Every year some MSM tool wheels out the bogus 'War on Christmas' in an attempt to show that the left is godless, pagan, satanist, or, worse yet, secular humanist. I say this year we give them a real War on Christmas, but not the kind they are thinking of.
Eleven months into allegedly progressive administration of Barrack Obama, amidst a majority of Democrats in both the House and Senate, it seems evident that the interests of the poor and working people of America remain almost completely unrepresented. Health Care Reform is a joke. The infrastructure is still coming apart at every nail. Our schools continue to slip backward; the million jobs allegedly created are a drop in a swimming pool. And our wars of empire, against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, continue with no end in sight.
These facts should come as a no surprise to educated observers of US politics; the electorate has been less important than corporations and millionaires for at least a generation. Our system of lobbying and campaign contributing are merely legalized bribery, and when the system is absolutely based on bribery, we can never and will never win.
Forming our own PACs and interest groups and phoning our representatives might be effective, sometimes, at least around the margins, and we should not give up on these methods. Our voices, however, are not heard because we have done nothing to make our government care about our voices.
Your elected representatives care when they get a phone call from Exxon because they know that Exxon can and will hurt or help the representative precisely as Exxon sees fit. Your representative does not know the actual power of Exxon, because that power is now so large as to be utterly unfathomable to mortals, but he knows that Exxon is vastly more powerful and all the constituents in the all the districts in all the nations.
One of the biggest forces in our political marginalization is gradual transition of the US from a manufacturing economy to a consuming economy. With about 5% of the world’s population, the US consumes about 25% of the world’s resources.
Ecologically, this fact is a disaster, but there are other ramifications that might be useful. Exxon, Microsoft, and many other corporate titans depend on US consumers to keep the profits flowing it at maximum speed and volume. The economies of our manufacturing rivals, China, Mexico, etc. all depend on certain levels of sales to US consumers.
And indeed, we are wonderful consumers. Americans will buy everything and anything, provided the price is set at the right point and that it is marketed correctly. US consumers buy the best and most complex personal messaging devices ever mass-marketed, a trend with no end in sight, and despite this, most of us still fail to communicate. We spend huge amounts on programmed canned entertainment, movies, TV shows, video games, despite the fact that we all claim to have zero leisure time. Some US consumers have even purchased a personal transportation device called the ‘Segway,’ which at a cost of $5700 remains the least useful and least versatile vehicle ever to be commercially produced. In our society, the $80,000 kitchen is not considered a luxury.
We spend billions on professional nail trimmings, body waxing, gym memberships, cable and internet services, artificial tans and color consulting.
Six times or more per every hour of broadcast media, we are treated to the most artful and sophisticate of all propaganda ever created by human hand, entreating us to buy merchandise and use services,.
Despite the 3-decade orgy of consumption however, many Americans have been left behind. And in the last 2 years, many more are joining their ranks. Yes, despite easy terms and ubiquitous credit, there are many who won’t be able to join us at the trough. These are the persons whose income is sufficiently low that they must face reality.
In the roughly 30 years of war against American workers, their have been heavy losses in the income, vacation, security, and of course health coverage. But concurrent with the diminishing potency of the American worker have been an ongoing series of corporate-government measures designed to jazz consumer spending. These measures mostly boil down to loosening credit, bringing in cheap import goods, and keeping inflation low. I speculate there are 2 purposes to goosing consumer spending: 1) pacify disgruntled workers 2) maintain profits at the uppermost level of the consumer economy.
Here is the thing: unless you are a member of the Trump or Hilton class, your income, in real terms, is either stagnating or shrinking. Also, unless you are in safely ensconced in the economic stratosphere, you are always one or two pen-strokes away from a layoff or a foreclosure.
And now at this very moment we are on the leading edge of the silliest of seasons, the peak hour of the consumer year, the Christmas Season. This is the time when retailers and manufacturers watch us hungrily, like cattlemen at the stockyards.
The plutonomists still want us to buy stuff, and they bombard us with the most artful, the most high tech, and most persuasive propaganda 24/7. Black Friday, when the American Consumer goes full-tilt boogie. That suggests to me an opportunity. They want us to buy stuff, so maybe we should stop buying. Anything. Everything. I suppose we’ll have to buy groceries, maybe underwear and socks as well.
There is no reason not to declare War on Christmas. Not war on the Christian Christmas, nor the Pagan Christmas, nor non-secular Christmas, but war on the Economic Christmas. War on the consumer orgy of dubious goods and frivolous services. War on the soul-destroying junk by which we are normally pacified.
Many would object to this idea, saying that the economy depends on the consumer spending of the Christmas Season.
But in the final analysis, the consumer economy is doing nothing for the American Worker. Moreover, this economy has metastatic cancer. Any ‘boost’ it may get from Christmas spending is temporary and illusory, akin to giving a terminal patient a combination of B-12, amphetamines, and opiates. At the top of the pyramid, a few dozen interlocked CEO’s and a couple thousand shareholders stand to make a tidy sum, while the rest of us scramble for peanuts, most ending up with only shells.
There are legions of accountants awaiting sales figures this Friday, and wouldn’t it be swell to send them them a message that their economy stinks? Wouldn’t it be something if every week in December we sent them the same message? Wouldn’t it be great if we sent that message every month until we became something other than just consumers?
What if nobody bought new toys, new clothing, new electronics, new sports equipment, new books this year? How about no lights or decorations? No Christmas trees, no cards or flowers? How about Hamburger Helper for Christmas Dinner this year? How about we reduce driving as much as possible? How about no trips to the cineplex or the video-rental? How about a full-scale consumer strike, no new nothing except basic food items?
It’s true, the first to feel real pain would be all retail workers. Perhaps we could donate what we would have spent to a big relief fund for those poor souls. Odds are, before this is through, we’ll be unemployed as well so we can feel the pain first hand. And maybe its better that way. Maybe we’d get change if this rotten economy weren’t camouflaged by bustling shopping malls and new clothes.
But it’s crunch time people. The forces of the plutonomy overpower and outclass us in every mode imaginable. The can outlobby us, outbribe us, outspeak us, and they own everything anyway. As long as we are playing the game by gentlemen’s rules, they will win. Voting, calling your senator, and carrying signs don’t cut it anymore.
You ask me, it’s time for a consumer strike, and make it a long one at that. Nothing’s really going to change until the people with the real power feel a little pain. So let’s get them where it hurts. Scare them at least.
The question is then, what next? Where are they vulnerable, what do we do to make them feel our pain?
Let’s make the War on Christmas the opening salvo in bigger fight.