Category Archives: Globalization

The Manchurian Candidate as the next Steve Jobs

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The 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate was a great movie for the days when communism aimed to dominate the world.  The movie narrates the Chinese government’s attempt to take over the United States by subverting the mind of a solider who is the son of a would-be President of the country.  Chinese intelligence agents turn him into a political assassin bent on eradicating the opposition.  The film’s most iconic image is the crosshairs of his rifle.

The remake of the movie in 2004 was a flop.  That is about the only thing regarding anything Chinese that has flopped lately.  Fifty years after the original movie, the Chinese are closer than Mao ever imagined to global predominance.  And who would have thought back then that the United States would create its own Manchurian candidate by allowing its middle class to be hollowed out and by failing to develop a HispanicLatino population that daily is becoming a greater part of the nation’s population.

Experts disagree on how quickly China is going to develop into a superpower and “overtake” the United States.  If the question boils down to a debate about the wealth of the “average Chinese household” and the “average American household,” the United States wins.  The standard of living for individuals in the United States is higher – by many times over – than for individuals in China.  That is important until one considers that the Chinese number 1.3 billion and the United States 315 million.  A ratio of more than 4 to 1.

The numbers tell a more subversive story than any movie ever could: If only a third of China’s population achieves middle class status before its demographic growth levels off, that amounts to almost 400 million people – by far more than the current population of the United States, whose middle class currently is shrinking and whose HispanicLatino population makes the story more interesting more quickly.

Since 1970, the actual income of the average HispanicLatino household has decreased – this for a group whose proportion of the national population is increasing while the size of the rest of the white population is decreasing.  For a country the size of the United States to remain relevant, those lines should be trending upward, but two of the three are not.

Aside from the demographic drama being played out, the reason why China will overtake the United States in due course is that it will have more people doing more things and probably more people doing more things better.  The future of the world will also be decided by those with harder – not necessarily better – societal values, so that any population that does not have hard work, focus and attention as core values will suffer.

It leaves an impression on the mind, indeed, to walk by a college library – almost any library – late on Saturday nights and early on Sunday mornings.  Only Asian students from foreign lands are working and studying – with literally no one else around.  In the new world of absolutely maniacal global competition, the most absolutely maniacal workers will win.

Thinking that somewhere in a room off campus a Steve Jobs is inventing the next economic revolution is sadly simplistic and shortsighted.  We need scores of Steve Jobs – and those willing to sacrifice as he did throughout his life but certainly early in his career.

All of us – HispanicLatinos especially – are in the crosshairs of history, and we probably won’t get a shot at a remake.

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Pssst — the Passat

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It happened suddenly this year.  Almost as instantly as changing a television channel.  I do not know the actual count, but the number of commercials that now include more than a HispanicLatino “feel” has exploded.  This is more than about brown-hued actors, words in Spanish or surges of guitar music.  It signals the start of the era that goes beyond the HispanicLatino at last being imprinted on the national consciousness – which in and of itself is nothing to sneeze at.  The slew of ads is about what happens next politically and socially and ultimately, when language is at the core of a globalized world.

The larger story wittily and wittingly is contained in an ad promoting the environmentally-friendly Volkswagen Passat TDI. The commercial is entitled Vamonos, setting the departure point of the country’s new journey into the future.

The subject of the commercial is symbolically a road trip that begins with two young men in a car that soon crosses a bridge into time and into the kinds of terrains and vistas that can found anywhere in the country – just like the HispanicLatino population.

“Road trip, buddy, let’s put some music on,” says the uninformed passenger to the driver.  The passenger like so many Americans wants to feed his fixation on entertainment in the midst of change on a global scale.  He is interrupted from the dashboard of the car – representing the engine of HispanicLatino demographic growth – by a female voice, itself symbolic.  At the root of all culture is the mother tongue: “Welcome to learning Spanish in the car.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” says the passenger, who like many Americans today is not pleased by what he hears and sees around him.

“Yeah, this is good,” says the more-knowing driver – the like of which cannot be found in Arizona or Alabama.

The first word in Spanish learned in the commercial is “gracias,” perhaps a thankful demographic tip of the hat to HispanicLatinos who are saving America.  Without HispanicLatinos, the nation’s population eventually would run out of gas, except that the car arrives at a service station and store – and a new beginning.  The passenger alights from the car now speaking impeccable Spanish thoroughly and although still miffed signals that nothing is impossible.

“Trece horas en el caro sin parar y no traes música!”  (Thirteen hours in the car without stopping and you bring no music!)

“Mira, entra y compra unas papitas!” the driver retorts. (Look, get in there and buy some chips!)

They remain the same but are changed.  Unlike most Americans – including many HispanicLatinos – these two are already in the future around us, even the recalcitrant one.

“This is good,” the driver said.

Actually, it is priceless — o de valor incalculable — to quote another commercial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oOVqUInA6w

Blogs published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or variably in between.