How much more of its soul will America sell to buy cheap stuff?

[Skidmore]

Down the slippery slope to peridition we slide grabbing baubles and trinkets as we go. We've let them allow our infrastructure to decay, or outright sell it to the highest bidder. We've let them give away whole industries to other nations. We've allowed our labor laws to be stripped and the workers' unions to be overrun with corruption and eviscerated. We've allowed Congress, the "Peoples' House", to give away the war powers, power of oversight, and the power of the purse to a corrupt despot and his cronies. The treasury has been robbed and our children fed into the maw of a war machine over cheap fuel. We look at the problem of global warming and its repercussions and do not DEMAND that the legislators build a fire under the auto industry or sanction the petroleum industry. We worship at the altar of designer chic while ignoring the needs of the youngest and the oldest among us. We worship youth and try to buy it or starve or puke our way to an unrealistic ideal while neglecting to provide basic preventive care to people so they don't develop diseases to begin with. We take into our bodies poison through our food and drink and pop pills so that we do not have to deal with our emotions. We are killing ourselves and our nation. And for what? Cheap stuff.

[Horse with no Name]

1. Outstanding synopsis

and frightfully true.:(
K&R

[opihimoimoi]

2. Take up writing ...ya might get to the TOP

Good job here....K&R

[htuttle]

3. Stalin (or Lenin, depending on who you talk to) once said:

"When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope".

[AndyA]

4. Americans have become cheap, selfish, lazy people.

As long as things are OK for them, they don't really care about anything or anybody else. Gas can go through the roof someplace else, as long as they can still afford to gas up and go shopping at Wal-Mart, well then that's OK.

They believe what they are told by authority figures, without questioning why things don't seem to add up. Take George Bush, for instance. He says he's a Christian man. He goes to church on Sundays. He tells us he prays to God, and God talks to him. (Shades of Oral Roberts!)

But no one seems to stop and wonder why the man doesn't actually DO anything that's Christian. Try to name something. He goes through all the actions of being a Christian, but the substance is not there.

Yet many Americans still believe Bush is a good Christian man.

I'm thankful that our forefathers had more spine than the current crop of Americans, we would have never won any of our previous challenges with the bunch we have today.

The good news is that people are beginning to wake up, as represented here at DU, so with that awareness comes a new breed of patriot - and just in the nick of time!

[nealmhughes]

5. When people stop having decently paying jobs;

when the cost of health care has made us into a two caste society: those with insurance and those without; when the textile and shoe industries in the USA have been destroyed; when industrial agriculture has made "small" farmers obsolete (they are in effect agents of the giants such as ConAgra, ADM, Tyson, etc.) and we are as fetishistic in our practices as those farmers who plowed in order to bring rain by our use of massive amounts of pesticides, depletion of our Central State aquifers; when China begins to make automobiles, then the end has come. Without an industrial and agricultural base, the USA, the richest and most varied parcel of real estate ever stolen from the indigenous who actually crossed from Asia, then the end is nigh. Oh, wait! China ought to be making cars soon. Now we can have peons making our clothing, autos, and electronics!

[AX10]

6. The problem you state has gotten exponetially worse since 2000.

2001 seemed to be the last "sane" year, relativly speaking.

[The2ndWheel]

7. Entropy

I'd say as much as it can.

[Horse with no Name]

8. Kick.

Can we have a few more rec's for this perfect piece of prose?

[Initech]

9. It's official - we now live on the third Wal-Mart from the sun.

Really, my hatred for American consumer culture knows no bounds. I'm sick of being labeled a consumer (more like a walking dollar sign) by Pepsi and Coke. I'm sick of seeing ads for erectile dysfunction and depression pills airing every 30 seconds. I'm sick of our jobs being outsourced to India and China. I'm sick of the high cost of insurance, NECESSARY medication, gas and general overall living. I hate the fact that I live in LA and cant even find an apartment to rent on the salary I make. I hate this crap.