Tuesday, July 11, 2006

...and I know you believe this crap: "Affluenza"

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I just skimmed through the dopiest, most hateful, demonizing book: Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, based on a PBS documentary by John De Graaf, David Wayn, and Thomas H. Naylor.

It claims that "the Market Values" are killing "the American Family" and the earth, and all that crapola. It laments that we spend more time shopping than going to church. Alas, heaven forfend that we pursue our own, evil selfish values when we could be sitting in front of a scam artist, promising us riches after death--or, of course, watching McPBS (paid for by that restaurant you made every indication of despising, but didn't mention, PBS). It allies itself with and quotes fundamentalist ministers and downright lies in order to prove just how evil, ugly, and shallow we all are for buying stuff at discount prices.

The ideology at Focus on the Family is decidedly free-market capitalist , but not without reservations

(like--how do you have a free market under a theocracy?--alleee)
like those expressed by Stanton. "The market in a very real sense is hostile to the family," he contends.

(you mean the power imbalance of the partiarchy, or the hostility towards a God who demands the first of everything for himself?)
"It needs to expand itself."

(with a little help from force, right? Meaning an enslaved market, not a free one.)
It needs to bring in new consumers. And quite tragically, it brings in new consumers at almost any price.

(except by gunpoint, like the state, and threat of eternal hell, like your church.)
Do we go after a sale even pitting a child against a parent?

(sound familiar?)
We would contend that is too far.

(public schools, drug war, religion, etc.)

If you wanna read this book, fine. I hope you have a good laugh. I always enjoy a good book with no sense of morality. I have a little weird idea: if you don't like consumerism, don't "over-consume." Just stop whining and complaining about everyone else.

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