Posts Tagged ‘consumerism’

I have been deleting myself from email lists for most of a year now. I am sick of being hectored and nagged by both sides. Somehow, the local Republicans got my phone number and keep calling to ask if I want to be a delegate to their convention, wtF is that about?

I am burned out. My health has suffered. My marriage has suffered. My writing has gone to sheer shit. And I am pissed off. Seriously, America? Have you forgotten what a representative democracy is all about? You elected Obama to replace the mad cowboy who took Reagan’s start into corporate thuggery, and Clinton’s book-keeperish nice guyness to the next fucked up level. The ship of state is on the rocks and you think the new “Captain” should fix it all yesterday.But you think he can do it alone?

The GOP is busy trying to blame everything from Afghanistan to the oil spill on him. Pssssttt—-he did not do it! One man, with his political party acting like a crew of pussies (and so not the bad cats in “Cats” either) can only do so much.

Barry Obama doesn’t have a magic wand to wave over all of America’s problems. Sorry, but to both progressives and republithugs, I must say, give up the myth of the “magic negro”, ok? He is President, NOT King. But America likes being stupid, the redneck jokes are coming home to roost, research suggests that facts don’t change fondly held dumb-assed ideas. Is this some sort of right wing New Age sewage effect? If you believe hard enough in something moronic and downright wrong, it will become true?

Here are some facts that even a housewife-grandma-veteran-bitch can grasp, try to keep up, alright? This is like the phone call your 7th grade teacher made to your folks, two weeks before semester end, to tell them you were failing.

* Illegal immigration is not what threatens the American worker. Having nothing worth working UPON is ruining American labor. We don’t MAKE anything anymore besides artery-clogging cheeseburgers and movies. Illegal immigrants largely do work that white Americans want nothing to do with at all.

* We have to dump the idea of the Mall being “entertainment.” Spending money on necessities instead of stupid assed fads USED to be the American way. Expecting to work for a living wage and actually knowing the job used to be the American way. Now every other person wants to be a “day trader” and “dot com millionaire.” You all watched the wrong fucking movies, ok? I honestly don’t know if we can get back to this, because the idiocracy seems well set.

* Obama didn’t start the wars. He surely needs to finish them. Good luck with that, Barry. He needs your help—-tell him supporting the troops means bringing them home alive, educating them with the new GI bill so they can go out and revitalize American industry as the vets of WWII did before them!

* Stop flogging the fear. The “terrorists” do not really want to “bring it to us here”—-they simply want American business and American military the fuck OUT of their countries and lives. Using the Marines and the Army as very underpaid mercenaries for American corporate interests abroad is going to crash the country.

(And just an aside? Fire the mini-white-shirted brownshirts of the TSA—hire some war veterans that know what a real asshat looks like so the petty jerks can quit feeling up grandmas and stealing baby sippy cups, ok?)

* This bullshit about cutting budgets, but NOT defense that Teabaggers are on about? Stupid. The defense budget would cover ALL the rest of the budget with leftovers for all. Basically, continuing to vote for morons espousing this line is paying for big rich bastards to use your sons and daughters as bullet stoppers for their own purposes. Wake the Fuck UP!

* Health care is socialism? Just what the fuck is so goddamned capitalist and democratic about dying for lack of medical care? That isn’t American, that is a twisty stupid form of social Darwinism—last espoused best by the Nazi Party of Germany. If you think Obama’s watered down health care plan is going to sink America’s little democracy into socialism, you are being ignorant zombies for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries and their rich bosses who want to keep raking in your bucks. Until you run out of cash and die that is—sucks to be you, then. Wake the Fuck UP!

But back to my opening—taking myself off lists and ignoring most petitions and letter writing campaigns. I think it is too late. I think too many Americans have their heads firmly up their own racist, sexist, save-me-Jesus asses and they like the sky being brown. I think they all drank the stupid Kool-aid and will keep buying the prettier myths of the GOP and their corporate masters. They don’t want to hear that DECADES of hard work and personal trial lie up the road. They didn’t want to hear it when Jimmy Carter first tried to tenderly inform them that they were going to hell in handbasket.

I’m glad I am old. But if all you young pups won’t learn from history, you are certainly going to suffer through repeating it until you learn or watch the American experiment fail. I almost wish I believed in the traditional afterlife.
I’d kind of like to watch the pissed off Founding Fathers kicking some ass there when some of the authors of the current shitstorm arrive in the “There” after fucking up the minds and lives of millions.

But since I don’t believe in that, I have to content myself with telling everyone buying the drivel and waiting for a fairy godfather/mother President to save them to kiss my ass.

A friend’s journal post today makes me ask…..a world famous violinist played for an hour in street musician fashion. Thousands walked past him, very few pausing to listen even for a few minutes. His concert tickets are $100 each—-they had him for free, and ignored it.

Do you only value what you pay for? Are we that motivated only by money and the price tag?

Do you notice the geese overhead? Do you see the murders of crows in the pumpkin field you drive past? Did you pause to look at the last rose of the season before frost makes it droop and fall, petal by petal?

Or do you only see those things in photo galleries? Where it costs money to own and consider? Do a little exercise I once taught, a lifetime ago, in a Sunday school class, will you?

