No, that’s not a metaphor. I’m talking about can openers. The gadgets used to open cans.

America is facing a can opener crisis. We can’t get good can openers anymore. The can openers available now are junk. They don’t work and they don’t last. You used to be able to buy a can opener for 79 cents that would last 20 years. Now they cost $4 (plus tax), and I’ve gone through 3 in the last month. That’s $13.15 in the trash, and I’m stuck with cans I can’t open. Of course, this problem can probably be avoided if you make use of electric can opener reviews in order to find a new solution to this issue, and this is something that we should probably consider sooner rather than later.

To make sure I’m not imagining things, and aren’t some crank who just doesn’t know how to properly use a can opener, I did some online research — and found plenty of can opener complaints. Here’s a sampling:

• “My ancient can opener died of old age. The four different ones I have gotten from WalMart were all junk. They barely can cut open any cans & all broke in a month.”
• “For the past few years I’ve had a devil of a time buying a decent can opener that actually works. … The other day I was swearing and leaping around trying to open a can when I thought, “F**k, wouldn’t want to be relying on this piece of c**p when the s**t hits the fan …. Is this a conspiracy? Are they ‘dumbing down’ can openers so when TSHTF we won’t be able to open our stockpiled canned goods? I ran my theory past my mother and my partner this evening while I was swearing trying to open a can and they both agreed I may be onto something.”
• “I am so sick to death of these shitty shitty can openers that don’t work. Iv tried from the cheapest to the most exspensive brands and all seem to stuff up after a while. I had an old metal one that lasted 30 years and only died because of rust. Can anyone suggest a good manual can opener than work!!!”

(Do I really need to provide links? Nah.)

If, as appears to be the case, half of humanity is complaining they can’t get a good can opener, there may be a problem. (The other half lives on rice, which comes in bags not cans.) And if some Americans are unaware of the can opener crisis unfolding before us, it’s because those fortunate souls still have their old, good, can openers. But even good stuff doesn’t last forever, so it’s just a matter of time for them, too.

Of course, there are other ways to open cans. For example, a samurai sword can do it, although it takes unusual deftness to avoid splattering the contents all over. You need a good horizontal swing like a baseball hitter’s; hacking at it in the manner of a golf duffer who couldn’t hit the fairway with a howitzer won’t do.

But when World War 2 came, America didn’t have a samurai sword industry, and our troops couldn’t capture enough samurai swords to go around, so the ubiquitous P-38 can opener was invented and American factories produced millions of them. (See photo)

The P-38 is, in many ways, a thing of perfection. French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery must have had a P-38 (the can opener, not the airplane) in mind when he wrote, “Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n’y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n’y a plus rien à retrancher.” (If you don’t know what it means, get off your lazy a*s and run it through Google Translate; don’t expect me to do that for you.)

It’s simple, cheap, easy to make, so tiny it’s nearly weightless, and lasts damn near forever. And unlike electric can openers, they still work during winter power outages. I used to carry one on my key chain, until people began suspecting I might be a crazy Vietnam veteran. The negative connotation is unfortunate, because no better can opener exists, and mine still works after 40 years of occasional use. There’s also the challenge of getting them through airport security. Some stupid TSA agent might think it’s a weapon (see, e.g., http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/airportmedal.asp). The P-38’s designers didn’t anticipate this problem, so they didn’t design for it.

Although I began this article by saying I’m not using the modern can opener as a metaphor, in fact it’s emblematic of much that has gone wrong with civilization. You can’t get good stuff anymore. Everything is junk nowadays.

For example, I had to pay a service technician $180 to replace a $2 plastic part in a nearly new $1,000 refrigerator, without which the fridge didn’t work. (I’m won’t identify the brand because it’s irrelevant; they’re all made in the same Chinese factory, and they’re all the same sh**ty quality. Everyone has cheapened their products to boost profits, and brand names mean nothing anymore.)

I try to avoid “Made in China” anyway, because I don’t want to help them fund their military buildup. If you haven’t noticed, China is building aircraft carriers, submarines, fifth-generation interceptors, and sophisticated missiles, all of which have a single function: Chase the U.S. Navy out of the South China Sea, or blow up our ships if we don’t leave voluntarily. The problem with that is a third of the world’s trade goes through those waters.

And anyway, everything that comes from China is c**p or worse. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, so I won’t spend much time or space on this. I’m sure you’ve heard of antifreeze in baby formula, chicken meat that was used to mop processing plant floors, and so on. We all know “Made in China” means “toxic c**p” that you wouldn’t want to buy even apart from strategic considerations. (I don’t know about you, but I always read labels. I want to know where stuff was made, so that I don’t, for example, get stuck with a radioactive can opener.)

Perhaps the best answer to lousy can openers is new packaging technology that’s making them obsolete. Who uses churchkeys to open beer cans anymore? I’ll bet today’s kids don’t even know what a churchkey is. If they found one in grandpa’s fishing tacklebox (there was a time when all tackleboxes contained churchkeys), they wouldn’t even know what it was, much less how to use it. (It’s not hard. In the old days, most people learned with less than 1 minute of instruction.) Beer cans are self-opening now, and the food industry is going that route with self-opening cans, too. Brand-name soups and vegetables already come in self-opening cans, and even the generic and store brands are getting on board. In a few more years, the can opener crisis may solve itself, because no one will use them anymore.

There will always be antique can openers around, though. Millions of ’em. The P-38, being tiny, was easy to misplace or lose. Especially when someone was shooting at you. So the U.S. government put one in every pack of C-rations. They were meant to be disposable, and the world’s battlefields are littered with P-38s. Any given square meter of European soil probably has more P-38s buried in it than there are Minie Balls stuck in barn walls and trees at Gettysburg National Military Park. If you live in the right place, i.e., someplace that’s been fought over, you probably could go into your garden with a metal detector and find half a dozen of them in half an hour.

But Americans, unfortunately, don’t have that option because our continent has been spared from invasions and wars. Consequently, about the only place you can find P-38s in North America is surplus stores. They’re available online, too, but I wouldn’t trust those. They’re probably not genuine Made-in-USA military surplus. More likely, they’re cheaply-made imitations from China. As in all things, when shopping for a P-38, you want the real thing, not foreign-made imitation c**p.

As for finding a standard household can opener that works and isn’t a piece of c**p that breaks after a couple of uses, I’m still looking for one. Anybody got any suggestions?