America 2.0: Running on Fumes

When I was a wee lad back in America 1.0, I never noticed how poorly everything was run. When my parents bought anything, I don’t remember them having to take it back because something was wrong with it. They certainly didn’t spend a lot of time calling companies with automated menus, arguing with thickly accented “representatives.”

Sometimes I feel like shouting, “Consarn it! Who runs things around here?” Can I talk to the NIC, as we used to joke back when you could joke? Btw, nobody used that expression more than my Black co-workers. America 2.0 is like an abandoned vessel, drifting listlessly at sea. No captain. No crew. And no lifeboats. I just got back from lunch with my sole remaining sister. She just turned 88, and is in remarkable physical shape. However, things could have been dangerous even for a fit oldster like her, since no one bothered to remove the snow from the parking lot. We had a big snowstorm a few weeks back, and there are still huge mounds left from that one, which serve to block several parking spaces. We had a couple inches more last night, and because no one touched the lot, we had to walk around a row of cars to find a clear spot to step up to the sidewalk. I’m sure at least one senior citizen will slip and fall there today. They won’t sue anyone, and if they tried, they wouldn’t win. You can’t fight shitty hall.

Before I left the house, I pulled out one of our dandy new battery powered blower devices. One is a shovel blower. That doesn’t work with a wet or icy snow. In other words, for 90% of the snows we get. The other is a hand held device, like a blow drier. It seemingly should be able to blow snow off of cars, at least. That’s what the pictures on the box show. If they had an infomercial, that’s what the infomercial would show. But no, it didn’t work at all. So I had to use a common broom, a celebrated author like myself, just like some poor sap from a century ago. I don’t think it has a money back guarantee, but it probably does. All the products that don’t work do. They know few people will pursue getting their money back. That’s why rebates used to be so popular, because they knew most people were too lazy to fill out the forms and mail them in. Notice how you don’t see a lot of rebates in the internet age? That’s because even most typically lazy ‘Murricans would probably be willing to click a few things online.

Don’t get me started on appliances. I would say that our dishwasher is the worst device ever made, but that honor goes to our refrigerator, which is in a Third World class of its own. It’s Whirlpool- a major brand, but it’s like some sort of alien toying with me. It used to freeze some items in the refrigerator section, while not freezing some things in the freezer. We had technicians come out several times. After all, it was “under warranty.” But I don’t think we bought an “extended warranty,” which you need because…the regular warranty is worthless? At any rate, they kept changing the settings, and we kept changing the settings, but nothing worked. So they just gave us a new refrigerator. Problem solved, right? I mean, what do you want, we got a free replacement! But this one does largely the same thing. The only improvement is that the freezer does freeze things. But the fridge part still freezes arbitrary items. One item won’t freeze, the one next to it will. Why bother with another replacement?

Then there’s the stove. To quote Rodney Dangerfield, it’s no winner, either. We had to have that one replaced, too. I forget exactly what was wrong with it, because we’ve had so many things wrong with so many items we spend too much money on. At any rate, the replacement is better, although two of the four burners don’t work right. I guess that’s better than not working at all, which is often the case. Now our dryer has developed a mystifying problem where the door won’t close half the time. You have to clean out the dryer vent, even when it’s already clean, and then try and close it a few dozen times, until it finally shuts. I guess that’s the kind of craftsmanship you get in those sweatshops in Bangladesh. But I must say a word in defense of my washer. No one badmouths my washer and gets away with it. It’s the only efficiently working appliance we have, the only one I’m satisfied with. I suppose one out of five appliances working properly is the best we can expect. At least in America 2.0.

I’ve given up on ever finding a vacuum cleaner I can afford, which will actually work properly. The primary part of every vacuum I’ve ever purchased, which is supposed to glide across your rugs with effortless ease, works maybe once or twice, and then never does again. I mean, it runs. It makes a loud noise. But it doesn’t suck up any of the countless traces of golden hair my lovely diva dog Riley leaves around the house. Sometimes it struggles with a simple bit of lint. It will, however, suck up a sock. It’s an America 2.0 machine thing, you wouldn’t understand. So I am forced to use the attachments for all vacuuming, because they usually do work. Sure, it takes a lot longer and makes the work harder, but as more than one salesman has told me, “What do you expect at that price?” Well, regardless of price, if you’re selling it, if you’re charging anything for it, I expect it to work. Craftmanship again. Tangible results of companies closing factories here and paying underage Vietnamese 25 cents an hour.

