Those Southerners of us with gray hair can still smell the furniture plants and textile mills that gave our small towns life and propelled the young into adulthood. We worked summers at one plant or mill along with our neighbors and family. Paychecks were stuffed in the local branch savings accounts to fund our next chapter and we learned quite a lot about human dynamics, problem solving, and life.
We all saw the end on the horizon, when the politicians were elbow deep in the pockets of the banks and their M&A divisions, all crowing about "new age, new era" and "transitioning from manufacturing to service economy" with "shareholder value" on all their black tongues. NAFTA was the icing on the cake, the cake of manure we were all forced to eat. Every bite. And made to smile about it.
The same play was performed in the North but on a different stage: the unionized work force was destroyed more slowly but more effectively and the effects will be in the genes of their offspring for generations.
Well hell. You know what? Screw all that. The past might be dead but I'll be damned if I will submit to eating another sh** sandwich. And good luck getting me to smile. We, the normal people of the United States, have been hypnotized and led along a path to slaughter by the people we entrusted to protect us. I think things are beginning to change, but it is time to cut the strings of dependence on "the global good" and take care of our own by our own means.
Cheers y'all.
The original "Danville" post and link pissed me off.
ReplyDeleteReminded me of some areas in Ohio and Michigan.
The above comment by Dan Patterson: I hear you, brother.
Dismantling us, dismanters getting rich, and sticking the shelves with cheap foreign crap.
Dismantling us, dismanters getting rich, and sticking the shelves with cheap foreign crap.
DeleteNot happy campers.
I would like to dunk these clowns who gave us "free trade" into a barrel of tar and then roll them in chicken feathers just like the colonials did to charlatans like them. Free trade wrecked the country, somebody has to go to jail for it. They stole our factory too, first our smaller company was bought up by GE, then they sold the building and "leased" it back for 5 years. At the end of 5 years they fired us all and sent it to China. Not just "monotonous" tasks like assembly, but all the technicians, managers, engineers, office workers, IT, machine shop, cafeteria workers, custodial crew, warehouse workers, and all the outside vendors who also got work from our existence lost their livelihood. Like thinking you can get rid of all the Wildebeast and Zebras and still have Lions and Leopards? Eliminate the Privates and Corporals but still have a thriving office corps? Just fleece everyone with college loans and hand them degrees and magically high paying jobs will all await them in a world of all chiefs and no indians. Of course these were all lies rolling off these snakes tongues to sell a bill of goods that let them get even richer, and middle America's wealth and livelihood all going off to build up China. Now that they've suckered the millennial generation with debt financed college at 5X what it used to cost 30 years back when is the real blowback against all this unprotected trade for the past generation that has made Uncle Sam as sick as an 80s queer covered in purple spots.
ReplyDeleteThanks. https://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2018/07/comment-on-left-for-dead-in-danville.htmlhttps://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2018/07/comment-on-left-for-dead-in-danville.html
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