"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

From:                the pollack michaelstruckel@yahoo.com
reply-to:           the pollack a4nik8r@sbcglobal.net
To:                     me
Date:                 Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 1:54 PM
subject:            RE: "American" angst

angst 1 (ängkst)
n.
A feeling of anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression.

Down boy, down! Try to not get your panties in a bunch, huh?

I suppose on the surface, your ravings might appeal to various types of pseudo-sophisticates such as yourself but in the cold light of day, it's just more ranting by a mislead soul for an unsupportable conclusion. The idea that economic protest will sway a manufacturer with the highest market share to change a best selling product because someone out there who buys a less well selling product who feels that the only criteria one need employ when making a motorcycle purchase is performance, then have the nerve to claim it's one's patriotic duty to buy only from foreign manufacturers to send a message?
Ludicrous.
Don't forget that patriotism is a responsibility a citizen owes to one's fellow citizens and not to a foreign country. Keeping fellow Americans (that's us) working should be our overriding concern as economic conditions worsen. It's Japan's (not your) duty to do the same for it's citizens. Working American citizens (not Japanese) are the people who pay the taxes that support upkeep of our infrastructure - like roads - where you ride your bike.
Using your arguments, I guess that families should forgo the purchase of minivans and Cadillacs in favor of Ferraris and Corvettes (sorry, the models of Japanese high performance autos escape me) so we can all achieve performance. If you and your fellow elitists feel that the only means of getting the Japanese version of the motorcycle adopted as the model for the world, keep buying from the land of Godzeera. Then eventually, when Riceland has all the marbles, they can buy Hawrey David-san and build only rice rockets. Of course, this will only elevate the price of the remaining used Harley's so old, fat accountants and their plump spouses can climb aboard their last American motorcycle and hopefully leak oil all over the next corner you drag your pegs on.

 

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To which I replied

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It amuses me when people try to be clever using their email signature.  Did you pick up on Michael's online email handle?  a4nik8r@sbcglobal.net ?  It breaks down into "a fornicator"  (which he spells phonetically and uses numbers substituted for letters) which can, of course, be shortened to simply "fucker."  Michael doesn't tell us what he fornicates with (though the term "bovine" does come to mind) and I'm not sure that I would really want to know even if he was willing to talk about the subject.  Why anyone with a fifth grade education would ever want to go around the Internet signing their name like that, I don't know but Michael obviously thinks it is super way cool to do so (and it may very well be super way cool to do so, that is, to other thirteen year olds who just got on AOL for the first time and are trying to act like seventeen year olds in the chat rooms).  So, if Michael Struckel wants to be known online as "a fornicator" then so be it. 

For the purposes of this email, I'll just politely refer to him as "Mr. Fornicator."

Let's get this party rolling!

angst 1 (ängkst)
n.
A feeling of anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression.

Down boy, down! Try to not get your panties in a bunch, huh?

I suppose that it makes Harley owners feel a lot smarter than they actually are when they copy and paste the definition of "angst" from dictionary.com or some other online source.  It never ceases to amuse me when someone includes the verbatim dictionary definition of "angst" then can't seem to realize that it applies perfectly to this website.  It's almost like they're trying to tell me ... "See, here's what "angst" means and you have it wrong" when actually I have used the term in the exact correct manner.  The amusing part comes when a Harley owner tries to chastise my use of the term "angst" and ends up getting it wrong their self.

“I suppose on the surface, your ravings might appeal to various types of pseudo-sophisticates such as yourself but in the cold light of day, it's just more ranting by a mislead soul for an unsupportable conclusion.”

Pseudo-sophisticate is a big word for someone like you to throw around, Mr. Fornicator.  This will be the second time in your email that you have deployed a word in both the incorrect manner and in such a way that it is evident you don't really know the meaning of the word.

No one ever said that being an American was easy but so many people like you seem to want to take the easy way out, the lazy way out.  You believe what you are told without asking. You want to be an American as long as you don’t have to break a sweat in doing so, as long as you don't step on any toes, as long as you move with the herd, and as long as nobody hurts your feelings ... Sometimes, being an American requires that you do things that, to the uninformed, to the blatantly stupid and to the wholly ignorant, might seem to be rather un-American in nature.

