America’s True Religion: Shopping

[cbayer]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/03/americas-true-religion-shopping/

DECEMBER 03, 2012

The Triumph of Consumerism
America’s True Religion: Shopping
by LAWRENCE S. WITTNER

Although fundamentalist fanatics have been working for decades to turn the United States into a “Christian nation,” they have not had much success along different religion: shopping.

After all, in this “holiday season” the dominant activity does not seem to be traditional religious worship or prayer. The recently-concluded Black Friday provided the occasion not only for an orgy of consumer spending, but for ferocious action by screaming mobs of shoppers who engaged in mass riotsin their desperate attempts to obtain a variety of products. The frenzied participants were not starving, impoverished peasants or product-deprived refugees from communist nations but reasonably comfortable, middle-class Americans. Their desperation was not driven by hunger. They simply wanted … more!

And now that the nation enters its Christmas shopping spree — conveniently begun in November, to allow plenty of time for the practice — there will undoubtedly be lots more commodity fetishism. The shopping malls are already alive with the Christmas music designed to encourage purchases, while visions of rising sales figures dance through the heads of happy store managers.

All of this, of course, leads to complaints by traditional religious believers about the commercialization of Christmas. Of course, the bloviators on Fox News seek to blame the decline of religious feeling during the Christmas season upon liberal thought. But the hard reality is that Jesus in the manger or bleeding on the cross has less appeal to many Americans that do the latest cellphones and other commercial gadgetry.

more at link

[TygrBright]

1. Good post. I especially like this:

>> Imagine the political future of a candidate for public office who said: “There has been enough talk of economic growth and competition as the solutions to our problems. Our real challenges as Americans are to limit our consumption to what we genuinely need, to share with others who are less fortunate than we are, and to halt the plunder of our planet’s resources and the destruction of our environment.” <<

Imagine, indeed.

You know, when I was young, the "conservative" viewpoint was that we needed to rely less on buying stuff and nurture our families, our connection to our land and work, and traditional ways of enjoying ourselves, as in church suppers, community fairs, reading to the kids, etc. The darned "liberals" were the ones who saw trade and commerce and the freedom to move to cities and acquire endless stuff affordable to everyone as a desirable vision.

I'm over-simplifying and over-drawing the picture, of course, but there is some truth there.

What a long, strange trip it's been.

reminiscently,
Bright

[cbayer]

2. Hey, you! Nice to see you around these parts.

I agree with your description of what *conservative* used to be. Then they were politically co-opted. Their anti-choice and anti-GLBT positions were *harvested* by the neo-cons, who saw a powerful voting bloc.