The Wake Up
Well I woke up this morning to some not so great news. For some reason people are still voting for Republicans. Yes they’ve been hammering at the foundations of democracy by intentionally shaking faith in elections, yes they’ve created a “critical race theory” boogeyman, yes they think JFK will return from the dead to appoint Trump King-of-Kings and make JFK JR. his vice King-of-Kings. And yet, they still get about half the votes in each year’s elections. It’s almost as if this country has a mad, alternate universe sense of itself, baked in from the start. As if the man who wrote the words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” also believed himself to be the owner of hundreds of his fellow humans beings (he wasn’t, but our laws at the time enabled him to maintain this sick fantasy.)
One of the boogeymen the GOP is pushing are “supply chain problems.” For anyone paying attention, the supply chain was already pretty messed up. Last year a large boat turning sideways in the Suez Canal shut the world down for chrisake. It turns out it just needs something unusual to kick the supply chain in the crotch to bring it to a halt. Enter Covid-19. You’ll remember George W. Bush and his response to the post 9/11 economic woes. “Go shopping more.” He said. And lo, we did. America struggles with many fatal addictions and shopping is one of them. We actually need consumers to consume in order to grow the economy, and they need to consume more each year if we want to declare capitalism a success. In order to consume more each year, we have to invent more things to consume, hence the rebranding of old stuff to look like new stuff, and an endless line of toy fads for young and old. Where do all the old fads go?
“Supply Chain” problems are based on the fact that we outsourced millions of manufacturing jobs to China and now they can’t keep up with demand as we bathe ourselves in stuff. Had we kept the manufacturing here, paying slightly more for disposable geegaws and other material destined for the Great Pacific Ocean Plastic Gyre, this wouldn’t have been an issue. But corporate America has once again crapped the bed and demanded to know who’s responsible. The outrage we’re feeling over not being able to buy the ‘My Little Pony’s First Slip and Fall Lawsuit’ set for Christmas is so wonderfully misplaced it’s actually painful.
The upshot of these losses is that the United States of America isn’t really as woke as many of us would like. In some ways it’s in a deep slumber, dreaming of the days when one could declare all men created equal without actually meaning all men (see: “all lives matter.”) Maybe some shopping detox will help us snap out of it.