By Lloyd Frazier
It seems the argument for or against buying American drifts in an out of our societal collective conscientiousness due to the cycles of media attention. A lot of our attitudes are formed by a disproportionate amount of anti-American discourse from our media. We get bombarded by their side of issues on everything from the Gulf War to the evil oil companies and their record profits. We are given a steady diet of this as it suits the mostly liberal media and we are expected to take everything they tell us as the gospel truth. This brain washing carries over to our consumption habits.
Most of us purchase small ticket items on a daily basis without even a thought as to how it affects our country’s economy. When it comes to big ticket items, most give pause, even if mostly due to how it affects our own interests and what the ‘trend of the day’ is. The big debate going on now is our addiction to foreign oil. Buying a more fuel efficient car is a step towards alleviating that addiction. Most of us automatically assume that Toyota, Honda, and Nissan are the logical choices when looking for fuel economy. In our societal, Lemming-esque, trendy ways we go out and purchase the car d’ jour. We are told that evil GM, Ford and Chrysler are in cahoots with the oil companies and want to sell us gas-guzzling behemoths. Toyota and others are good, kind, environmentally friendly stewards of our earth and that we should only consider their products.
A lot of pessimism is prevalent in the media regarding the sincerity of GM, Ford, and the newly re-Americanized Chrylser. Granted, the domestic manufacturers were putting out some questionable products over a decade ago and they deserve some of the blame for this attitude. However, the domestic Big Three have been making great strides in that area. When will we forgive, forget, and move on. The Big Three are producing some great products. Congressman Joe Knollenberg from Michigan’s 9th district makes some good points regarding what is and isn’t American when addressing the automobile industry. I submit that he is a bit prejudiced due to his ties to his community. He is a fellow blogger and appears to write in it regularly. Take a look at his April 30th post titled ‘The Yen, Domestic Content, and Toyota’- click here >Joe Knollenberg blog. He makes some salient points about the American content percentage of Toyota’s products and how Japan manipulates its currency to give them a competitive advantage. It is eye opening and should be alarming. Why doesn’t the media point more of this out? We should be educating our citizens about what this means for the long term relevance of our economy in the world. I hope I can spark more interest in this subject along with Mr. Knollenberg. I think it is time we pay more attention to how we spend our dollars. Wake up America! Our second revolution draws nigh!
Lloyd, signing out…
