This doesn’t pretend to be a balanced opinion piece; it’s a screed. However, in today’s screwed up world, sometimes it’s the screeds that make the most sense. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:
Star Wars 24 plus the novelized version, amusement park ride, podcast, action figure and OnlyFans pages, anyone?
I happened to be in a Big Box Emporium, buying two bags of whole wheat flour, when a strange revelation struck me: almost nothing in this giant emporium was made in the USA. Apologists will quickly point out that the two bags of whole wheat flour were “made in the USA,” and note the US-made items in the food, liquor and beverage aisles; but wander out of these aisles and tell me how many of the hundreds of items are made in the USA (not assembled of foreign components, but made entirely in the USA). The answer is very few.
I suppose this fact is unremarkable to the majority of Americans, but my reaction was, sorry, America, you lost me: how is this not insane to depend on sweatshops thousands of miles away to make virtually everything on the shelves and warehouses of the U.S.?
It’s as if a war was declared on manufacturing in America and we lost–or simply surrendered.
If you want to buy a bulldozer or electric vehicle, you can Buy American, and if you buy an iPhone, the firmware is conjured in Cupertino (the phone is assembled in China of components sourced globally). But below a certain price point and outside the snacks, magazines and beer aisles, U.S.-made good are “special order” if they’re available at all.
Is this because the foreign made stuff is so high quality? No, it’s virtually all garbage quality. A war was declared on quality, and America lost. Virtually nothing on the shelves of America’s Big Box Emporiums and fulfillment warehouses is durable; it’s either designed to fail (planned obsolescence) or it’s so poorly made that it breaks, fades, rips, tears, delaminates or fails, and is dutifully hauled to the landfill as part of the entire Landfill Economy. (Forget trying to repair it; it’s been designed to be impossible to repair, and all the components are junk, too.)
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 
I’ve been complaining about that for 50 years. Pet peeve.
People go blank. They cannot tell the difference. Shiney!!
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+100
Agree with mobious, been bitching for decades to deaf ears, everyone plays along with the scams. And I don’t even carry a cell phone or subscribe to TV. I’m convinced people don’t care what happens to them, or how many times they get ripped off by big tech, they just go along with everything shoved in front of them. Too dumb and lazy to care about changing something, that would require effort.
Just like reading up on facts, too much effort required to find out they’ve been lied to their entire lives.
This society is toast, burnt and discarded.
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The American “Elite” or Capital if you like would rather he country burn down (c.f the entirety of last year) than pay decent wages. Its class warfare in the most direct Marxist sense waged with social policy with the working and remnant middle class has no idea war is being waged on it.
The reason isn’t difficult to understand, simply the Elite can be replaced by nearly anyone and are no better than the Middle and even a chunk of the working they are trying to destroy.
Status is more addictive than crack after all.
Still workers may have gotten the message said huge numbers of workers are going Galt, anyone who can is retiring or living at a lower level that is comfortable to them.
Its great to be rich in such a scenario till you realize this is global money buys nothing and no one knows how to do plumbing.
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Watching Hero movies or bakkaball means you haven’t seen through THAT idiocy in at least 30 years. You lost ME Mr Smith
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All my rants and pleadings are spectacularly ineffective.
Shall I continue?
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You may as well continue, Large Marge, we will all be silent one day anyhow. We are here now, and can think and do, so let’s. Weary are the travelers now, weary of years of being mentally, (if not yet physically) beaten down, and having every discouragement placed in their paths. Others please note, our communist opponents are counting on the weary and discouraged to do and say nothing, as they are playing the long game. You’re being slowly brainwashed by parasitic experts, the same as POW’s in Korea, without the starving. Do not lose heart, nor faith, nor courage, nor G-U-T-S, nor resolve. It’s admittedly a very bad situation, but, as long as we live, and breathe, and think, and do, all is far from lost. Our opponents want us to believe it is. They’ve the experiences of a hundred years of screwing with peoples minds and lives to fall back on, and they know all about wearing their victims down. I say let’s wear THEM down, and eliminate THEM.
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