"Aah so......................................."

The Christmas crowd was not all that thick yesterday morning. Beth yet wanted a particular pair of basketball sneakers for one of the grandsons and we had driven out to the nearby mall in hope that one of those sports stores might have them. While there, however, this old man remembered his own request for a new belt, not that there was any immediate danger of losing my trousers, but I had just recently noted some aging on the part of that which holds up my dignity. Penny’s was my choice for the purchase. I was not prepared for the price. More than that, though, the real “kicker” was the ubiquitous “made in China” that was stamped into the leather of every brand, Levi, Stafford, Dockers, it mattered not the manufacturer’s name. Shocked? Not really. Puzzled? A bit. I mean, why so many labels? Why not just sell them all under “Po Ling Mao Products”? It rather redefines “global economy”, doesn’t it?... In a little old-time holiness church, nearly forty years ago, at least once a week we would usually hear a sermon on eschatology, prophesy taken from Biblical books like Revelation and Daniel wherein preachers predicted what would happen, not so much “in the end of all things” as it was “in the finality of the Gospel”. It was all coming down to “one-world government, currency, and woes”, Israel being attacked from the north by one enemy and another from the south coming from the far East. Do I need to name who that latter foe was said to be? In my own mind there used to be an image of some huge mass army of yellow-skinned barbarian cavalry warriors charging in with spears and sabers. We’re speaking, after all, of four decades back. Nowadays the picture has changed. I used to declare that it would not be nuclear war bringing this country down. You can have all the weaponry you want; but if you don’t have the money to arm, man, and move it, how much force does one really possess? It used to be Khrushchev I pointed to as occupying our television sets some morning, sitting there in the White House pounding his shoe on the table; but any more it’s more like some Asian fellow who will probably be behind the desk in the oval office, smiling at us with a smug grin on his face as he offers us a credit card……