Black Friday heals America’s nonexistent wounds - By Mark Morford
Because America.
It’s good to realize, in times of international horror and savage bloodshed, when terrified refugees are fleeing impossible levels of violence we here in the States cannot possibly comprehend, when fundamentalist thugs murder hundreds in one of the world’s most beautiful, historic cities (and in many other places this year, and even deadlier), when zealots are furious and bombs are flying, it’s good to note that America, a nation almost completely immune to these horrors and yet somehow also the most paranoid, reactionary and mal-educated of all, can still lean on its deepest values to find solace.
No, not from God, silly. Not from any church, or political rhetoric, or from baffled TV pundits or racist Republicans desperate for a new group to demonize.
It’s shopping, of course. Our balm, as always, comes from aggressive retail therapy writ large and hallowed beyond words, beyond suffering, beyond crushing credit card debt. It’s the American way, no?
Of course it’s true. Shopping – Black Friday in particular – is America’s truest religion, our biggest distraction and, next to fear and guns, our most rabid addiction. In a nation almost completely devoid of true history to call its own, we turn instead to our proud status as the world’s No. 1 consumer of goods and resources as the best evidence we can muster that All is Still OK Because Hey Look I Scored a Kindle for Twenty Bucks, So the Terrorists Lose Again.
The rest: http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2015/11/18/black-friday-heals-americas-nonexistent-wounds/
