Bring Back American Jobs
In the seventies and eighties, there was a lot of concern in the United States about how and why Japan was kicking our butt in manufacturing, particularly in steel and automotive manufacturing. As we tend to do, a lot of magazine articles and books were written on the subject. I read several of them.
From what I can tell, most of the blame was put on American Exceptionalism. Since the war, we have been teaching our children that the United States was massive and the most successful country ever. Our military dominated the world, and really, we should feel sorry for people who don't live here.
Japan, on the other hand, taught their children that they were a very small country in the middle of the ocean, under constant threat of annihilation from China, the USSR, and encroaching American Exceptionalism, even though we were their allies. This drove Japanese children to put in extra effort to become productive and successful.
Sometimes, a book might point out that the Japanese factories were a lot newer than the American factories, seeing as how we blew their old ones up during the war, and how the US had loaned Japan the money to build those factories, and several other actual economic factors that might explain what was going on, but none of that was as interesting in the idea that we were ruining our children by preaching American Exceptionalism in school.
At the same time, deconstruction became a driving force in undergraduate and postgraduate academics. It made short work of all the pro-American memes we spent so much time trying to instill in students leading up to and during the war.
Since then, we've had a war between the America-Good movement and the America-Bad movement, with one side positing how great things were in the fifties and the other pointing out how awful things were in the fifties, particularly if you weren't a white protestant male.
Forever searching for a shorter meme to express themselves, the America-Good team started using the phrase CRT to describe their opposite. It stands for Critical Race Theory, which is a genuine academic theory but one that has nothing to do with what the America-Good people are upset about. They just like short memes and give extra points if it brings up race.
In the meantime, Asians are still kicking our ass in the production of automobiles and steel. Every presidential candidate since Reagan has promised to turn the tide and bring those jobs back, but with no success, handing it off like a baton to the next guy running from their party as a bludgeon to beat the other party with.
In my lifetime, a liberal arts education presumes an emphasis on critical thinking, and critical thinking is very likely what got us into this whole business of academic deconstruction in the first place. This means that you don't believe Washington cut down the cherry tree or that Honest Abe was all that honest.
The fear that deconstructing our history and our national self-image might damage us as a country is genuine and not entirely without merit. People don't have to know the truth about a thing to be motivated. Sometimes, "the truth" can be a hindrance. That's why propaganda works.
I don't think you can contain knowledge, though. Everything mankind ever knew is available on your cellphone, and your four-year-old grandchild knows how to access it. What may hinder us for a while is that genuine academic inquiry and historical research have to compete with hare-brained conspiracy theories. The America-Good team, through people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump, has aligned itself with the conspiracy crowd, which has been surprisingly effective. I'm constantly amazed at what these people are willing to believe.
Ultimately, I don't think these issues will be resolved in my generation. Maybe they never will. Meanwhile, if somebody promises to "bring back American jobs," remember that they're very likely lying to you, even if they don't know they're lying.