Standing up for what you believe in, even if it seems wrong to the masses and goes against the opinion of current reigning pop culture, is even harder but sometimes it is necessary. As a proud American, I do not believe in rewarding failure and punishing success. I do not believe in worshipping mediocrity and I do not believe that freedom and liberty are commodities which can be packaged for sale let alone bought or sold in a commercial venue.

The “unsupportable conclusion” that you are speaking of is that Harley Davidson is a failure and a repeat failure at that; it always has been and always will be. History and facts prove this (the same history and facts that I quote on my website and in my dissertations but which people like you ignore not because they are incorrect but because they are inconvenient). Much to your chagrin, I hardly think that my views, supported by historical fact, hard numbers with easily provable example after easily provable example, can be considered to be an “unsupportable conclusion” when the conclusion that I do reach is easily and richly supported by said facts, figures and historical precedent.

Perhaps if you knew as much about the company that you support as I know about the company that I ridicule, you would never have put finger to keyboard and sent me an email that you yourself couldn’t support.
 

“The idea that economic protest will sway a manufacturer with the highest market share to change a best selling product because someone out there who buys a less well selling product who feels that the only criteria one need employ when making a motorcycle purchase is performance, then have the nerve to claim it's one's patriotic duty to buy only from foreign manufacturers to send a message? Ludicrous.”
 

Wow.  What a long winded piece of rambling economic ignorance that was!  Your words may have just set a new precedent in ideological idiocy, Mr. Fornicator.

Ludicrous?

Harley Davidson is third place in its own country of origin in total sales.  In the world scope of motorcycle sales, Harley Davidson is dead last. Honda, not Harley Davidson, is the leader in motorcycle sales both in America as well as in the world. In 2006, Harley Davidson built and sold a little over three hundred thousand motorcycles. In that same year, Honda built and sold over ten million motorcycles. For every motorcycle that Harley managed to slap together, Honda produced and sold twenty-nine motorcycles to match the single motorcycle that Milwaukee produced. That’s 29:1 ratio in Honda’s favor so I can safely say that when you claim that HD has the highest market share, you are both uninformed as well as ignorant of the basic facts of the argument.  I understand the fantasy and myth that is Harley Davidson but I'm afraid that the kind of bullshit that you're basing your argument on will only work on dimwitted Harley owners ... not college educated pundits who have researched their facts long before they put finger to keyboard.

Now, I’m not sure where you have retrieved your “facts” from but my facts come from the official year end business report presented by both HD and Honda and downloaded and reviewed directly from their respective websites.

Ludicrous?

Ludicrous is presenting bogus information as fact when there's no way that you can prove the statements that you've made.
 

“Don't forget that patriotism is a responsibility a citizen owes to one's fellow citizens and not to a foreign country.”

But patriotism is not a responsibility that requires me to buy junk just because that junk is built in America and the company that builds that junk has wrapped its junk in the American flag as a way to insure its own survival.

Is it our patriotic duty to reward failure and punish success?

Is it our patriotic duty to be stupid, to think and act like sheep?

Is it our patriotic duty to subscribe to make-believe rather than let our decisions be based on cold, hard facts.

I don’t think so.

Harley Davidson isn’t an American legend, it is an American embarrassment and if it is a legend in anything then it is a legend in stupidity.  Harley Davidson represents every single thing that is wrong with America and it represents nothing that is right about America (and Harley owners, by default, are the same way).  Harley Davidson didn’t last over a hundred years by making a product that was superior to every other similar product, no, HD survived for over a hundred years by copying other manufacturers around the world, by not accepting personal responsibility for their own actions, by blaming others, by prostituting its logo on everything under the sun, by turning mediocrity into cool, by begging for a handout from Uncle Sam twice and by being bought out twice.  Oh, we can't forget the recent $300 million dollar loan from Warren Buffet ... matched with another $300 million to make over half a billion dollars in money that the Motor Company needed just to stay in business.  Why did they need this money?  Well, you see, they had made a quarter (or more) of their loans were what is called "sub-prime" in that a quarter of their loans were made to individuals that Harley Davidson knew in advance were the type of customer that could never repay the loan or afford the bike in the first place.  Harley Davidson's greed, once again, along with the

Given the true, real history of the Motor Company, Harley Davidson is hardly anything to be proud of, I assure you.  In all of my research into the history of the Motor Company, I have yet to find one fact, one instance that makes me proud that Harley Davidson is made in America.  In fact, I'm pretty embarrassed that HD is made in America ... given that HD's technology base and the education base of its customer base would lend belief to the assumption that Harley Davidson was made in some place like Chad.

