“Memory need not deceive, but it is mercifully selective”– C.J. Maloney, Back to the Land
In 1983 All the Right Moves, a film about a high school football team within a dying steel town (the fictional Ampipe, PA) was released. The movie didn't receive great reviews, but its cast (including Tom Cruise and Craig T. Nelson) succeeded in portraying the desperate struggle of the town's athletes to escape the drudgery of mill work through success on the football field; success that would hopefully lead to football scholarships at colleges and universities far away from Ampipe.
All the Right Moves has come to mind a lot in modern times given the odd economic nostalgia that has reared its unfortunate head in 21st century political campaigns. Left or right, Republican or Democrat, it's become popular in the 2000s for politicians to promise the return of the factory and mill jobs from the past that were once a ticket to a middle-class life. Leaving aside the sad economics that inform promised blasts to the past for the moment, all this rhetoric about bringing back manufacturing jobs was eyebrow raising simply because those most familiar with factory work have historically been the ones most eager to shield their children and grandchildren from just that kind of work.
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