Talk to an American over 40 and before long you might hear about how no one builds anything durable anymore.
If that same American grew up in the United States of the late 20th century, then he or she also might react with skepticism to nearly anything manufactured in a communist country. Totalitarian communists could develop thermonuclear weapons, of course, but they built nothing that improved their subject people’s material lives.
Small wonder, therefore, that so much manufactured crap comes out of Communist China, one of history’s most murderous regimes.
On Thursday, the U.S. Consumer Product and Safety Commission reported that the New York-based importer MM Products Inc. had issued a recall on a glass coffee mug — made in China — with an unfortunate tendency to explode and cause serious injuries.
The recall covered 580,000 JoyJolt Declan Single-Wall Glass Coffee Mugs, model number JG10242.
It turned out that when consumers filled their coffee mugs with a hot liquid — for instance, coffee — the mugs would often crack and break at the base.
The word “often” is not an overstatement.
In fact, the CPSC noted that 103 such glass-shattering incidents had resulted in 56 injuries. Those injuries included 35 cases of spilled hot liquids causing body burns and 21 resulting in cuts. All told, seven of these cases led to injuries that resulted in surgery or stitches.
#RECALL: MM Products Recalls @JoyJolt™ Declan Single Wall Glass Coffee Mugs Due to Burn and Laceration Hazards. The glass mugs can break and crack when filled with hot liquids. Get Refund. CONTACT: https://t.co/HGdgNNNbhFhttps://t.co/Y2OiGOfGuY pic.twitter.com/DGMeRohxn9
— US Consumer Product Safety Commission (@USCPSC) June 20, 2024
The exploding coffee mugs are merely the latest in a long line of dangerous Chinese imports.
According to The Week, Chinese companies have made a habit of exporting toxic products. In fact, this occurred with alarming regularity in the first decade of this century.
For instance, in 2007, American pet food companies discovered the kidney-failure-causing chemical melamine in Chinese-made pet products. That contamination resulted in the reported deaths of more than 4,000 American dogs and cats.
Furthermore, doing business with (or in) China comes with the taint of human rights abuses such as forced labor.
Communist China has a ghastly record of atrocities.
In the 1994 book “Death by Government,” political science professor R.J. Rummel quantified what he called “democide“: the “murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.”
Having slaughtered more than 35 million of its own people, the Communist Chinese regime ranked with the 20th century’s “Deka-Megamurderers.” Only the Soviet Union, with nearly 62 million murder victims, outpaced the Chinese.
In other words, the two largest communist countries killed approximately 100 million of their subject people. And China remains under the control of the Communist Party.
Is trade with China ultimately good for Americans?
Should that not give at least some pause?
Even if the Chinese Communists have stopped murdering their people by the tens of millions, Americans instinctively understand that dependence on foreign-made products works against their long-term interests.
Since the 1990s, the establishment has sold Americans on neocon foreign policy and globalist trade agreements.
Regime-change wars and exploding coffee mugs are all that Americans now have to show for it.