“Keeping fellow Americans (that's us) working should be our overriding concern as economic conditions worsen. It's Japan's (not your) duty to do the same for it's citizens. Working American citizens (not Japanese) are the people who pay the taxes that support upkeep of our infrastructure - like roads - where you ride your bike.”

I support Honda because Honda has been far better for this country than HD ever has or ever will. Honda of America employs more hard working Americans, pays more federal and state taxes, pays more employee wages and benefits and brings more money to the local communities than HD ever will.

It’s just one more example of why Harley Davidson is the biggest mistake America ever gave a second chance to.
 

“Using your arguments, I guess that families should forgo the purchase of minivans and Cadillacs in favor of Ferraris and Corvettes (sorry, the models of Japanese high performance autos escape me) so we can all achieve performance.”

No, that is a ridiculous and uneducated guess that you made.  Allow me to correct you, Mr. Fornicator.

Giving my arguments, if an American family were looking to purchase a minivan then they naturally wouldn't be looking to buy a Corvette or a Ferrari (two cars that would not meet the same criteria of family needs as a minivan would provide).  Logically, if someone were looking to purchase a minivan (something with lots of space for a family) then they would not be looking at something that only had two seats, competition inspired suspension, storage for maybe two soft pieces of luggage and an engine that generated more than 400 horsepower with ease (i.e. something that a young couple or a family without children might be looking at).  Once again, like the other ignorant members of the flock you call home, you equate "performance" with going fast.  I attribute your lack of understanding of the word "performance" to the simple fact that the term "performance" has been absent from anything built by Harley Davidson for about sixty plus years now.

If an American family were looking to purchase a minivan, then they would look at both domestic produced as well as foreign built minivan offerings and in doing so, they would purchase the minivan that gave them the best value for their hard earned dollar.  They should not buy a minivan simply because it is built in America.  Do you want to know why companies like GM and MOPAR and Harley Davidson are all in financial difficulty right now?  Do you want to know why GM and MOPAR had to be bailed out by the US government and why Harley Davidson recently had to beg for a $600 million financial infusion just to stay alive?  Do you want to know what the primary difference between American vehicle manufacturers and Japanese vehicle manufacturers are?

That's simple.

American vehicle manufacturers have, for decades, believed that you and I, the consumer, answer solely to them.  The Japanese manufacturers have, in turn, acted like they answer to the consumer.  American vehicle manufacturers produce mediocrity and expect us to buy their junk because, after all, they are American vehicle manufacturers and we are Americans and people like you expect, nay, demand that we reward American failure by purchasing lackluster American products.  That is rewarding bad behavior and one of the reasons why America is in the position that it is in today is because we have been taught, we have been bludgeoned time and time again about the head and shoulders, with the ridiculous notion that rewarding failure will somehow create success.  That's tantamount to saying that rape will eventually lead to a stable marriage somewhere down the road.  If you reward failure and you punish success, you do not cultivate success ... rather, you cultivate failure and the more you cultivate it, the deeper and taller it gets until it reaches critical mass and implodes with disastrous results ... on the economy, on the manufacturer, and on the consumer.  Unless you have had your head stuck up your ass the last six months, you will have noticed the curren results of what happens when America rewards failure, of what happens when America rewards failure not just today but for years and decades at a stretch.

Don't punish success, punish failure.  I am opposed to the government bailing out failed American automakers.  It is not my fault that GM and MOPAR failed but I'm having to pick up the tab for their failure and I think that is wrong.  If I didn't think their products were worth buying, then I hardly think that the companies are worth saving because if we save them, what will they do?  They'll keep on building mediocre, substandard products, they'll keep the UAW wealthy, and when, in a decade or two we arrive right back at this very same type of situation, rather than own up to the fact that the manufacturers have failed again, they will not only look to be bailed out by the American populace but they'll expect it as well.  Why?  Because we will have rewarded failure and punished success.  We will have told the American manufacturers that it is okay to fail because we won't let them fail ... we will bail them out.

