Did lazy Americans kill those 1,127 Muslim garment-workers in Bangladesh?

Once upon a time, we tried to go cold-turkey.

After all the reading I needed to do for the following piece, I was left with a feeling of nostalgia and some sadness. What a shame for our once-great nation to be brought to its financial-knees in part for the sake of cheap (and increasingly tawdry) fashions, and other "stuff." I'll bet the ChiComs could figure out how to get all the abandoned American factories dotting the countryside up-and-running again... 

My 3400-word essay, Did Westerners cause the Bangladesh apparel factory collapse, will expose a unique angle on how we, as a nation, got hooked into the fashion-by-slave-labor industry, as well as offer 3 1/2 all-American solutions. I hope it’s sufficiently provocative to begin to awaken my fellow consumers; whether they’re young, practically born with an internet-connected cellphone in their hand, or more mature – and have quickly adopted the same distraction by glitz & glamour disorder.

From the essay:

Once upon a hippy-er time…a pocket-sized green dragon was summoned. Raised by Keynesian-channeling bureaucrats and called, innocuously, paper-currency. This new sovereign crawled forth from the depths of the earth and it stood momentarily, like any usurper, on the fresh grave of the just murdered, hastily buried, Gold Standard it was designed to supplant. It was hungry, so it went hunting; tiptoed innocently across the country at first. You see, that original green dragon was quiet as a tornado the day before it’s born, but as it traveled, it kicked off the last traces of gold; grew insatiable; grew more menacing with every step, as tornadoes will, once set in motion.