Product and Pitches
Looking back, it seems that since I was a child, certainly as far back as I can remember, I have been immersed in the advertising model: we are told that we have a Huge Problem (bad breath, frizzy hair, dirty carpets, hours wasted cooking, etc., etc.), that someone has a solution (a better mouthwash, shampoo, vacuum cleaner, quick meal), and that only an uncultured savage would consider living without the product. To have a meaningful and worthwhile life, advertising tells us, we need what we are being offered. We all know this model. We have all been swimming in this sort of soft propaganda since we first opened our eyes.
It’s interesting, looking back, to see my blind spots. In the late 70s, when I was twenty, there was a push back against this paradigm. I stopped using popular soap products and gravitated toward more “natural” cleaners like Dr. Bronner’s. I shunned synthetic fabrics and leaned heavily on cotton and wool. I refused to buy pre-mixed products like Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix, preferring instead to buy the ingredients (in bulk, if possible) and mix them. In fact, I pretty much refused to believe advertising. If something was advertised as a solution, I believed, it wasn’t, and odds were good it was being offered as a solution to a “problem” that didn’t exist.
Yet, at the same time, other groups were offering other solutions to other problems. I recall making pancakes on the wood stove in the house I was living in with a group of people, and then everyone bundling up to head out to a meeting of The Clamshell Alliance, a group that had formed to oppose nuclear power in general and the construction of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in particular. It never occurred to me (or anyone else I knew at the time) to think it through. Weren’t we just playing the same game on a different field? We had a Huge Problem (nuclear waste, The China Syndrome, toxic fish), someone had a solution, and we’d be uncultured savages if we didn’t participate with our money and time in the proposed solution. Fossil fuels? Hell, we were told an ice age was coming. No one was concerned about fossil fuels. Fear of carbon was a problem (and another product) for another day.
This pattern has followed me all of my life. Crisis, proposed solution, buying in. New and Improved Crisis, new and improved solution, buying in. In a very real sense, I have been conditioned to think of the world in these terms and to act accordingly. One crisis after another, backed (of course) by the latest Science, and someone offering a solution; and, when nothing was solved, we all moved seamlessly along to the next crisis. In retrospect, it is all very clear.
It’s a crazy way to live, and I’m not sure when I gave up, but I can see now that I have. Growing up as I did, basking in media, made me a cynic. At some point I realized that peace of mind and a moral footing wouldn’t be found in a retail outlet. It wouldn’t be in the Fair Trade Coffee, or the Because We Care recycled paper towels. It wasn’t going to come in a 9mm shoulder carry, or a low-emissions vehicle, an F-150, or a bag of quinoa and kale. That was all just the blather of people trying to sell me something.
I got that feeling from Trump early on, with his talk of making America great again and his aggressive tweets, but I watched what he actually did and nothing seemed too untoward. Things were getting better all around, too. Peace was breaking out, the economy was booming, unemployment was down for everyone. I didn’t see the racism, sexism, and xenophobia I was constantly warned about. I figured he was selling something, and so were the people telling me he was “just like Hitler” and would end democracy. I didn’t much mind anything he did, though. There was never anything I could point to and say, “Woah. That’s bad. I’d better buy what those other people are selling.”
Now, I’m convinced I had the right of it. People who are telling me that the country is fundamentally racist remind me of people telling me I have wimpy garbage bags or that my mouth isn’t minty fresh. They are shouting about a problem, because they are selling a purported solution. It’s a Medicine Show and a tent revival all rolled up in one. I’m not buying.
If this makes me an uncultured savage, I can live with that. I lived with it when I didn’t by the Extra Picker-Upper, or spray my bathroom to kill 99.9% of the germs. I wore the badge when I didn’t join a health club, and when I chose a shave that was less than The Best a Man Can Get. I learned to live with the stigma of not drinking The King of Beers and Leaving Home Without my American Express card.
This is what Woke looks and feels like to me. Like dingy floors or colors in my laundry that are less than off-the-hanger bright. It’s a pitch, like a late night ad about the horrors of fumbling with ice cube trays or tangled cords. When I see the politicians and their appointees telling me how bad things really are in the country, how racist and unfair, and how I have to suddenly be a racist to fight racism, I see them in yellow t-shirts wearing miked headphones and chopping vegetables.
Someone will buy it, because someone always does. Sham Wows went big and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker got rich before their fall. Someone always buys. It’s just not me.