Vanity pickup trucks: I fucking hate these things, and so you do. The second I see a Dodge Ram SuperUltraMegaSoldierDuty on the highway, I already know that it'll have a Blue Lives Matter decal splashed across its rear windshield, a pristine flatbed untouched by manual labor equipment, and a driver who has no fucking idea how to park. These are vehicles made by assholes, for assholes.
Knowing all of that, it was destiny that Dodge, a brand owned by Dutch auto conglomerate Stellantis, would hire one of America's leading assholes to sell its most asshole-ish market offering to America's sizable asshole population. The asshole in question is UFC boss Dana White, all four feet, six inches of him. The product in question is the Dodge Ram pickup truck, which retails for as much as $100,000 and resells for probably a third of that. The TV spot they produced together is, without question, one of the worst things I've ever seen. If you've been watching any of this year's World Cup on Fox, you've already seen this ad far too many times. Here’s the director's cut, if you feel like going on a killing spree:
This is less a promotion for a vanity pickup truck than it is for the entire pickup truck lifestyle. This ad tells you nothing about the Ram's towing capacity, its crash test safety rating, or even its sound system. You don't need to know anything about the quality of the Ram truck itself, Dodge assumes. You only need to be made aware of how it'll burnish your already overinflated self-image. Thus, for the suburban alcoholic who fancies himself the toughest man in the world, Dodge has compiled an anti-sizzle reel of all the things that every domestic Patton loves about 'MERICA: Paul Revere, monster trucks, guitars, space shuttles, the Wright brothers, company executives loaded up on HGH, and B-roll of overpriced pickup trucks doing donuts in empty spaces. You know, the stuff that President Edema wants in the Smithsonian instead of what’s in there now.
Intercut with this glorified stock footage are shots of White driving his manly Ram around this great land of ours—presumably while sitting on top of a phone book—and walking menacingly toward the camera, while delivering what can only be described as a Prager U graduation speech:
This country didn't tiptoe onto the world stage. Hell no!
It sure didn't, Dana. It founded one form of government before scrapping it for a different one, displaced and murdered its native citizens, built an economy on slave labor, got into a bunch of awkward wars (one of which involved multiple failed invasions of Canada) before going to war with itself, and then finally got some war dubs on the board against Germany before declaring itself god's gift to human history. YOU TALK ABOUT MAKING A GRAND ENTRANCE!
We kicked down the door with all the subtlety of a cannon blast.
Or all the subtlety of Trump threatening Iran while squeezing out a 45-minute dump. Take your pick.
We were born loud, born with that unmistakable American sound: part war cry, part victory lap, part "watch this."
All mixed metaphors.
Liberty is loud, baby. Always has been, always will be.
But what does "loud" really mean, Dana? Does it mean more than just being an sufferable prick who'll never go away?
Loud isn't just about volume. It's dreams that won't stay bottled up, or be muzzled by good manners.
That's right. Loud is about dreaming of a white ethnostate, and not letting all of the woke people tell you that's probably a shitty idea.
It's the roar of American thunder ...
Not like French thunder, which is all Honh honh honh I am ze big rain and I will steal your girlfriend!
... engines that cut through the static ...
Engine noise IS static.
... and speak directly to that loud, proud, impossible American soul.
And that soul says I WANT MORE FRENCH FRIES ON THIS SALAD OR I'M CALLIN' THE COPS.
Something to say? Say it.
I wish you had never been born, and I bet your parents feel likewise.
Something to prove? Prove it.
Here's proof of you smacking your wife.
Something to ride? Ride it straight into the history books, because quiet won't get you anywhere. In this country, in loud we trust.
This whole thing offends me both as an American and a loud person. You can be an extrovert in this world without being a complete shitbag. You can barge onto the stage if you like, so long as you have something to actually say besides, "The gays won't let me make fun of 'em anymore, Brandine!" You can talk openly about your dreams, and they don't have to be dreams about chaining your wife to the bed if she gives you too much sass. And you can have a boisterous American soul that also thinks that things like science, education, and conservation are groovy ideas.
That, of course, is not the sort of loudness that White and Dodge are selling here. No, they're selling MAGA loudness: that empty, selfish, intellectually vacant clamor that exists strictly for its own sake, and has colonized our lives for a decade and counting now. I am so sick of these people that I wish for death to come and claim me so that I might finally have a moment's peace.
Alas, there's no sign that Dana White and his ilk are going to shut the fuck up anytime soon. Since moving to Paramount Plus and staging unwatchable fights right on the White House lawn, White's UFC has become totally unconcerned with mainstream viability or minting star athletes. Instead, it now prefers to sell itself as a MAGA lifestyle product and tacit neo-Nazi signifier. In tapping White as its spokesman, Dodge has opted to do likewise with its line of pickup trucks. So here's my dream, one that I won't allow to be muzzled by good manners: I hope all of these people, including White, die a quiet, lonely death.
