The America We Live In

This story will be familiar to just about anyone who has purchased a car from a dealer. Any car dealer. A letter arrived last fall from the corporate headquarters of the manufacturer of the car, telling me my car had a defective part and that I needed to bring it in for a free repair. I was leery, because I had bad experience with the company’s local dealership – in both its east and west Madison locations. When I would take my car in for the simplest routine maintenance, like an oil change or to have the tires rotated they tried to upsell me for more expensive repairs.

When the warranty expired I stopped using the dealership, and went back to my good independent mechanic that I used before getting my almost-new car. He had already saved me plenty of money when the car was under warranty, and I would take the car to him when they tried to upsell me. They were lying EVERY time.

So I didn’t trust the "recall" notice. It was a simple repair, something to do with the spare tire, almost meaningless. I took the car in, though, and sure enough the dealer tried to upsell me. I had recently bought new tires and had a complete brake repair done by my good mechanic in the spring, but the dealer told me straight-faced that my tires were showing excessive wear and needed to be replaced. And, all four brakes needed repair. It was so smooth I was almost convinced. "We can set you up for an appointment right now."

I lied back to them, telling them that I would mull it over for a while, then took their invoice to my good mechanic, and he very judiciously told me that they were mistaken. He had done this years before when another dealer tried to cheat me. He didn’t badmouth car dealers, or anyone else, for that matter. He just relies on his own good work, and keeping his business going.

This is the America we live in. The smallest businesses with the most direct relationships with customers can still be honest, but anything connected to a large corporation is all about separating customers from their money – all of it if they can.

I tried doing what I call hard-core sales many years ago, toward the end of the time I lived in Hawaii. It was for a solar hot water contractor in Honolulu. The training was for about two weeks. We were to generate our own "leads," making cold calls and even working the street, knocking on doors. I still remember the lead trainer telling us "Never lie to a customer," then proceeding with a litany of lies to tell customers. One I remember was "All our installers are licensed plumbers." Since I had been a plumber I went out on a few installs with one of the crews. Not one of them was a licensed plumber. The work they did was shoddy, including what they called "cold soldering," a common practice on Oahu.

I was a terrible salesman. I didn’t sell one solar water system. One day I was trying my luck in the well-to-do Diamondhead area, going door-to-door making my pitch. At one house the man who answered the door was a really nice guy, Chinese-American, and he was a vitamin salesman. He invited me in and we traded sales pitches. After about a half-hour I left with a bag of vitamins and no sale. One true thing the trainer said is that the easiest people to sell to are other salesmen, good or bad. I quit the job not long afterward, and returned to Illinois a few weeks later.

I wasn’t a good bullshitter. I’m thankful. If I had been a good bullshitter I would be just like so many others in this country for whom lying is like breathing. Almost half this country’s electorate voted for the 100% liar Donald Trump in two elections. It isn’t as if this country is divided between half liars and half non-liars. It’s more like psychotic liars versus a continuum of semi-dishonest to honest. Who knows how many people fall into each type?

We are conditioned to accept lying as truth. TV commercials are the most obvious. I have fallen for more than a few. I even fell for one of the worst politicians in the nation’s history. Lyndon LaRouche, probably the most dangerous "right wing" crackpot to ever run for office. In 1976 I wasn’t very impressed with either Ford or Jimmy Carter for president, and Lyndon LaRouche of the "U.S. Labor Party" paid for a half-hour or full-hour ad on national television. He was pretty convincing, spouting a lot of seeming anti-corporate, pro-labor rhetoric that had me fooled. It was pretty easy to vote for him, since Carter coasted to an easy victory, but it was a painful lesson in how easy it is to fall for pure hogwash.

So I can be a little forgiving of people who voted for Trump. Not much more than a little, though. Trump, a deranged criminal sociopath, Is far worse than the crackpot Lyndon LaRouche. He is a totally malevolent human being, an obsessive narcissist and a predator. And roughly half the country’s electorate voted for him.

Trump was able to incite a mob to try to overthrow the government in January. Thankfully, Trump is as stupid as he is evil, and his attempted coup failed. He actually thought about 10,000 rioters could do his bidding and take over the nation’s Capitol. A ragtag mob of deluded Trump followers were as dumb as Trump, believing that they would succeed because the charlatan they fell for told them it would work.

The attempted coup failed, but it made the country aware of a looming threat: "hate" groups. "Right wing" domestic terrorists. The Oath Keepers. The Proud Boys. Boogaloo Boys (or Bois, depending on ability to spell). “The” Ku Klux Klan. Various Nazi groups. "White" supremacy groups, dedicated to dominance by something that doesn’t exist – the "white" race.

We should look at these groups in context. They exist in the United States of America, where dishonesty doesn’t exactly rule, but proliferates. The various Nazi groups are imitations of what they think existed in Germany in the 1930s. One thing they don’t consider is that the Nazi Party in Germany was indigenous and original to Germany, invented out of nothing after the country lost World War I. "Nazi" is short for Nationalsozialismus, (in English National Socialist), itself a fake name. There was nothing socialist about them. American Nazi groups are dress-up outfits, fetishizing fascist symbology. They appropriate the German word instead of calling themselves by the English translation  "Nationals," or "Natis." They are violent and hateful, but what "liberals" and our mainstream media fail to see is that what is most prevalent in the membership of extremist "right" organizations is mental illness. It takes a certain level of madness to be in one of these groups, and madness precedes ideology. Who would fall for a crackpot book like "The Turner Diaries" if he weren’t already disturbed mentally?

Trump brought these people out of the woodwork, so to speak, but the madness was there before him. He just gave them confidence and a sense of legitimacy. They became his "base," and many of them still believe he is the real president. No doubt a goodly number of them would like to attack the Capitol again.

Since they are Trump’s base, they are also the base of the "Republican" party. Which says all we need to know about the "Republicans." They are as bad as their followers. Worse, really, because they should know better. But they have their own delusions. The poster boy for today’s "Republican" party is Matt Gaetz, a man with no principles, no morals, no ethics and no worth. He will be gone soon enough, but what about the rest of them? Maybe they could go into the car business.
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Here's a video. Here's a song. Hoyt Axton. Steppenwolf. The Who. John Mellencamp. David Lindley. The Beach Boys. Wilson Pickett. The Beach Boys again. Johnny Cash. Another from Johnny Cash. Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen. Chuck Berry. Chuck Berry again. Woody Guthrie. John Hammond. The Beatles. Willie Nelson. Ronnie and The Daytonas. The Beach Boys. Vince Taylor and His Playboys. Tracy Chapman. And, the theme song for the biggest liar in human history, Donald J. Drumpf (his real name). Our national anthem. Gabby Pahinui. Another from Gabby.

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R.I.P. Larry McMurtry. The only book my father ever gave me was Lonesome Dove. He just said "Read this book." I lived in it for about a week.