems in cities across the United States.13 When the last steel rails had been ripped out of the streets, a "better" form of people-moving rolled in—on Firestone tires connected to a GM bus body with a Mack diesel under the hood and Standard Oil in the fuel tank.

The nation's cities, defiled and broken, cried out for justice. Justice was then served: a $5,000 fine for GM and each of its partners.14 The CEOs could be heard laughing all the way to Washington, where the Defense Department was proposing a series of interstate highways—you know, so that the military could move swiftly when called upon in an emergency. And so that former General Motors chairman Charles Wilson, who now ran the very same government agency promoting those highways, could get away just as quickly when angry mobs showed up to confront him for the villainous racketeering.

Except that no mobs showed up. President Eisenhower, freshly mesmerized by Mr. Wilson, told the American people that the highway system would keep them free and strong and mobile. The people, their hearts swelled by Dinah Shore's stirring assurance that "America is asking you to call" by driving Chevrolets across the U.S.A., obediently fell into patriotic trances and chanted, "We Like Ike."

The carnage continued. Two-lane roads that had been main thoroughfares became empty lines on landscapes, their roadside attractions forgotten after being bypassed and cut off. The towns that had dotted those two-lanes became shells or found their shapes contorting to reach the new freeway interchanges just beyond the city limits, where farms and woods were clear-cut to sprout shopping malls with acres of free parking. In major cities, downtowns emptied; in suburbs, construction boomed. And then, riding in the back of a shiny Cadillac convertible on fat Firestone tires, a clown, a king, a retired Confederate colonel, and a freckled girl with bright red pigtails rolled into every city in the nation to set up the burger joints, chicken shacks, and taco stands that would turn meat into a commodity ingested at the rate of 284 million tons annually, worldwide, by 2007.15

While this crime spree played out in the United States, passenger train service in Japan, Germany, France, and across Europe steadily became faster, roomier, quieter, and more efficient. The U.S. closed its train stations and sold off its passenger rail lines. Japan and Europe invested in high-speed trains that would eventually rival the airlines for speed and convenience.16 The U.S. invested in rockets and sent two guys to the moon. In Japan, Honda was engineering its first fuel-efficient cars for export to America, where the Big Three were busy building engines so powerful, fuel-thirsty, and gigantic that whole front ends had to be redesigned for existing product lines to contain them. (Even with the retooling, muscle cars "wanted to plow off the road front end first every time they were poured into a curve," as one automotive writer put it.17) Few owners expected these monstrous motors to last more than five years or 50,000 miles before throwing a rod or blowing a freeze plug, and then the cars were towed to the scrapyard.

Three years later, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries shut it all down with a resolute flip of a switch and a firm "No more oil for you." By this point the U.S. auto industry had long since gone completely homicidal and psychotic. With nothing left to destroy, it began to cannibalize itself.

====SOURCES====

11 Fuel Tank Hazards. Byron Bloch Auto Safety Design, Inc. www.autosafetyexpert.com/video

12 John Gartner, “The Pernicious Price of Petroleum.” Wired, December 2006; John Anderson, “Review: ‘Taken for a Ride.’” Newsday

13 Ibid.

14 John Anderson, “Review: ‘Taken for a Ride.’” Newsday.

15 Mark Bittman, “Producing Meat Taxes Energy, Environment.” New York Times, Feb. 10 2008.

16 Edward Miller, “Light Rail Is the Answer.” Marin County Coastal Post, June 2005.

17 Joe Oldham, Muscle Car Confidential. Motorbooks, 2007.