So here's the rub of ... I don't even know what to call it... globalization (?)- but that's not even it really, I mean, it is and it isn't, but it is:

So I went to the Walmart to get thread- Walmart 'cause this is Clemson and that's what we have, though I could have driven a more annoying drive to Michaels.  Anyway, while getting thread at the Walmart, I got some cheap t-shirts to print "nastee" on. Cheap being 6 bucks a t-shirt, which is what I think t-shirts should cost; though maybe I only think that because I am old (theme of this weekend 😅). 

The T's were "hecho in Nicaragua and Honduras", and I thought to myself, "Great, not China," which is actually a pathetic thought, but one nonetheless... And that sent me into a long string of guilt ridden thoughts:

1) k, can you imagine what the conditions are for those women (you know it's women) working in those countries and what they must be making if you are only paying 6 bucks a t-shirt?

2) Pima-cotton: can you imagine the working conditions of the people picking this horrible plant, cotton, that is used to make these t-shirts that you're paying only 6 bucks for? Not to mention the conditions they are working in to produce it (my father had textile factories in a somewhat more civilized banana republic, I know the environmental conditions).

3) But k, at least they are working and earning something, and not feeling the need to walk millions of miles to come work here under some better but still terrible conditions. Isn't that good?

4) Great cotton, but the sewing is not the best; but then, what do you want for 6 bucks. And remember the pressure those women probably are under to get their quota sewn everyday...

5) I will look into buying American made t-shirts!

So I just looked into buying an American made t-shirt.  They sell for 40 and 50 dollars... Who can afford to buy something unseen that costs that much to get ink on in the studio?

This is one more example of put all the social responsibility onto the consumer and let them choose bullshit.  And honestly, yeah, I can buy a couple 50 dollar t-shirts; but most people in that Walmart just can't afford to buy American, and they can't because the jobs they used to do, the same exact ones that South Americans are doing now, have moved to, well, South America.

I have no answers, but questions are a beginning. I know it's not my fault, but that's what 50 years of weird republican use of Chicago School of economics thinking wants me to believe.

Fuck 'em.