Old Cars
Mid 1950’s Kaiser-Willy’s of Canada Ad
“It just sat in the woods and looked at me!” I have played a mind game for most of my life where I find a beautiful old vehicle and restore it to better than new status. Right now 1948-1960 Kaiser-Willys Pickups or Station Wagons are my imaginary targets. The expertise, time, money and equipment needed makes the project improbable for me of course.
Old cars can be more than an obsession. They can even be a necessity. Many media outlets package the Havana, Cuba scene with exciting images of finely restored, late 1950s and early 1960s cars sashaying through a cityscape of elegantly decaying, multistory buildings as if in a Broadway show. Unfortunately this presentation ignores the fact of Cubans living for decades with the necessity that cars cannot die in that governmental system since only the elite can get new vehicles. My cousins living in the former East German communist system often spoke of the same situation. They went to extreme ends to keep their cars running. The East German government did produce personal vehicles but if you didn’t have an inside track with a power broker, you could wait for a decade before you got a poorly made, sometimes not even running, new car. Of course, lovers of, family of and associates of a governmental oligarch wouldn’t need to wait long and sometimes even got the car for free.
Welkyrie, my novel available through this website, brings such a situation into the United States. In the book, electric pancake motors hide behind each tire on old jalopies, allowing the automotive zombies to continue indefinitely. I transplant the automotive problem to our western democracies because of an important matter that we all need to consider. Humanity has epochs of experience verifying that when governmental power becomes increasingly centralized, the people’s situation always becomes less of a priority, including the people’s transportation necessities. The greater problem however is that this deteriorating trend doesn’t stop with the population simply being “car-less.” Bad government can become worse, even life endangering.
Iran under a Shah was a bad situation in the 1970s but many Iranians could still afford to travel or study internationally and the Iranian Rial traded at about seven Rials to one United States Dollar. Today approximately one thousand Iranian Rials trade for two US pennies as an obsessed central government focused on bringing a type of religion worldwide by force, rapes their own economy for every Rial that it can get. Ever more Iranian markets continue to shut down as the government seizes anything of value, leaving an increasingly impoverished population behind as ever increasing numbers of citizens disappear in the night.
How do we humans get to this point? How had the nation of Goethe and Schiller for example, become the nation of the swastika about a century ago? In some cases the situations that we humans allow is right in front of us but we still give in to it. For example, North Korean leadership seems to believe that an undernourished people is a compliant population as they treat their own constituency like cattle to be harvested as cheaply as possible. This begs a question. Since elites are few and suffering populations are many, again, how do societies find themselves here? There are variations to the reasons throughout history but here is my take for us in the United States.
Emotion based decision making. The bad guys are going to get you so panic and vote for me. Look where I am pointing not where you should be looking. One repeating effort gubernatorial candidate in the United States feels that she will win next time by emotionally wrapping multi-billion tax dollar vote buying schemes as environmental salvation. She has all of the related doomsday verbiage if she doesn’t get her way. You can see evidence of emotional based decision making in this article: The Role of Emotion in Global Warming Policy Support and Opposition
A tired, distracted or lazy populace. Take it from someone with decades of experience here that politics for the vast majority of us is a thankless, expensive, self-sacrificing and sometimes even dangerous job. There are honest and hardworking politicians getting accolades, respect and living well in democracies but they truly are an anomaly. Therefore for most of us it is extremely easy to hand absolute power over to a self-enriching charlatan who claims that “they will fix it.” Democracy bluntly means self-government and if we don’t sacrificially self-govern, we become governed. Here is an example of a Hillsdale College student doing just that.
The fool’s gold of centralized governmental compassion. Charity is not my giving to whoever I deem as needy by using your checkbook. That is Robin Hood-ism with Mr. Hood ever getting richer. An international fact on institutional compassion is that the less that transparency exists always leads to the less need actually addressed with some need possibly not addressed at all. I refer to the fine work of Truth in Accounting: https://www.truthinaccounting.org/
The good news is that nations with tyrannies or leaning towards them, have overcome the tyrants. Unfortunately, the opposite also happens. The time worn saying that each generation must save their democracy, stands in stone here.
Self-government is not overwhelming if each individual does what they can. Here is what I practice.
Be an informed voter. This means not just operating in an echo chamber of the same media, day in and day out. I even pursue media that I generally disagree with, (though I try to get their stuff for free.) They do have different takes on matters that I need to consider. I also look for “boots on the ground” expertise and will leave the source when they lose their expertise. If you are in Wisconsin and want to keep on top of elections, use myvote.wi.gov. If you are in another state, look for a similar resource that provides you election updates.
Work where your life allows you to. Some employers give time off for employees being poll watchers/ workers or to do volunteer work. (Training is generally available.) Run for a local office. Run for a statewide office. Run for a Federal office. Volunteer and donate to someone’s effort that you believe in. Do whatever God leads you to do. As it says in Hebrews 13:21 (ESV) - "May He equip you with everything good that you may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight,"
If we live a life engendering respect, then people will listen to our point of view and maybe even follow it.
We shall overcome any tyrant even if we have to drive old cars to get there! We are more than they are.
