John Galt Writes a Car Commercial
Frankly, since a young age, I have felt nothing but immense distaste toward advertisements, mostly because my icy and dispassionate Houyhnhnm mind could see the logical errors in the presentation, the appeals to emotion, and so on. I understood that customers need and want to be informed of the benefits of one’s commercial product, but the distaste remained.
Until now. I finally saw a commercial which had created so much enmity among Leftists, and generated so much raw hate and scorn, so much undisguised hatred for America and for work and for ethics, that for this reason alone it merits praise.
Let us have more of this sentiment, please, and, as Michael Ledeen might say: Faster, please.
The emotional appeal of the commercial is to the American work ethic, but it carefully avoids being a mere appeal to materialism. The man expresses no pride for his things, but for the hard work needed to acquire them.
The monologue contrasts this unfavorably with the work ethic of Europe. The Leftists have been conditioned for years to react to any compliment to America in the same was a sane man reacts to a compliment given to Nazi Germany, or, to use a more egregious example of a more egregious evil, to Red China.
While I continue frankly have no particular taste for commercial advertisements, particularly for foolish products like electric cars (they run on electricity generated at powerplants by burning diesel fuel, hence serve no purpose), I admit it is refreshing to see one which pretends, if only for a moment of make-believe, that ours is the America we once had in the 1950s and which has since been abandoned.
But we may one day be that America again, once the cult of nihilistic narcissism that currently runs our society is overthrown and discredited and forgotten. All the future is open to us.
For there is a second commercial I saw, which had a similar appeal. Film makers would not attempt to make such appeals were there no one in the audience to which it would appeal.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
