Everything Except Cars

Guest Post by Eric Peters

You might think – because it was once true – that a car company’s primary tout would be its . . . cars. Just as any other company that makes whatever it makes would tout whatever it was it made. That being the thing the company does. And which it hopes to sell.

Well, did.

Nowadays, companies still do those things. But they are are secondary (and tertiary) to things such things as “People,” “Safety,” Diversity, Equity & Inclusion” and – wait for it! – “Citizenship.”

Is it seventh grade civics? Maybe the Boy Scouts. Whoops. There aren’t Boy Scouts anymore. But it is GM, today.

The above enumerated are the top four menu items you will find on General Motors’ Corporate Newsroom page. Nothing about cars – excepting EeeeeVeees, which of course ties into the “news” categories listed above, as EeeeeVeeees are all the same, too and so very “inclusive.”

Click on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and you will find out about International Women’s Day at General Motors and how:

“Today, we unite for gender equality. We pledge to #BreakTheBias and help bring out our best selves as we work toward accelerating women in leadership across the industry. Watch how our teams in Africa and Middle East are changing the world and paving the way toward our goal of being the most inclusive organization. Here’s to women who challenge the status quo. Here’s to men who advocate gender equality. Here’s to a more tolerant and diverse community.”

One can also read about GM’s “commitment to sustainability” – which has “hit high gear” with a determination to reduce the company’s “carbon footprint by 95 percent by 2024.”

Got that great GM feeling, yet?

The Long March Through the Institutions, a term used by disgruntled communists who fled communist repression in places such as the old Soviet Union, to give it another go here in the America, is nearly complete. You know it is so when General Motors – once upon a time synonymous with  American capitalism – has become one of the main institutions pushing communism.

They don’t use that word, of course.

For just the same reason that the government uses “asks” when it orders you to hand over money – or do whatever it says. Instead, words with less baggage and more moral suasion are used. Word such as “diversity” and “equity” and “inclusion.” For who could be opposed to what it sounds like they mean?

Of course, they mean something else. Just as it means something very different whenever the government “asks” you to do something. When it “reaches out,” look out.

“Diversity” means just the same, in its own way, as “ask” means  . . . when used by government. As in literally. The same. So long as everyone is superficially different. The requisite, proportionate differences as far as skin color, genitalia and (lately) pronouns, irrespective of genitalia. But diversity of views has as much place in this scheme as freedom of speech on social media.

Similarly, “inclusion” means the exclusion of those who do not think the same – especially if they are white, straight and male.

The long march has ended – and we are there. So, ironically, is GM – which has been so focused on selling the virtues of “diversity,” “inclusion” and “equity” that it hardly sells cars anymore. The whole operation today sells far fewer cars than Chevrolet division did all by itself, in the once-upon-a-time days when the latter owned about 25 percent of the entire new car market in the United States – as opposed to all-of-GM’s roughly 16 percent share of it, today.

Of course, in the once-upon-a-time days, GM ads touted Seeing the USA in Your Chevrolet. That Pontiac – RIP – Built Excitement.

And did.

Oldsmobile – also RIP – had Rockets.

Wouldn’t You Really Rather Have a Buick?

Many said yes.

Today, most say no – except in China, where Buicks are popular because of the association with Mao, who liked them very much.

And now America is a lot like China, our institutions having been throughly marched through such that the differences between the United States and China have become as superficial as the differences between a badge-engineered latter-days Buick and the same thing sold under a different badge as a Chevy and then again a GMC. Sometimes, a “Cadillac,” too.

GM is, however, adept a selling virtue.

The problem is finding enough people willing to buy it.