by Mathew Pulver at Salon

“There’s a good chance (like a 94 percent chance) that the flags present at your Fourth of July festivities will be Chinese-made. The ubiquity of American flags made in that authoritarian state is such that Congress actually had to pass a law last year banning the military from purchasing foreign-made (read: Chinese-made) flags. These flags are so cheap, however, that similar bills mandating the federal government purchase only non-Chinese-made flags routinely fail. We’ve got a budget to meet and all.

That flag, then, that so proudly attempts to recall our independence this weekend is, in fact, a symbol of, at best, our interdependence and, more likely, a dependency which determines how we live. The United States is a democracy that with each passing day submits to the demands of global capitalism. If you work, where you work, what you do, how much you make, and what you spend it on are, with each passing day, determined by global capitalism more than America, which it hurriedly subsumes.”

Read more at Salon