Now I'm stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store
Just like the ones we made before
'Cept this one came from Singapore
I guess we can't make it here anymore

- James McMurtry

The past week I've been in Renton, WA, visiting my father. Renton is a suburb of Seattle.

He voted for Obama via early voting. We've been having discussions about Obama versus McCain, but mostly on a larger picture what direction the USA is going.

First, I was rather surprised to hear that he voted for Obama, being that he has strong blue collar roots. When I was a kid, he always preached to me the virtue of working hard, setting the bar high, and putting myself into a position of independence. I think retirement really changed his perception of the world with him having to depend on Social Security and his military pension.

But after having some political discussions with him, the common theme I kept hearing out of him is that "we cannot do it anymore".

Those words reminded me of the song I quoted above from James McMurtry. I asked my dad, "well why can't we make the shirts, shoes, toasters, and television here in the USA, like we used to do?"

He said, "Because we can't, that's why. Who's going to buy a $500.00 toaster?" He went on to say the USA ought to let the Chinas of the world make all the cheap stuff, and allow us to make the really high-tech stuff, like bio-tech, nano-tech, and anything else other countries don't have the technology to produce.

So I asked why everything has to be so darn expensive in the USA? Why do our costs have to be so high?

His answer was another question, asking me "So how are we supposed to build our roads, how are we supposed to provide for a military, how are we supposed to put kids through school?"

The way I saw it, China is able to provide all of those things by taking wealth from other countries. That is, they sell stuff to the world. So what if we could make the cheap toasters and the cheap shoes, and what if we sold them to the world? Would we not have the money to build the military and pay for the public schools?

His answer was that there's just no way Americans could live on 25 cents an hour. My answer was that we could if the rest of the world was buying stuff from us, and paying for all of our welfare. But again, he shook his head and said, "we can't do it".

I suppose that's why he voted for Obama, because we can't make it here anymore.

Instead of trying to compete against China, he'd rather carve out a niche for the USA where we just make the bio-tech and the nano-tech. So I asked him what happens when China starts making bio-tech and nano-tech? Honestly, his only answer was "Well, I'll be dead and gone by then".

Basically, he had no answer.

I don't know what happened to the father I once had. The guy who urged me to aim high, who said I could do anything I wanted to do, who told me to build my own future.

I think for him, voting for Obama is not a vote in right direction, but last ditch attempt to do something to save a sinking ship. He doesn't know if Obama can really save a shinking ship, all he knows is that everything he's tried hasn't worked. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter because he'll be dead before it all goes to Hell.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama