Noisy cars resonate with ongoing blue-collar discontent, and possibly
with emissions from a major presidential candidate
There’s been talk about how aspects of the 1970s are back. I’ve
said this myself (such as in noticing certain social tones), but talk on it has
been in the media in more varied and eloquent ways.
One way is the talk about “narcissism” again (cf., for one
scholar’s take, Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism [1979]); but
this psychological category I always thought—whether it was 35 years ago or now—was
a rather shallow diagnosis, at least when it came to understanding individuals.
Common use of it, especially from a judgmental perspective, seems to accord to
narcissism, which to me often seems to be more descriptive or about “traits,”
more than its pronouncers seem to mean—that it reflects something especially
deep or constitutional about a person.
Anyway, one thing that seems a “return of the ’70s” to me in
the U.S., and I’ve anticipated talking about this in a past blog entry, is
noisy exhaust pipes on certain cars and privately owned pickup trucks.
Actually, the way this often features today is as a sort of “hot rod” aspect,
or a certain status symbol among young, especially males. Back in the 1960s and
’70s—perhaps in the ’50s, too—a hot rod, a “souped-up” version of what had been
an old/traditional-model car (like a mid-’50s Chevy, or a 1972 Buick Skylark)
would not only have, say, a jacked-up back (and big rear tires), and “rally
stripes,” but also exhaust pipes (and/or absence of a normal muffler) that were
designed to make a loud noise.
Also, in the 1970s, when more average passenger cars were
less well-made with rustproofing and such, people could go around after a while
with rusted mufflers and exhaust pipes, and have noisy cars without really
meaning to sound “like a hot rod.” That was more a feature of being a hapless
middle-class sort who hadn’t yet gotten the car to the shop to get a
replacement exhaust system.
I think that in recent decades, tightened car-inspection
requirements and systems virtually eliminated noisy exhaust systems. And independently,
cars had become made with better rust-proofing, I guess. I’m talking based on
my experience with car-loaded New Jersey.
Well, as many of us know, noisy exhaust systems are back (as
a feature of “underground culture”). In a big way. (How do these vehicles pass
inspection? [Probably facilitating this development, inspection has become
legally determined to be less frequent in recent years.])
Not only do diesel pick-ups often have big exhaust pipes and
apparent “resonators” that make a loud sound—I’ve seen some exhaust pipes
shaped toward their ends like a funnel, built for maximum noise, I guess—but little
cars (a converted, old VW Rabbit or a Japanese car, let’s say), typical of
late-teen and early-twenties male drivers, maybe with low suspension, have
noisy “resonators” or whatever allows them to have noisy exhaust systems. They
also, per impulse, drive the cars, with acceleration, to maximize the noise.
So-called “coal-rolling” is a different (and more socially
disruptive) matter, where diesel vehicles seem to have, at the flick of a
switch temporarily, the ability to alter the air/fuel flow (or something like
that) in order to send out heightened belches of black clouds of exhaust. This
has been done, mischievously, to obscure the view of drivers behind them. A state-law
bill in New Jersey was pursued to make this illegal, and I think it was.
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Well anyway, my main point here is that, along with other
features of the blue-collar types that seem to be fueling the support of Donald
Trump, it would seem—if anyone killed the time to do the calculations—that owning
a car or pickup with a noisy exhaust system correlates positively with the
driver’s supporting Donald Trump.
And on a “macro” level, this makes sense (aside from what
you might say about the raucous doings at this week’s Republican National
Convention). Donald Trump himself, with haystack hair and duck lips, with index
finger uplifted and curved as he makes yet another point, seems like, with the
effusion of noise that comes out of his pie-hole, a vehicle with a noisy
exhaust pipe uttering a kind of air (and noise) pollution.
As a side matter, with the young guys around where I live
and their noisy exhaust pipes, I’m reminded, a bit, of hearing one time that,
supposedly, if (as a Mischief Night thing) you shoved a potato into the exhaust
pipe of a car, when its driver tried to start it, he or she would find the car
would stall. Which, on a physics level, may make some sense.
So maybe the young guys with their noise-pollution cars
might be served by a potato shoved into their exhaust pipes overnight.