Personally, I think that GM and MOPAR and Harley Davidson should be allowed to fail.  AMC failed a long time ago.  So did Packard, Studebaker, and others.  Failure is a natural response to life, just like death.  If a corporation fails then it should be allowed to fail rather than congratulated and told it is okay to fail.  Failure should be chastised.  Failure should be punished.  Failure should not be seen as golden parachute but rather as a rusty anvil.  I think that UAW workers should be allowed to go hungry if they get so greedy that they can strong arm the American manufacturers into agreeing to their ridiculous salary ranges which cause the act of assembling an American made vehicle to be twice as expensive as it costs to build a Japanese car or truck.  If it costs twice as much, in labor costs, to build an American car or truck than it does to build a Japanese car or truck, and the Japanese car or truck is built to much higher standards, you tell me where the problem lies. 

I believe that if GM or MOPAR or Harley Davidson cannot save their own selves, if they cannot be competitive with the rest of the world, if they cannot pull their selves out of the very deep holes that they have dug for their own selves, if they cannot take personal responsibility for their own actions then they should be allowed to fail.  It is not my duty, as an American citizen, to reward GM, MOPAR and Harley Davidson's inability to compete with foreign manufacturers.  It is not my responsibility, as an American citizen, to use my tax dollars to reward their failure or to bail them out for making piss poor decisions. It is not my duty, as an American citizen, to reward America's failure and punish Japan's success, all at the expense of my own hard earned money.  What you are referring to, Mr. Fornicator, is not "patriotism" rather it is called a "shake-down" though what the government and the American manufacturers have done lately I would more properly term as a "mugging" of the American populace.

It is not my fault that American car companies are failing.  They wouldn't be failing if they had built a better product, if their labor costs had been competitive with the rest of the world, and if they had listened to me, the American citizen, on what I wanted to buy rather than trying to tell me what they wanted me to buy then chastising me for buying a better product from Japan.

The American Dream has had quite a few casualties lately ... Plymouth and Oldsmobile followed recently by Pontiac, Hummer and Saturn and now Buell. 

I'll tell you right now that I own four cars and one motorcycle.  Only one of those is an import.  In order from oldest to newest, I own a black and gold 1986 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am (WS6, Recaro, LB9 5.0 liter TPI V8, T-tops), a red 1991 Chevrolet Z07 Corvette coupe (one of just 733 made), silver 1999 Lincoln Town Car (at 40 years old I need some cush for my tush), silver 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis, and a black and silver 2004 Honda CBR600RR so you see that a full 80% of my stable is American made products and that 80% is broken down into 50% GM and 50% Ford.   I don't believe in MOPAR and the few products that I have had the displeasure of being around have been junk.  GM's choice to kill Pontiac, my favorite division of GM, has had two resounding effects on me.  The first is that when GM killed Pontiac, the value of my 1986 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am basically doubled overnight and will only continue to go up in value the longer I own it.  The second effect is that in GM's bid to desperately save itself by cutting  off its hands and feet, it killed the one division that it had which used to stand for performance and youthful exuberance above any other division at GM.  So long Trans Am, so long GTO, so long Grand Prix ...  Gone.  Dust.  GM, in its bid to save itself, may have done just that but in doing so, GM has alienated me from ever desiring to own another one of their lackluster products. 

Ever.

Like many American companies in recent history, they traded short term relief for long term misery.

