The only sensible way to deal with cars.
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A car manufacturer is trying to lure me with advertising for its new model. This, the ad says, offers “simply more of everything: more style, more power, more space, more range”. Now, quite apart from the fact that I basically neither need a car nor want to own one, I’m not interested in “more of anything.” In my opinion, the world is already far too crowded and too spammed. I would be more up for “less of everything”: less androcentric, Donald Trump-like idiot advertising, less embarrassing shouting about faster, further, more, but above all: less unsightly junk cars in front of my front door.
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Thomas Blum fundamentally disagrees with the prevailing so-called reality. He won’t be able to change her for the time being, but he can reprimand her, admonish her or, if necessary, give her a beating. So that the bad begins to retreat. We stand in solidarity with his fight against reality. Therefore, from now on, “The Good Column” will appear here on Mondays. Only the best quality for the best readers! The collected texts can be found at: dasnd.de/diegute
If you consider that a large part of all public space is now occupied by cars and that cars pollute the environment, constantly make annoying noises and their use in traffic claims countless lives every day, the main activities of the car are making noise, smelling, taking up space and causing of suffering, one would have to call it the super manspreader of inanimate objects. All of the gun laws in force in this country also turn out to be a farce when you consider that today every testosterone-driven psychopath, every inferiority-complex-laden superdulli and every normally drunk Oktoberfest fan can convert their car into a deadly projectile and murder instrument at any time with a single movement of their foot.
The company’s advertising strategy alone – promising potential car buyers “more power, more space, more range” – makes it abundantly clear what kind of medieval asshole ideology we are still trapped in today, according to which man’s main purpose is to protect the environment with him to fill it up until there is nothing left of it. The lowest instincts are teased: lust for power, the urge to spread, the urge to expand. “More penis fencing, more top-dog taste, more cock-like strutting” could just as well be in the advertisement, but the big-ass posturing was translated into automotive advertising German in good time before it was printed on posters.
The last car for which one could even speak of “style” in the sense of aesthetic relevance (“Style”) was the “Citroën DS” model series, whose production, as far as I know, was discontinued in the spring of 1975. (The Vietnam War then promptly ended, and shortly afterwards the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who ruled the country for 36 years, unexpectedly died. Imagine what blessings the world could have enjoyed if car manufacturing had been completely stopped worldwide at that time would have been discontinued! And what level of civilization we can expect today if car production stopped immediately!).
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Since then, mostly ugly cars have been manufactured, but they are still bought and driven fanatically because no means or ways have been found to drive people out of their tastelessness and their obsession with automobiles. In Berlin, a new motorway is currently being built – a few allotment gardens that have not yet been concreted over look like a relic from a lost, more humane era – “to strengthen Germany as a location for the automotive industry.” Which is roughly as if I were to pour a hectoliter of toilet drain cleaner into my toilet every hour in order to strengthen Germany as a chemical industry location.
I’m not sure that in a better future, owning and navigating motorized vehicles shouldn’t ideally be reserved for a select few: those who can credibly assure a committee under my chairmanship, made up of people carefully selected by me, that they are compulsory in the short term need a car. For example, to be able to immediately transport a heavily pregnant, seriously ill or injured person to a place where they can be cared for. Or to get life-saving medication or equipment to where it is needed as quickly as possible. Or to transfer a few extremely rare and valuable books from the Baroque Hall of the St. Gallen Abbey Library to my private library as safely, easily and quickly as possible. (Although, for the sake of importance and urgency, I’d better get a plane on the way.)
In any case, one thing is certain: all other cars must be scrapped.