Praise, Almighty Shopper, from Whom All Blessing Flow
Praise Thee, all creatures here below;
Praise Thee above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Thy Wallet, Thy Blessed Cart and Credit Card.
We praise Thee Shopper!
It is You, Shopper, and only You, whose power exceeds the massive predatory behemoths, the mighty Corporate Persons On High. The Blessed Job Creators shudder when they see indications that You might be withdrawing the Sacrament of Your Shopping from them. It is You, Shopper, who gives them the nourishment to continue the rampage of the Everlasting Free Market. They know this and they fear You.
Yes, they fear Thee, Mighty Shopper!
Trillions of dollars are spent on You, Shopper: to study Your smallest tics and preferences, to cajole and seduce You, that You might alter Your gaze slightly and grace with Your Sacred Credit Cards the inventories of the Glorious Persons who own our government. That You might sign loans for the shiny vehicles they assiduously advertise, meticulously display and obsequiously try to manipulate You into purchasing. That You might sign lifetime pledges for overvalued homes, pledges they leverage into complex systems of monetary euphemisms for unmitigated greed.
If we went into stores only when we needed to buy something, and if once there we bought only what we needed, the economy would collapse, boom.
Fortunately, the economic party that has been the second half of the twentieth century has fostered more shopping than anyone would have predicted, more shopping than has ever taken place anywhere at any time. (Paco Underhill Why We Buy: the Science of Shopping)
Good job, Shopper!
Yet, in Your Humility, You do not wield Your power. You meekly wait in line, pay Your bills, throw the useless crap You bought last week into the garbage and trudge to Your tiny cubicles in the maws of the Corporate Persons On High who pay You with Your own money that You spent on the same worthless crap You helped them produce.
It is time, Shopper!
It is time for You to Rise Up!
Rise up and cast off the chains of drudgery!
Pound Your shopping carts into ploughshares!
Tear up highways for gardens!
Realize Your power!
Walk away from the hamster wheel and watch those Corporate Persons On High crumble to dust. For they are nothing. Nothing!
They are nothing without You, Shopper!
Nothing but hollow shells around piles of useless brickabrack without You. Without You, Shopper, they will starve, shrivel and die!
You have been misled. You have become convinced You are powerless. You have been told your Job depends upon the Blessed Job Creating Corporate Persons On High. You have been lied to. You have been deceived into believing a Job is Good Work.
Occupy Your Job, Shopper!
Occupy Your Occupation!
Turn drudgery into Good Work!
The real name of our connection to this everywhere different and differently named earth is "work." We are connected by work even to the places where we don't work, for all places are connected; it is clear by now that we cannot exempt one place from our ruin of another. The name of our proper connection to the earth is "good work," for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where it is done, it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the thing that it makes and the user of the made thing. Good work is always modestly scaled, for it cannot ignore either the nature of individual places or the differences between places, and it always involves a sort of religious humility, for not everything is known. Good work can be defined only in particularity, for it must be defined a little differently for every one of the places and every one of the workers on the earth.
The name of our present society's connection to the earth is "bad work" - work that is only generally and crudely defined, that enacts a dependence that is ill understood, that enacts no affection and gives no honor. Every one of us is to some extent guilty of this bad work. This guilt does not mean that we must indulge in a lot of breastbeating and confession; it means only that there is much good work to be done by every one of us and that we must begin to do it. All of us are responsible for bad work, not so much because we do it ourselves as because we have it done for us by other people. – Wendell Berry
It must start with You, Shopper. For You are the ultimate source of power. You are the Key that will unlock the Doom of the Market Machine that devours us all and the planet we live upon.
Cast Your chains into the Mountain of Doom!
Watch Barad-Dur collapse!
All Praise to Thee, Shopper!
10:09 AM PT: Now let us say the Te deum Laudamus for Black Friday:
(Thanks to commonmass in the comments for this.)
We praise thee, O Commerce; we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee, avarice everlasting.
To thee all politicians cry aloud,
Wall Street and all the Powers therein.
To the David Brooks and NPR continually do cry:
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Mammon;
Washington and Wall Street are full of the majesty of thy glory.
The glorious company™ of the Robber Barons praise thee.
The goodly fellowship of the Koch Brothers praise thee.
The noble army of Fox News praise thee.
The Holy Church of Capitalism throughout the world doth
acknowledge thee,
McKinley, of an infinite majesty,
thine adorable, true and only Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge,
and also the Holy Ghost, Reagan.
Thou art the king of Finance, O Wall Street.
Thou art the everlasting Son of Capitalism.
When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man,
thou didst humble thyself to be born of a three million dollar quarterly bonus.
When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death upon default swap instruments, thou didst open the kingdom of legalized gambling unto the Democrats and all believers.
Thou sittest at the right hand of the President, in the glory of Ben Bernanke.
We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge, and take away our social safety net.
We therefore pray thee, help thy media,
whom thou hast threatened with blackmail,
Martyr them among those you have crushed under your heels,
and have NPR glorify them in puff pieces at the end of the hour.
AMEN.