"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Hummah!

The "real" Hummer, the H1, is going out of production:

The 2006 model year will be the last for the Hummer H1, the hulking, gas-guzzling status symbol that attracted celebrities and off-road enthusiasts but has drawn the ire of environmentalists.

That's sort of misleading. The much more popular H2 is also a gas guzzling pollution-machine, and it has the added bonus of just being an ultra-heavy Chevy Tahoe, so it can't, like, do anything special.

In light of that, I found this quote kind of illuminating:

"It's a great brand. There is a lot that can be done with that in terms of leveraging its ruggedness and toughness."

The brand contains the ideas of ruggedness and toughness, but the product itself does not. The H2 and H3 are not in any way extra-capable or able to acually do anything.

This is where we are as a civilization: so heavily invested in our own bullshit we don't know the difference between a tough vehicles and a "tough" brand. Like most hegemons in declines, we are militarily active, driven by signs and wonders.

Responses