Caps off to America.

So I bought a new cap. One I really wanted. I resisted for a while, but succumbed at last. Just seeing the symbol on it brought back happy childhood memories. This was the official logo of the United States Bicentennial in 1976. 

What finally sold me was the knowledge that we are just four years from the U.S. Semiquincentennial, an event that already has an organization and a Web site. I want to keep my Bicentennial cap around long enough to wear it then. 

Of course, I do not expect the Semiquencentennial to be as big as the Bicentennial was. First of all, hundredth anniversaries are bigger than half-hundreths. Second, the Bicentennial was embraced by a strong civic spirit that barely exists in the United States today -- membership in everything from civic clubs, business associations, local boosters, lodges, churches, even bowling leagues has plummeted even as the population soars. We're all loners and wonder why we're so lonely. And third, despite Vietnam and Watergate, in 1976 most Americans believed that our country was good and worth celebrating. Now it seems that at least half of Americans despise their own country and vote for its ruin. I, at least, want to express the opposite opinion.

I bought this hat from Civil Standard, which sells a lot of gear with logos from all kinds of U.S. organizations of the past, from the Hale America campaign of 1942 to the TVA to Maine's 1901 state flag. For the socialists on your gift list, you can buy things with the logo of FDR's chock full o' unconstitutional Works Progress Administration. 

Seems like Civil Standard's stuff is well made. This is a nice cap, comfortable and sturdy. Unfortunately, and perhaps all too appropriately, it has this zinger:

Yes, this site celebrating American history has its products made in China, but still charges thirty bucks for a ball cap. For all I know this was sewn by Uyghur slave labor in China's work "campuses." Suddenly this looks wrong in several ways. 

"...it doesn't get much more American than that."

The Civil Standard site doesn't tell you anywhere that the stuff is made in China. I guess our rule of thumb now has to be that unless something is specifically said to be made entirely in the United States, it's going to actually be made in China. 

In the seventies we were all about the little guys, the workers who made America great. Crystal Lee Sutton was fighting to unionize her mill, for example— her story became a book and then the 1979 film Norma Rae. In the eighties the company she worked for was sold to WestPoint Home, and in 2003 Sutton's mill closed permanently. Now the new company does its manufacturing overseas. Guess where?

Good job, everybody! I've said before that if you think a factory town looks sad, wait until the factory is gone. 

My enjoyment of my new cap is thus diminished, but I intend to wear it as a sign of hope. We ought to celebrate our nation, not denigrate it. That is what I intend to do, anyway, on July 4, 2026. After all, America has been a beacon of hope for millions, and maybe even to the very person who made this very cap. One can hope.