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(via waxandmilk)
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It’s clear that “manufacturing” is a symbol. For what? For the America of the Industrial Revolution to the 1980s and 90s, for the world of voters’ parents and grandparents and their struggle; for the fact of Rust Belt economic decline; a symbol of lament for the odyssey of the last 40 years for the American city; for unions, for European immigrants who found their work in factories more than anywhere else, just as much as it is for the African-American journey to Northern cities; a general symbol of America 1870-1990 which serves, in turn, as an even more abstract sign of a reverence, of desire for change from the uneasy 21st century, of *conservatism* in a certain Obama sense which I think we can all recognize intuitively.
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I recognize, but do not share this conservatism. The dreams of old-fashioned factory workers, sweat on their brows, union cards in their hands, are dreams of a lifestyle neither their dreamers nor me would ever want to live through.
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It’s pretty mysterious to me why the miles traveled by food in particular is thought to matter more than, say, the miles traveled by my Chinese laptop. Rootedness? Purity? How are your laptop miles, America?
Should we minimize our “music miles” and boycott bands on tour? Thankfully, our next-door neighbors have a band, Dead Larry. We don’t have to go anywhere to hear them.
—Will Wilkinson / The Fly Bottle » Blog Archive » Eat Local, Yokel