For what it is worth, back in 1999, I bought my wife a brand new 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP (the supercharged sport model).  A few months later, I bought a 1998 Chevy Blazer LT four wheel drive as a program car with low miles.  I had two brand new GM vehicles in my garage, both under warranty and both supposedly the best that GM could build at that time.  What a joke.  Within the next three years, both of these GM vehicles, under regular use and regular maintenance, basically disintegrated bit by bit.  When I replaced multiple ABS sensors in the GTP, when I replaced two driver's side power windows, a passenger side power window, and a rear driver's side power window, when the cruise control stopped working and the CD player died but the radio still worked ... I looked at my 14 year old Mazda RX-7 GSL where all of the original equipment was still working.  The last straw came when my GTP ignition key stuck in the ignition itself and would not turn effectively stranding me ... I had had enough of American (and GM especially) "quality."  I had a cousin who worked for GM and he told me to give GM another ten years, that they were getting closer to the imports but I told him it wasn't my job to beta test GM's products, especially at my expense.  I traded the equally failing Chevy Blazer in on the 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis and I sold the 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP (after getting it all repaired) back to an employee of the dealership that I originally bought it from.  I paid about $23,000 for the GTP.  Six years later, I was lucky to sell it for a tenth of that and I was happy to offload it for that price.  No, not happy, ecstatic!  I should have kissed the man I sold it to because in buying that Pontiac Grand Prix GTP, he did me a tremendous favor and set himself up for years of misery.  At that point in time, I firmly switched from GM to Ford and I've yet to have any major problems with my 1999 Lincoln Town Car (same year as the GTP) or my 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis.

I now am a firm believer in Ford / Lincoln / Mercury. 

GM's stupidity did what Ford's marketing could never do; GM's stupidity made me a Ford man for the rest of my life and until Ford majorly fucks up, I will continue to support Ford as the last, smart-thinking, smartly run, non-government handout accepting American car manufacturer.  My choices in the future will be between Ford and the import offerings ... I will not support MOPAR or GM for what they did to Plymouth, Oldsmobile and Pontiac, for what they allowed these once great, historic car companies to become.  My only thanks to GM is that when it came time to kill Pontiac that they actually did it rather than let the once proud division live on in name only, producing mediocrity like the ASS-Tek, the import Holden that was rebadged as a faux-GTO and any other nonsense that Pontiac might have been forced to produce.  My love for Pontiac was over when the Firebird (and Camaro) was killed in 2002 and the GTO returned as a rebadged import and shoved off on the American public as a "real" GTO.

For me, Pontiac died in 2002 ... it's just taken seven long years for the body to stop twitching.

“If you and your fellow elitists feel that the only means of getting the Japanese version of the motorcycle adopted as the model for the world, keep buying from the land of Godzeera. Then eventually, when Riceland has all the marbles, they can buy Hawrey David-san and build only rice rockets.”

Mr. Fornicator, the Japanese version of the motorcycle is the model of the world, as identified by the fact that Japan produces far more motorcycles than any other country in the world.  Tiny little Japan produces millions of motorcycles each year, I think that if America and the rest of the world all got together, they might be able to scrounge up a million, maybe two million motorcycles (and most of that would have to come from countries other than Japan).  I'm sorry if you aren't smart enough to understand the basic facts of the motorcycle market (or you prefer to remain ignorant of them since that is what allows you to live in the fantasy world you dwell in currently).  I feel that the only way to get something, anything, adopted as a "model for the world" is to build the best example that there is of that something and currently it is Japan, not America, that builds the best motorcycles, cars, and trucks in the world.  If there is angst involved in that, it is my ire, my regret, my anger that America, as great of a country as we are, cannot be the number one manufacturer of motorcycles, cars and trucks in the world.  But we can't because we don't build vehicles that are taken as the model, as the measure of what is expected and that is because for the most part, our manufacturers have been stupid and they have been rewarded time after time for being stupid which is why they never change.

If Japan builds a better car or truck than America, then that is not Japan's fault and Japan should not be punished.  American manufacturers aren't in financial trouble because they built the best cars and trucks in the world and everyone was too stupid to buy them ... no, American manufacturers are in trouble because they built the worst cars and trucks in the world and everyone was too smart to buy them.  Since when did Americans think it was good or right or just to punish success?  When that success wasn't our own?  When we couldn't equal or better that success?

Being patriotic in this day and age obviously requires two things; that you have no brain and that you stick your head in the sand (or up your own ass, whichever is closer).

Oh, and the word that you are looking for is "Gojira" which was the original name for Godzilla but Americans couldn't pronounce that so the name was changed to "Godzilla" when the movie appeared in American theaters.  I see that you refer to Japan as "Riceland" thus identifying your narrow minded view.  You say that eventually, Japan can buy "Hawrey David-san" (another attempt by you to be funny at the expense of a race of people who are different than you and, obviously, not only more intelligent but also more educated) but once again you show a deep lack of any fundamental knowledge of how markets or corporations work.  You assume that the Japanese would inherently support or reward failure ... you erroneously believe that Japan would somehow embrace American ways of doing business (when it is America and Harley Davidson in particular that have adopted Japanese ways of doing business) when those very same American ways of doing business have done nothing but lead to corporations going out of business, bankrupt and worse.   My question is why exactly would Honda ever want to buy Harley Davidson?

Does Harley Davidson have a technology or engineering base that Honda is envious of?

No.

Does Harley Davidson build vehicles that Honda cannot? 

No.

Does Harley Davidson have a championship, world class racing team with a long string of victories behind them?

No.

The truth is, Honda would never buy HD because HD is a failure and Honda would never buy a failing company let alone one that was so replete with failure that failure has become the mission statement of Milwaukee. Honda represents success.  Honda is number one in the world and you don't get to be number one in the world by making mistakes (ask Harley Davidson about this some time).  Honda didn’t become the number one motorcycle manufacturer in the world because it made mistakes but Harley Davidson became the last motorcycle manufacturer in the world because it did make mistakes … mistake after mistake after mistake for which it was rewarded and its behavior reinforced and it was congratulated.  Harley Davidson is in the financial difficulty that it is in today because every time it failed it was rewarded and in doing so, it was never punished thus it never learned from its hardship and it kept on doing stuff that would fail because every time that it would fail, it would be rescued.  Harley is like a spoiled brat who always gets its way.  I'm a parent and other parents who are reading this will know that Harley Davidson acts like a child that hasn't gotten its way.  When you chastise the child and try to teach the child the error of its ways, it merely walks off grumbling while saying stuff like "you don't love me" and "I don't care."  That is how Harley Davidson acts when it is scolded or it gets in trouble.  On the exterior, it puts up this gruff front that makes you think that it is tough but on the interior, it is crying and begging for mercy and running around scared to death looking for someone to hold its hand and tell it that it will be all right.

Recently, Harley Davidson's "Just Screw It" ad campaign made me want to puke.  I decided to have a humorous go at putting some truth back into the spin.

Here is Harley's original pompous "screw it" ad.

Kind of pompous, don't you think, especially since they dug their own hole and had to get $600 million to bail them out.  I love the guy riding the Harley while wearing a German war helmet and the red, white and blue motif.  What a load of crap HD is trying to push off on people like Mr. Fornicator and the problem is that he'll actually believe this crap without thinking twice because it's easier to buy an American than it is to actually be an American.

Well, after I finished throwing up what little patriotism I had left, I decided that I could make the HD "Screw it" ad much better.

This stuff really makes me sick.  When I see HD using the American flag in order to beg for their life, or to associate their mediocre products with all the greatness that is America, I get the same feeling of disgust and anger that I would if I saw someone pissing on the American flag or desecrating it in some way.  That's the only polite thing to say about Harley Davidson's marketing strategy ... they turn a profit by desecrating the American flag and people like Mr. Fornicator are happy and proud that they do.

“Of course, this will only elevate the price of the remaining used Harley's so old, fat accountants and their plump spouses can climb aboard their last American motorcycle and hopefully leak oil all over the next corner you drag your pegs on.”

When I say that people like you are not only ignorant but that you are utterly predictable, I mean it. Thank God, at least the last time I checked, that people like you were still in the minority (though you do appear to be breeding faster than the smart people). If being a real American is being like you, i.e. vindictive, uninformed, uneducated, ignorant, gullible, stupid and easily manipulated with slogans found in a company’s sales brochure then maybe it is time that America died as well because there will be no more real Americans left in this once great country. If being an American depends on what you buy then anyone in the world can be an American … if they have the money.

You and those like you are pseudo-patriots. You are patriotic dullards who think with your hearts and not your mind, if you can really be said to think at all. Never before in my life have I been witness to such a large group of clueless idiots thinking that they are either more American or somehow a better American than I am simply because of what they buy or own.
You are the reason why America is in the situation that it is in right now. Maybe if there were more people like me then America wouldn’t be in the sad state of affairs that she is in right now.



 

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