Jeep Cherokee

Youve never known a single Indian who wasnt painted onto a football helmet or branded in chrome on a tailgate, but there you go, off mashing the landscape like some edge-city explorer, flinging yourself toward new worlds beyond the driveway, Lewis and Clark with a seat belt. Go ahead, you trampling trooper, you goose-stepping little Godzilla, you shining beast of raging fashion, riding the big teeth of your tires as if you would ever follow a dirt road anywhere but to a car wash. This is America, and you're free to drive anything you can buy but I will tell you: Hitler would love this car- a machine in which even the middle class can master the world, purchase their way through peril safely as senators. This is a car for a uniformed strongman, a one-car motorcade through a thatched village of strangers. This is the car that will replace Prozac. This is the car that Barbie buys with mad money after the date with Angry White Ken. This the car that makes it safe to be hateful in public. Go ahead. Climb in. Look at yourself, way up there on the bridge of this thick-windowed ship of enterprise. Everybody knows the only way today is to buy your way through, be bigger, be better, be a bully, be a barger, be sure youre safe from the poor, bustle your way through each days bombardment with the muscle of royalty. You've got the power to bring back the monarchy four fat tires at a time. Go anywhere. You're entitled. You have squashers rights. Onward! Accelerate, you brawny bruising winner, you self-saluting junta on wheels, you reclaimer of gold-bricked streets. Democracy is for people stuck in small cars and God has never ruled through traffic laws. Get used to the feeling of having your way. Each broad cut of the steering wheel is your turn at conquest. The power-assisted triumph of the me in heavy traffic. You are rolling proof that voting is stupid, that the whole damn machine is fixed before it leaves the factory, that fairness is a showroom, that togetherness is for bus riders, that TV has the right idea: there is just you in a small room on the safe side of glass, with desire spread out before you like a ballroom without walls, and you will not be denied, youve got the moves and the view, you dont need government, unions, bank regulation, mercy, the soft hands of strangers. Youve got 4-wheel drive and a phone, youve got the friendship of a reinforced chassis, youve got empathy for dictators without knowing it, youve got freedom from read-view mirrors, youve got wide-bodied citizenship, youve gained Custers Revenge: caissons packed with children and soccer balls coasting across the plowed prairie, history remodeled with one great blaring of jingles and horns: Hail Citizen King! Hail the unswerving settler! Hail the rule of logo! Hail Jeep Cherokee!