Empire of Elastic Waistbands

The Decay Is Over

On the downward decline of a civilization’s culture, a longing for the past, often viewed through a nostalgic lens can be what Don Draper refers to in one of the most culturally important television episodes to ever air, “Delicate, but potent.”

With a cursory glance at the present, Americans are actively and more frequently looking to the past for answers. Nothing provides a more measurable perspective for which to comprehend the overwhelming dis-ease conferred by the current decrepit state of, well, everything.

During the 2012 Golden Globes, before the Big Equity Commissars of ESG hijacked the corporate advertising industry for woke virtue signaling at the expense of profits, one of the savviest commercials aired. It visually and psychologically encapsulated a shocking socio-cultural downfall.

At that moment Americans got to see a reflection of what they once had through a mirror of a cool, classy, confident, and stylish bygone era only one and a half generations departed. An era they could still see and remember but knew was barely visible in the rearview mirror, based on what stood before them in their now-undersized vanity mirrors.

The product being marketed in the commercial was an automobile, or more specifically—style—though nothing gets sold in America, or anywhere in the world, without a full-fledged psychological shelling of inner and collective voids, this essay notwithstanding.

Chrysler aimed to sell Americans their past, their longing for what they once had, back to them through the new style of their cars.

In the opening sequence, Chrysler launches its first mortar on the American psyche in the form of a question for the American people, “Whatever happened to style?”

Actor Adrien Brody’s voice proclaims, “It wasn’t too long ago. America had it.”

The confusion of regression to the culturally depraved present, now, eleven years after that commercial aired, still hits like a gut punch.

“Where has the glamour gone? It wasn’t too long ago. America had it. Looking, and feeling like a million bucks. It was practically our birthright.”

Delicate, but potent.

Americans weren’t hurried back then, overly stressed while frantically dashing everywhere to keep up with unmanageable lifestyles. They didn’t race anywhere back then proclaims Brody, “We cruised.”

The imagery plays on old Hollywood glamour at the height of American middle-class economic prosperity. The automobile was a symbol of freedom and liberation. Americans cruised the streets and boulevards of cities for fun.

The ad doesn’t use nostalgia so much as ooze nostalgia while exploiting a collective longing for a past people assumed was simply better in every conceivable way.

Americans at home watched that Chrysler commercial during the Golden Globes in 2012, quietly gnashing on Cheez-its and sipping cola, twisting in their Barca loungers to reach for the nearest deep bowl of <insert highly processed junk with seed oils or high fructose corn syrup> the message washing over them as they pondered who will win best supporting actress.

Amnesia eclipses Nostalgia in late-stage empires. While looking to the past for perspective becomes habitual, others prefer forgetting the past, making it easier to cope with all the ugliness and moral confusion of the present.

Late-stage empires tend to have a period of gradual descent, called The Decay, before terminal decline sets everything ablaze, with or without space lasers.

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