Take a piece of paper…printer, construction…whatever you have got. Fold it in half and get the scissors. Now, cut the center out…leaving a rim about one inch all round, open it up: kind of a “picture frame” now, of paper, see? Now, go outdoors. Find a place where something natural survives….not concrete, not just ‘golf course grass’, ok? Walk a few steps with your eyes shut. Drop your picture frame to the ground.

Now, get down and look at what it frames…up close. Really look. Wonders will unfold. Connect, see, feel…..live. Without spending a penny.

My holiday spirit is lacking.  I have all but one or two gifts ready and waiting, except for some hand work to finish.  I didn’t go ballistically over budget except on a project employing a pair of artists.  I don’t have to brave the malls, I skipped the post office routine entirely this year, except for one package to a dearly beloved lady.

So, why am I unhappy?  Why do I want to crawl in a hole and hibernate like the black bears common to my home state?  Or, alternatively, stalk the malls biting heads off, rather like a hunting polar bear?

I blame the television ads.  Buy an Audi for your sweetie for Christmas?  Seriously?  With the economy as it is, that is responsible?  And the electronic games….oh, most of the ads are for new shoot ‘em up types; now there is the spirit of joy and love of the much preached about season, eh?  Our state governor is still getting bitched out for letting some atheists put up a sign, but virtual murder in videos are suitable for the season?  Gotcha….the one makes money, the sign makes twitches.  Silly me, my inner pinko socialist must have got away from me or something.

I mean, where do I get off, expecting people to perhaps focus on responsibility for their own religious leanings—instead of worrying about what others believe?  How dare I question the commercial engines (you know, the ones that landed us in the mess we are in?) of America?

The roads will be horrid in an hour when I go to Costco to get prints for my home-made Yule cards.  The stores will be full of people buying more and more things to fill holes in their souls.  And then the castigation will begin on blogs…..buying cheap Chinese junk–that will be the wrathful cry.  Well, what are the options?  What IS made in America, besides cheeseburgers?  I made a lot of my gifts this year instead of buying.  But, still, just can’t get it all red, white, and blue.

The yarn I knit into gifts was from Turkey.  The cutting boards I am woodburning, well, some are American, but some were made in Viet Nam.  In fabric stores, I looked and looked and most of the fabrics are from China.  Those that are not from China are still not made here.  While I dislike the spreading Walmart mentality, the fact is, we don’t make much anymore.

The truth is that the 95% of Americans who are not in the top income bracket cannot afford the level of consumerism we are told me MUST maintain to keep our economy going.  Whose economy?  The toys are from China.  The computer parts are from Asia, too.  The fact is, like it or not, it is not a “black helicopter” myth—this is a global economy.  The problem is that America has become nothing except the marketplace, we stopped producing.  We need some balance back, we need to reel back the idea that we must have every thing.

End the excess, learn to treasure one or two things instead of reveling in a status of having it all.  What did I ask for this year?  That my 30 year old cuckoo clock be repaired and that friends give money to fly troops home for the holidays.  I have enough.  I feel that America and that polar bear image have something in common—both are endangered by encroaching “seas” of various sorts.

America has to find some home-spun roots of self-sufficiency, the bears have to find enough ice to rest between hunting ventures.  Unfortunately, the bears cannot will away global climate change.  But we have something the poor polar bears don’t have—the choice to make our efforts succeed if we discipline ourselves and participate fully in our society and government.  My card stock was made here in America, the images were created by me.  It is a small start at self-sufficiency, but it’s my ice cube in a rising sea.

And uncaring whether I am forgiven, to be honest. And being honest IS what I do here.  Thanksgiving is around the corner as I am notified from every quarter of American existence.

I do not “do” Thanksgiving.  If I had a job, I’d happily work that day.  Does this mean I am not thankful for various things?

No.  It means I won’t celebrate my thankfulness with a bout of gluttony followed by a day of screaming consumerism.  Also, to me, Thanksgiving is always given a very Christian gloss—so hey, fine, everyone is entitled to their holidays.

(Well, except my likewise pagan son, who lost his job for taking one such holiday, and now has been denied unemployment even though he was fired, because “a prudent person would not have taken that day for religious purposes.” Is there a lawyer somewhere out there who would like to kick some ass in Washington State?  Please??)

So, yes, if you are Christian and think that decorating your house with mythically happy Pilgrim figures and multicolored paper turkeys who are delighted to be roasted, go for it.  As for me and mine, we skip this ritual of gluttony, family-bound traffic and kick-off-consumerism-season.  Yes, I know the holiday is more than that for many people and I genuinely applaud their joy in it.  Nor do I snap at sales clerks wishing me Happy Thanksgiving (or Merry Christmas for that matter), I accept it gracefully in the spirit it is offered.

I have my own pagan festivals of official harvest-home and thanksgiving.  I don’t need this one.  If they cancel CSI Vegas for some sort of tripe presented as a ‘holiday special’ my grouchiness will be complete.  Humbug….and any three “Spirits of Thanksgiving past, present and future who intend to show up tomorrow night to teach me a lesson?  Be prepared to have your turkey-feathered asses kicked.