The Drum Major Instinct by Simon Balto
“I recognize that my criticism of Dodge here is not an especially hot take. The ad was skewered on Twitter immediately after it aired, and the blowback has been the subject of numerous news stories today. It turns out that, no matter how low we’ve sunk in 2018, coopting the words of one of the greatest freedom fighters in American history in order to sell trucks still strikes a lot of people as wrong.
It’s nevertheless worth noting the unique stupidity of Dodge’s choice of King speech, though. Entitled “The Drum Major Instinct,” this particular speech finds King exploring people’s materialist impulses, with “the drum major instinct” being human beings’ innate desire to be noticed and recognized. For King, who by this point in time had become fiercely critical of capitalism, this tendency toward conceit and self-regard was dangerous, and particularly so in contemporary America as everyone labored to stay one step ahead of their neighbors and sometimes ruined themselves in the process:
But now the problem is, it is the drum major instinct. And you know, you see people over and over again with the drum major instinct taking them over. And they just live their lives trying to outdo the Joneses. (Amen) They got to get this coat because this particular coat is a little better and a little better-looking than Mary’s coat. And I got to drive this car because it’s something about this car that makes my car a little better than my neighbor’s car. (Amen) I know a man who used to live in a thirty-five-thousand-dollar house. And other people started building thirty-five-thousand-dollar houses, so he built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house. And then somebody else built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house, and he built a hundred-thousand-dollar house. And I don’t know where he’s going to end up if he’s going to live his life trying to keep up with the Joneses.”