It’s pretty clear that all commerce now revolves around poorly made products, assembled by exploited foreign workers, which unconscionable companies sell with “warranties” that they often fail to honor on a technicality. Or they design the products to break down just after their warranty expires. Yes, that sounds paranoid, perhaps delusional. I’ve been driven to the breaking point, pun intended, by having to rely on so many things that don’t work. Am I the only one that rolls my eyes when I have to watch a commercial? You can’t scroll through live sporting events. Or YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix commercials. All the bragging about the magnificent things these products can do. We all know that the magical stain remover is not going to remove the stain. That you can’t chug down beers and wear a bikini. That Jake from State Farm is a DEI replacement, representing a company that isn’t that good of a neighbor. That every drug is a miracle, unless the side effects kill you.

My good friend Carolyn Rose Goyda has forwarded me information that, according to reports online, which as always may or may not be fake news, 80% of the toilets on the USS Gerald Ford are hopelessly backed up. How are we going to defeat mighty Iran when we can’t even unclog the toilets on our battleships? I guess it’s fitting that a ship named after a Warren Commission member, who was known as the CIA’s best friend in Congress before becoming our first unelected president, should be literally full of human excrement. Can’t they emulate the Marines, and look for a few good plumbers? Where’s our Commander in Chief? This kind of news, combined with RFK Jr.’s alarming statistic that 70% of our fighting age youth are physically, mentally, or emotionally unfit to serve, should keep us out of any kind of ground war. Just imagine what the percentage is for our transgender youth. Here’s hoping that toilets overflow on all our battleships. That may be our last best hope of avoiding World War III.

Another thing that perturbs me is the difficulty in opening nearly any can or bottle nowadays. I think I’m in pretty good shape for my age, but I struggle to open bottles of juice and the like. I’m sure I’m stronger than I was when I was six or seven, but I never struggled to open things back then. I often wonder how genuinely weakened or sick oldsters open anything. And if it’s a can, good luck on getting a can opener that works consistently. I haven’t twisted off a top in years, once I stopped drinking beer, but I can’t believe they haven’t become harder to twist off as well. With all the technological advances, shouldn’t all this be easier than it was sixty years ago? Because I’m no handyman, I’ve had to engage the services of many handymen over the years. A few have been good, but most produce work that falls apart not long after they’ve been paid. These aren’t my father’s handymen. Say what you want about them buying bonds and planting Victory Gardens, but the WWII generation could work.

Everywhere you look, our society is running out of gas. Pulled over on the side of one of our Third World-style crumbling roads, waiting for roadside assistance that will undoubtedly take much longer than they should to get there. Insurance companies used to routinely send you laminated cards. Now, you have to request that they send you cards, and they’re usually cheap paper ones. Ones you can print out yourself online, which they definitely prefer that you do, since that means they don’t have to do it. We appear to have adopted Homer Simpson’s motto from the episode where he ran for trash commissioner: “Can’t someone else do it?” While it’s clear nothing works now, often no one works, either. It’s surrealistic having an extended conversation with an AI “representative.” And having “Kyle” from India assist you is only marginally better. You now get less, and pay more for it. Universally. And when what you get doesn’t work, that makes it even more maddening. What war did we lose?

If we ever do bring industry back to the United States, which is highly unlikely, there’s no guarantee that those employed by them, manufacturing the products, will do a better job than Sub-Saharan slave laborers. Our domestic workforce is a mess. DEI projects front and center. Frightened Whites who cling to the safety of their cell phones. Management that is clueless or never there. Go to any random store. Ask for the manager. Especially if you have a valid complaint, or are looking for a job that the “Help Wanted” sign advertises, the manager is very likely not to be there. It’s unknown where all these missing managers are, but managers at any new U.S. factories are likely to be a lot more visible. It’s the public the managers hide from, not their underlings. I can’t foresee any products being produced by these putrid multinational corporations, wherever they are located, actually working properly. To paraphrase Dickens, they’re all experts now at not getting it to work.

My wife has probably bought the family an estimated one billion Fitbits over the years. I have never had a Fitbit that doesn’t feature a band that breaks after a year or so. Every time. Just from my extensive, over detailed feedback alone, you’d think they would have tried something different, perhaps new material, in order to produce a better product. But no one does that. Not a single company cares about consumer satisfaction. They know you have zero options, because all companies operate under the same rules. Move your factories overseas, and pay slave labor wages. Child labor provides the optimum deal. Hire the cheapest, most “diverse” workforce possible in your stores. Pocket those huge, tax-free “performance” bonuses. Ensure that there is no competition in prices. Remember, John D. Rockefeller said that “competition is a sin.” If our brand of crony capitalism worked, then we’d have industry. And businesses competing to hire the best workers. And we would build the best products.

