As 2017 approaches I feel a breath of fresh air approaching! We are not alone, progress can be made, there are others like us, and you are welcome here! What the hell am I talking about? Hear me out; things are getting better for rough-cut car guys. There is a coming age of acceptance for men, and cars. The environmentalists and politically correct, for once, are not winning. Welcome 2017!
First on my front. I finally put the A arms and hubs together and mocked the front end up for the (fake) Lotus 7 project. Suddenly I see a car again. A car with possibilities. I’m about two days of work from seeing the car sitting on wheels. With 3.73 gears it should be quick off the line but not too slow at the top end. “STOP TALKING GEARHEAD GIBBERISH!!” Ok, fair enough. I’m building a car that will probably be a death trap. It will probably be fast. And fun. And did I mention unsafe? Liberals will hate it.
But wait. Let’s talk about liberals. Trump won! Despite every media article reporting it would never happen, despite the protests, despite feeling like I’m alone on a planet of lesbians and men that act like them (I live in Portland Oregon), we won!
And on that note I digress. You are welcome here. If you voted for Trump, I’d like to have a cigar and beer with you, while we sit on the back porch talking horsepower, after eating fried food, while the women stay inside because the want to talk women stuff and don’t like cigars.
Does this sound like a stereotype? How “man” can you be?! No one is like this. You should talk about your emotions, Freudian feelings, and metrosexual leanings. The women should be just as male as you, knocking the beers and cigars back and challenging you to arm wrestle.
Bite me.
You know what Trump winning told me? That there are still real men out there. That I’m not alone in a world of skinny jeans and man-bun oils. That there are others, outside of my group of four good friends that are similar. That men can be men, and women can be women, dismissing any stupid notions that we must be something else, something new, something more liberal, and in touch with our feminine side (or vice-versa).
The majority of car guys I know do not fit the metrosexual description. We like adrenalin. We like power. We don’t care what the Paris fashion week thinks is hip, we enjoy our race track t-shirt. Shoes come in two types, new ones for the day-to-day and old ones for the garage. We don’t care that its now acceptable that we, as men, can get pedicures; why the hell would we want one when in the same time and money we could add that extra four horsepower on our car or motorcycle that would give us those extra four cells of adrenaline someday?
Seen driving through Portland, what is it?!
And that leads me to this. There is news, and there is news. And we haven’t had options. They are all a bunch of Hillary pant suit worshiping, mall coffee drink sipping, limp-wristed spewers of insults against conservatives. And chief among these is the car blog site Jalopnik.
Jalopnik. It was a wonderful idea. A team of bloggers giving me up-to-date car news. I like cars. I like knowing about horsepower. People are having fun and getting adrenalin right now. Tell me how! Tell me how! TELL ME HOW!! Maybe I can do it too. I’m cool with stealing ideas for having fun.
And Jalopnik did give me fun. Sometimes. But they couldn’t help spouting off, every fourth paragraph, that they are hardcore Hillary pant-suit worshiping morons that hate my guts because I’m not a liberal. Owned by Gawker, their news feed typically goes, “Cars… Cars… Cars… I love Hillary’s Newest Pant Suit…Conservatives Suck… Cars... Cars... (Cycle repeats)”.
And that brings me to Drive Tribe. It’s the new blog feed setup by the ex-Top Gear guys. You know. The guys that got fired for punching a producer that didn’t have warm food available after a long day of filming. Princesses. Yes. They are. But lacking politically correct decorum. If I called Clarkson a “princess” after a few drinks we’d probably brawl. The media would condemn us as barbarians.
But you know what?
We’d be friends. That’s what happens after you punch each other… sometimes. You know how many times this played out in my small town upbringing? And we grew up different. We expressed ourselves as men, not in the shopping mall looking for/hoping for an identity. We met each other after school, in the wooded area, to have out our differences. And we grew up stronger. And we relate to other men. And we recognize women as different and bringing something into our life which we didn’t have without them.
And this is us. We are politically incorrect. We still believe in the concept of men. We like building something and driving it hard. We like banging our knuckles. We like breaking things because we pushed them too hard. We are sick of being told we are barbarians. We are sick of being fired because we raise or voice or suggest that there is conflict. We are tired of being told we are a dying breed. We are men.
And so I say, embrace Drive Tribe. Stop going to the Jalopnik website. They are spiteful liberals hiding behind a thinly veiled love of cars. They would never b.s. with you in the back yard through cigar haze, they’d be inside talking the newest skinny jean style. They would condemn the idea that men should work, and women are a better fit for the day-to-day empathy the kids need. Half of them are probably stay-at-home dads, while their wife goes to work and they write car blogs about something they saw on Youtube.
Case-in-point, my M3. It has the flappy paddle transmission, called SMG. The Jalopnik couch sitters say that it’s terrible almost daily. But that’s because one of them had that opinion once (possibly) and liberals simply repeat what they hear over and over until they believe it as a mass. The masses have never driven an SMG transmission. It shifts fine. Don’t take my word for it, Jeremy Clarkson drove the M3 CSL, which has SMG, and was in absolute rapture with it (Season 3). But these Jalopnik band-wagoners, never have driven it, say over and over how terrible SMG is. But they’re liberals; they are truly skilled at calling things deplorable.
So in response, I say “Jalopnik is a bunch of liberals that only repeat what the bandwagon liberals want them to repeat. They are mainstream media, a subset of the worthless Gawker, and they’re lame”.
That’s why I’m turning to Drive Tribe, the newly established blog feed by Clarkson and crew. I want it to succeed. The world needs more politically incorrect people that will tell the truth.
G.K. Chesterton wrote that it is a dangerous thing when only liars tell the truth. I feel like we are at that point. Liberal mainstream media lie left and right, but because their counterparts are all liars themselves, they embrace each other’s lies and press forward perpetuating the lies until almost everyone believes them as true.
We, the Gearhead crew, those that still learn from experience and act like men of ages past (putting our lives at risk, experiencing adrenaline, doing things that testosterone likely plays into, etc.), are the liars of now. We actually live life outside the plastic safety bubble, and through our experiences we are some of the few that can cry “b.s.” because we know the media to be lying from our experiences and lessons learned.
But relax. Trump won the election. You are not as rare as you think. There are other people out there that realize: 1. We need an intelligent immigration strategy, 2 Our Jobs are all going overseas, 3. Isreal is a better friend than Palestine, 4. Law enforcement protect us from thugs, and should be respected 5. We should be allowed concealed weapons to protect ourselves from thugs, 6. We need to support our troops, etc., etc., etc.
You know, those strong thoughts that are tough to develop and only men say. The sort of things your mother would never say to you, but your father would when he told you to “Stop being a jackass, and pull your head out”.
My Christmas present T-Shirt
And that’s why I feel like there is a breath of fresh air. My car is coming along. There are other conservatives. There is an alternative to Jalopnik in the car world. And we can be men. Men. Cancel the pedicure. Go work on your car. This summer, feel that adrenaline pulse through your veins while you push your machine dangerously hard. And then, while you sit around the back yard b.s.ing with your friends about it, realize you are not alone in the world. We are with you. I am with you. I’d have a beer and cigar with you and enjoy it. Jalopnik would call you a hater and spray paint “love” on the side of my truck and break out the windows while they march through Portland. Forget Jalopnik. Embrace Drive Tribe, till something better comes along. Because I have a sneaking suspicion Clarkson and crew are only a little less liberal, being British, but hey, at least we finally have a car blog option that didn’t rise from the stench of Gawker.
