THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF CARS™ part 4:

Approaching the 50th posting in the ongoing … WHY THIS second rate poet DOSENT LOVE BIG BUSINESS™, I am thinking it should stop at 50, with a grande finale, 50 being a magic number, a breaking point. Though I can not doubt there are millions of reasons to not loving Big Business™, I would say I for now should have made a point. But then what?

In an earlier posting months ago I fiddled with the thought of writing on CARS, and today I`ll introduce the successor to WHY THIS….from here and on under the collective headline: THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF CARS™. I have in fact posted three already, one on the DeLorean and one on the Jensen sportscar and, on bumper-stickers SUVs so this one, today is in fact.... hmmm part four (numbers means stuff to me), and a follow up on the HumVee posting yesterday.

One the most patriotic signals today in America is to drive around in a Hummer, or HumVee, the SUV of SUVs. The Hummer especially earned is fame in the 1st GulfWar , and have become as symbol of American patriotism and craftmantship.
The Hummer have now within the last couple of years hit the streets in a converted makeover, set up to the needs of an over-average soccermom SUV, but still with a clear militant design…
The commercial pushing the saletags up goes “Hummer like notning else” and ends with a clear shot of planet Earth seen from a satelite. Word Domination....no we never thought of that.

The Irony of the situation is allthough the Hummers engaged in Iraq. Due to lack of proper armor it is said to have been unsuccesfull in protecting the troops it carries, thus resulting in numerous killing of american Gi`s:
http://images.ibsys.com/2004/0630/3478072_200X150.jpg
http://www.ospolitics.org/worldview/images/humvee.jpg

It has not been unnoticed especially by the privates. Vicepresident Dick Cheney got caught with his pants down at a presidential rally at an army base late autumn 2004, when a private stood up and asked the trick question: “Why can`t we get proper armor on the HumVess…?”
Cheney had no immediate answers and mumbled something about the “Will of sacrifice”, but could not explain why the GI`s had to armor the HumVees with scrap-metal, and why one Captain Kelly D. Rover had been ousted from the army for taking pictures of the HumVees in which his troops died. And now more than two years into the war the armouring program that did get initiated is not yet completed. The program takes a 33000 dollars makeover of each HumVee being snd to Iraq, and consist of – for the Transport HumVee, a tempered steel plate around the troopcargo area, 3/8-inch thick, which is capable of withstanding 155 mm howitzer rounds, windshields more than 1,5 inches thick and are capable of withstanding AK 47 rounds, doors and side panels, and and armoured undercarriage to prevent damage from roadbombs.

So there you have it: one of the strongest symbol of war, patriotism, and American imperialism are roaming the streets states in – tacky – shining armor, depicturing the the success of war, or the mere defiance, and in Iraq we have the same model, the same HumVee being blown to bits, in a war that I bet looks different from a HumVee on a dusty Baghdad backroad than on any given stretch of tar in America.

I strongly recommend the movie “Gunner Palace” if it ever opens in Denmark.
http://www.gunnerpalace.com/