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The issue here is spiritual and economic in the basest sense. These cars represent something to us, as they have to the generations past. They represent the kind of independence that we as Americans and Volvo owners have always been prideful of: a spirit of cooperation, zaniness, techno-wizardry, a kind of thumbing our noses at the big boys who take our money and run. A little bit of zaniness and a brilliant spot of engineering by the Swedes has gone a long way. But the jig, at least for Americans, is up. When the big boys at our auto companies chopped away at the unions and our banks lined up at the chow line to give our money to each other, we were cooked. American cars, homeowners, small businesses, small farmers, and anyone else with an original idea became casualties, while a few guys made off with millions. I think the sale by Ford ia depressing news. It shows how powerless we are. It shows a lack of foresight on Ford's part. Any country with China's terrible human rights record doesn't deserve to build cars that will be sold here -- to a nation that has a good 200,000 of its young fighting wars to, among other things, free up oil for the very manufactuers who will sell us these new and "improved" Volvos in the first place. It doesn't make sense to me.
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