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Should We “Buy American”?
Most of us on the Left have been bitching about “cheap crap from China” for years. We used to boycott Walmart, remember?
Before plastic, there was artistry. You can go into a museum today and look at old items people used to use in their daily lives — everything from hairbrushes to hacksaws — and they are beautiful, ornate. Someone — an artisan —took time to create and decorate an artifact that would be aesthetic as well as useful. The intended lifespan wasn’t a few days or a few months, it was years, generations even.
The concept of manufacturing long-lasting, quality items of aesthetic value was still at play in the early 2000s. Look at toasters from the 1910s and 20s or refrigerators from the 50s. And then we got plastic. It was a miracle. All of a sudden, things were easier to produce at a much lower price point, and much easier to ship. It is, after all, way easier and cheaper to move a truckload of plastic soda bottles than glass ones.
The move to plastic was understandable, if unsustainable. A few short decades later, and almost everything is made of plastic. Even us. Studies have been showing for years now that plastic isn’t just polluting the oceans, it’s also worked its…
