I Hate "Made in America"

There's no arguing that America is great. At least not when you're sitting across from a confederate flag-toting, gun-running biker wearing face tats and a leather jacket broken in with skeptics' blood, "Mead in America"[sic] finely etched into the side of his skull. Let the record show that we advise you to not argue. But just between us, I have a "beef" with certain aspects of this American-made malarkey.

"I am gonna desecrate the shit outta you after prom, girl!"

 
Just to touch on the aforementioned "beef" I need to bring up certain issues. Mainly: everyone says buy American-made because it's better. Part of the reason - and this is legitimate - is that when you buy domestic you are ostensibly supporting what little manufacturing we have left (read: artisanal douchebag accessories) and by extension the livelihoods of our own people. Which is fine, I get it. The best part of it all, of course, is that just about everyone up and down the line takes a cut. From indentured teen to teamster. Everyone gets a slice. Name one thing more patriotic than that! Assuming the wealth gets circulated internally and the union guy isn't just running off to snag Sony flat screens (yeah, actually they fell off the back of a truck but the packaging is so good you'd never know it), there shouldn't be any kinda problem there so mind your own business; but then you have to look at the flipside. To do that you go way back into the history of manufacturing and not too far down the beginning of unionization. Now it just so happens I was churned out of the American school system (yeah: pride) so unfortunately don't know the Hatter's Union from a hole in my head. But I do know that labor unions, like every other once-great idea to come around and revolutionize the world (Yes we Ameri-can!), was not long untainted until soon enough some brave entrepreneurial bloodsucker got the bright idea there was balls-deep profit to be made on other people's hard work. I'm not saying all the good work done towards labor equality since the late 19th century isn't good, just saying that honestly, come on: who didn't foresee the corrupting potential of that one?

"It's about family, unity and lining up in height order just like
we practiced it or you get another smack on the mouth, Tommy!"

So, yes do buy domestic if you can. No, that starred 'n' striped bikini is made in Indonesia, not Indiana...Ford what? But, if you don't already know, all this skimming off the top hurts the companies you hold so dear. How can any large company afford to operate domestically with all these hands in their pockets (land tax, competition, redundancy, minimum wage, asbestos abatement)? Both skimming internally - and externally as government taxation, which is just plain wrong. Why do you think they moved their plants overseas in the first place? And don't say China has better Chinese food. Think about it: Halliburton is as American as it gets and a few years back they've had to pack up and move to slumdog Dubai. Where is the justice in that? But I have good news. We are beginning to turn it around. Yeah we persevere. Well, not with manufacturing, anyway, but the food-truck industry is on fire!

"Psst...hey sugar tikka, meet me over there for a most ironic stabbing." 

Now as irony (or god, if you swing that way) would have it I happened to notice, just as I was typing up this screed with my thumbs, that Prezbama stopped over at a Milwaukee kipple factory on his way to Wallmartland, Wisconsin; rolled up his designer Italian cuffs and glared at the crowd for half an hour while behind him projectors flashed the words "Made in U.S.A" and "Top Priority" and something called "Insourcing" in bacon lettering on forty-foot screens. When the 'speech' was over his aides used supersoakers to shoot cola into the grateful and expectant gobs of applauding natives. 

"How many times I gotta tell 'em no fat chicks in the audience?"

The one statement he did make using sound-words was, and I quote: “It would take 20 years to change the school system to train manufacturing workers.” Seems like the idea is people "often are not properly educated for positions in manufacturing," which to me sounds counter-intuitive. But then again I'm not a Chinese but an Ameri-can, and like I keep telling my teachers my homework's been repossessed.

"Angel of what?--No, no I'm just the Repo man."

No, actually it sounds like he is defeating his own argument here. But in any case, my feeling is that if you're not equipped to bolt shit onto other shit for twelve hours a day at the assembly line without losing fingers then you're not equipped to vote. I mean when I think of jobs in manufacturing - in sectors other than aerospace and robot army - I think, hey isn't this what everyone and their daddies in every flee-bitten rat-shitten town ever used to do straight out of high school or prison? Anyone can read an order form and, let's face it, you already gained expert hand-eye coordination when you started sneaking off with your old man's sticky old Playboys. Whose idea was it to put the option on the table of changing the school system to train workers for manufacturing jobs? You're not fooling me. We are way more than 20 years behind other countries in curricula which require half a brain so don't talk to me about setting back the little chilluns' whatchacallit intellectual development another deuce for pocket-science.