I have found my self again watching videos of Iran’s car culture. I guess it’s that I’d like to understand who our rulers want to kill, the things they want to destroy. Youtube has tons of these videos. Videos of car shows, burn outs, irresponsible driving, everything one would expect from the good old US of A. I know what some are thinking, that the cars are some horrible crappy little things or European imports. Nope. In the videos I’ve watched Detroit Iron well represented.
Often seen are well preserved pre-1979 cars and even rather new V8 American cars are apparently very popular. Consider what people must be going through to get these cars into that country. What they have to do to get parts. Many of the cars have US aftermarket performance parts. What pains and high prices they must be paying to have these things.
Many years ago in a car magazine I read an article on a trip to Cuba. The author took a set of spark plugs for a 1950s Ford with him. When he met someone with a car that the plugs might be useful with he gave them to him. The guy nearly broke down with joy. Over a set of NOS spark plugs. What is the point of embargoes and bombs? Just make and sell stuff.
Ron Paul is the sole advocate of a foreign policy of peace and trade in the Presidential field of candidates. All the others want us afraid of the boogie man. Well, the boogie man doesn’t exist. What’s on the other side of the walls the media and government put up are people. People just like you and me. Just as Ron Paul has said. But it is more than that, it is people who love what we here in America build. Not the war machine, the consumer products. The stuff that makes their lives better. Building, not destroying.
Build. What we BUILD, what we have built. Military power is meaningless. Democracy by the barrel of a gun is pointless. Building things wins over the world. People love stuff. They like all sorts of things. One of things many people the world over love are American cars. The uniquely American cars our government keeps trying to exterminate. The big sedans, the muscle cars, the sports and pony cars…. Nobody wants an American car that tries to be European. They want Mustangs, big Caddys, Camaros, GTOs, Challengers, and so on. This isn’t just Iran, it’s world wide.
I’ve known many people from many parts of the world. One rather common thread is when many get here they buy the biggest cars they can afford. I’ve seen it over and over and over again. Building what people want is powerful. Not in the sense that control freak rulers want power, but power in friendship and peace.
It makes us rich as a side effect. It uplifts economies and vast numbers of people. War, fear, violence makes the wealthy few more wealthy it makes the rest of us poor. Trade makes a society wealthy, not war. War is paid for by taking from most people and making things that destroy. It’s negative all around. Building takes from no one. It adds to human society. People become richer, they put their efforts towards increasing the wealth of man. War destroys wealth. War kills. War makes enemies. What does trade make? FRIENDS.
People do not intentionally emulate what they hate. They emulate what they like, what they love, what they see as being fun. When someone in Iran films someone doing burnouts and a doughnuts in a 1970s Firebird, this isn’t hate, it’s love. They love that car and through it, those who built it. Those who built the culture around such things that they emulate. All the bombs and armies in the world cannot achieve this. Building things people want does it easily.
Nobody preserves a car for 40 years in the face of a repressive government or goes through intermediaries and pays all sorts of government import taxes while putting up with all sorts of red tape to get a car because they hate it.
So the people love us… but what about the governments? Trade will make them compliant. Make those governments deny their people access to stuff. Make them be the bad guy. Sanctions make the USA the bad guy. Those governments can blame any domestic misery on the USA. So sell them every consumer, medical, and food good that the people want. Make their government block it.
And once it gets in, that’s the beginning of winning people over. Blue jeans and Rock and Roll broke the Iron Curtain. Bombs didn’t do anything. Trade is the most powerful thing on the planet, which is why rulers never want it to be free for they would lose the power they covet.
So instead of free trade our rulers have blocked trade with people in Iran. They largely wish to bomb these people instead. To what aim? Supposedly to get rid of the government that rules them. Well that’s backwards. Trade can bring down that government peacefully and quickly… unless it reforms. Either way this achieves the so called goal of all this war mongering. Of course the real goal is never stated in public because it’s about benefiting the few while costing the many.
When those in the government try to drum up fear, violence, and war, they are trying to make themselves and their friends wealthy at our expense. Afraid of someone? Make stuff they want to have. They’ll make you rich instead and do so of their own free will. The relationship will make people friends.
And so, I propose my solution for the so called Iran problem. Trade. Start with V8 muscle cars, built in the USA by people in the USA.
Wonderful column, Brent – I have nothing to add other than “thank you” for a job well done!
you’re welcome. Thank you for having a place where I can write occasionally.
On this particular topic I just cannot get over the difference between the real people of Iran and what the government and media tells us. It’s such a blatant lie.
If only the UAW could raise an objection to blocking product from customers… but in the end the UAW is probably too cozy with the government to do what is best for its membership.
I’d wager a year’s remuneration that most Americans have more in common, philosohically, financially, and morally, with an Arab/Cuban/Chinese/”Next Boogie Man” street sweeper than they do ANY of their “own” politicians or bureaucrats nor any distraction industry “pundit” bombarding their senses to keep them from thinking too much.
Nice Article Brent.
A recent article I’ve read requires an appendix:
“Surprise Surprise Surprise” – Gomer Pyle.
So it (finally) comes out that the real reason to attack Iran is not because they are a threat to any other people but because they would become un-attackable, that is a nation permanently outside the control of the empire. Which is -exactly- what Ron Paul has said regarding other nations pursuit of nuclear weapons programs, as a deterrent to attack.
http://politicalcorrection.org/fpmatters/201112020008
My own notes: The last thing the powers that be want is Iran to get on track and become the first world nation it would have become without interference. Ultimately the trade sanctions and war threats are to keep the religious extremists -IN- power. To give the present government in Iran a boogie man (the USA) to rally people around and thus continue to keep the whole nation down.
Exactly.
It’s of a piece with Eyerak and other “enemies of freedom.” It a-mazes me that more people are not struck by the weirdness of nations such as the US and Israel, each with thousands (US) or hundreds (Israel) of advanced nuclear weapons and delivery systems, shitting their pants (ostensibly) about a country 20-plus years behind them, technologically, with perhaps one or two very basic bombs.
No fuss was raised, incidentally, over Israel’s “illegal” nuclear program nor the fact that it possesses the Bomb – many Bombs, in fact. Iran has attacked no other nation in modern history. How many countries has Israel attacked?
Something else to consider is the monetary issue. Saddam Hussein was making noise about trading oil for currencies other than the almighty US dollar. All of a sudden he had WMD’s and had to be removed from power. Gadaffi wanted to use the gold dinar as currency in Libya and wanted payment for oil in gold. As I recall Libya had free education all the way through college, everyone got an oil stipend and they had the highest GDP in North Africa. Hmmm….can’t have that.
Apparently the band of rag-tag rebels that overthrew old Mu’ammar had already set up a national bank prior to the rebellion (no mean feat for a group of college educated Wall Street boys, much less that rabble). Maybe the Libyan “rebels” had outside help. Maybe someone was as much or more concerned with monetary “gold fever” spreading, than they were with oil.
Do you think perhaps that “Eyeran”, having the last independent national bank, might be in a similar unenviable position? Perhaps if they’d just turn their economy over to the boys that own the Fed, IMF, World Bank, etc., they’d be allowed to buy all the nukes they wanted? Nah, they wouldn’t need them then…..