My Hat Was Made In China
Sep
7
Written by:
9/7/2008 7:19 AM
From Greener Times September 7, 2008
In the old days a man catching up with the news would pluck the early edition from under his left arm and after a quick check above the fold flip to an inside page. There he would do a “commuter” fold that reduced the newspaper to a quarter of a page, tuck in his elbows, and read. His seat neighbor was doing the same and their elbows never bumped. Neither was driving, of course, for where I grew up everybody took the train to work. Today I catch up on this screen here and compare what it says with what Brian Williams said last night, a comparison made difficult by origination in different planets. I tuck in my elbows to still the vertigo.
A boatload of sympathizers returned from Gaza safely having run the Israeli blockade; a nearby Palestinian boat was not so fortunate. The US has turned the Anbar Province back to the Iraqis, explaining that it is now peaceful, implying a trend. (No oil there?) Five e-mails from the police, city, county and RNC have responded to my signing a protest harassment in St.Paul. In Afghanistan a wayward US bomb kills a child. In New Orleans a cardboard cutout of George Bush in shirt sleeves braved Gustav to assure the populace. McCain makes a Freudian slip in picking a vice-president with an illegitimate grandchild. Massive support for Obama continues to build in spite of his promise to continue military conquest of the Middle East. In comparison, Lake Woebegone is real.
The ‘thirties commuter was reading biased copy but it didn’t give him vertigo. I ask you, given the surround sound of total breakdown out there, do you know in what direction to aim the force of reason? Right. Well then look at it another way, one that sets aside the evil we read about and instead concentrates on things we work with, what we eat, and what we wear; so many of these are made outside the US that the pittance still made here comes with Made in USA in bold gilt letters of tarnished pride. Don’t believe? I just found out that my Impeach Cheney hat was made in China. Seen this way, aim is academic compared to the sudden feeling that we are in a boxcar, the door is locked, and it is gaining speed.