America 2.0 provides services, not products. Well, except for fast food. Pizza. Gas. Pampered cats and dogs. But what drives our engine now are dangerous Big Pharma drugs, more than half of which are manufactured overseas. What we can do is come up with an endless series of special diets, to give hope to the obese masses. None of which work, of course, just like the physical products they sell. Pretty much every alt media podcast with a large audience has a store, which invariably sells vitamins and supplements. If I ever get big enough, I’ll probably sell them, too. But I don’t think I’d sell tee-shirts, like these same podcasts usually do. Vitamins and tee-shirts. But maybe I would. Is there a demand for an “I Protest” tee-shirt? Are these vitamins and tee-shirts made in America? Possibly. Weren’t the “Make America Great Again” hats revealed to have been made in China? That could be fake news. Or it could be just another indication that Bob Dylan was right when he sang, “Propaganda, all is phony.”

Modern socks don’t last long at all. They’re either getting mysteriously lost in the wash, or developing a hole within a month of being used. I’m sure they’re all made in China, probably by 11 year olds trying to escape the world of sex trafficking. I can see the point, however, in not developing products that last a long time. Otherwise, who would buy new stuff? Even back in the golden days of America 1.0, I went through a bunch of Slinkys. They’d always get hopelessly tangled up and unusable. Industry must move on. I never had a basketball that lasted very long without getting a “bubble” in it. They were probably all made in China even back then. I know my crappy transistor radios were. But even things like Reese’s peanut butter cups taste different now. It’s hard to mess up a Reese’s, but they’ve done it. It’s probably due to the fact they now use GMO ingredients. Nothing is sacred in America 2.0. I’ll stick to Trader Joe’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups. They taste better anyhow.

Who knows how many food products we buy contain GMOs? After all, they aren’t required to list that in the ingredients, and the wise voters of California voted down a referendum to mandate that they do so a few years ago. They’ve been putting harmful and unnecessary preservatives like BHA and BHT in cereals and lots of other foods for decades. So in a real sense, the food we eat doesn’t really “work” either. No wonder we have to buy all those supplements from the friendly conspiracy podcasters. Our food is often nutritionally worthless. But it does serve to make us gain weight. So there’s a lot more of us to love. I’ll have to be content to use my handy bottle opener, which does work pretty well, in order to get to many of these products, that appear to be sealed so tightly by the underage slaves bottling them in other countries. Look, I really shouldn’t criticize anyone on this subject. Every treehouse I attempted to build fell to the ground. I usually miss hitting the nail on the head.

In northern Virginia, they can’t plow the roads when it snows. And they tell you ahead of time to expect power outages, because whatever worked in the past to keep it on doesn’t work now. In California, you may be a fortunate celebrity who still lost your mansion to one of the fires they forgot how to put out. It makes it even harder to not put out fires when you neglect to put water in the fire hydrants. California was running out of water back when the Governator was in charge. I guess they finally looked at the Pacific ocean, and remembered the desalination plants that have been around for decades. The space program, which was all the rage sixty years ago, doesn’t work any more either. We went to the moon six times, they tell us, but haven’t been back since 1972. They “lost” the technology, so they can’t fake another one. Everywhere, no one knows what they are doing. And nothing works.

All we can do is keep on keepin’ on, as they used to say back in the disco infested ‘70s. I’ll mow the lawn with my expensive electric mower, and know that the battery will sometimes just run down quickly, for no logical reason. I’ll buy a new electric shaver every six months, because I know it’s going to fall apart after I clean it a few times. I’ll vacuum using attachments exclusively. I’ll brace myself to pay $20 or so extra every time my car gets inspected, because apparently the underage slave laborers can’t make wiper blades that will last a year. Disposable lighters didn’t work that well back when I smoked. I bet they really don’t work now. Millionaire athletes can’t work like they used to, either. They call that “load management.” The perpetual “under construction” roads in America advertise highways that are never repaired and don’t work by any First World standard. So pump your own gas. Bag your own groceries after checking yourself out. The fires are out of control, and the hoses don’t work.

https://donaldjeffries.substack.com/p/america-20-running-on-fumes