COASTAL POST
(415)868 1600 FAX (415) 868 0502
P.O. Box 31
Bolinas CA 94924
http://www.coastalpost.com
email: [log in to unmask]
December, 2003

Shopping for Democracy?

by Frank Scott


Commissars of capital hope that the annual celebration of consumption
will soon reach its peak. Our economy is supposedly rebounding, though
the  jobs creation rate of the last quarter  would have to be
maintained  for at least five years to simply  get back  the more than
two million jobs  our economy has lost. But ministers  of the mall
preach that the holy shopping spree is needed to make everyone
prosperous again.

This festival of frenzied buying is somehow related to  popular legends
about our divine ancestry . Some of those fables inspire us to become
loving members of a single human race, however mysterious our origins
may seem. But more often,  biblical mythology acts as rationale for the
most  despicable  behaviors human beings can indulge in, and offers a
godly acceptance of the mass murder we call war.

The dominant patriarchal legends that reduce the awesome mystery of the
universe to an invisible entity with a penis, can inspire good as well
as evil. Unfortunately, those who interpret biblical testaments about
darker  experience to bring out the brighter side of humanity are
reduced to being  spiritual immaterialists, by those whose
interpretations are far more materially murderous.

Whether Jesus was a prince of peace teaching about love , or the world’s
first self-hating Jew, or the Jew  most hated by other Jews, or the
inspiration for generations of Christian murderers, or never existed at
all, is of less importance than the major holiday need:  millions of
christians, jews, agnostics , atheists and others must trek to the mall
and shop, until they drop.

Capital’s market needs consumers ,  and whether they participate in this
annual feast with innocent joy or greedy avarice makes little
difference. Shop with love,  with fear,  with spirit or with cynicism,
but shop. This is the  ritual  of the season, however much attention may
be devoted to various prayers and rites practiced during the festival of
spending.

Sadly, many who indulge these holidays by opening their hearts to an
immaterial spirit of peace will in reality simply be emptying their
wallets for a material god of war.

The middle east is where civilization is said to have begun, and it is
the geographic center of biblical belief. But more important is its
central role  in an economic religion’s warping of humanity into
acceptance  of racism and murder as somehow godly practices. It is where
much of the world’s oil is found, and that oil is what powers the
civilization that has created better lives for millions, and abject
misery for millions more. This contradiction  makes the economics, like
the religion , difficult to fathom, and  easy to bury in  simplistic
axioms that make  “buy cheap, sell dear” sound more godly than “love
they neighbor as thyself”.

The religious belief in peace and justice, honored in words,  is servant
to the  economic  pursuit of  profit, honored in deeds. Doctrines of
racial supremacy, and the organized chaos of the market under corporate
control are more important than prayers. Capital rules, and religion
serves  economic god by making the morally material  seem insignificant
compared to the spiritually immaterial .

So we shop for loved ones, and for many we don’t love , just to honor
the season , keep our jobs, maintain social appearances, and for other
reasons that make it seem  sensible to buy at holiday time , as though
there were no tomorrow. For many,  there will be no tomorrow, especially
in the “holy” land.  The Judeo-Christians of capital , who dominate not
in  number of believers but in number of  weapons , presently focus
their attention on that area , which looms large in both religious and
economic mythology.


There is profit in making weapons that cause bloodshed , and there is
profit in making Band-Aids to stop the bleeding. The manufacturers,
salesclerks and transporters of weapons and Band-Aids  earn  paychecks
and create  profit, without any thought on their part of loss, good or
evil. But the moral madness, the colossal contradiction of capital is
that profit pursuit  means that both war and peace can ring up sales ,
so what difference does it make whether we love one another, or hate one
another? Six of one, half a dozen of the other,  a dollar is a dollar,
yay god.

Iraq can have its government and infrastructure  destroyed by the
corporate Likudniks of USrael, and then rebuilt, at a profit, by the
same corporate Likudniks of USrael. A nation can be established to
provide a homeland for a   tortured people, and become a racist
colonial power , creating another   tortured people . And  religious
believers, inspired by biblical testaments old and new, can fill the air
with song, joy and tales of human wisdom , just as they fill that same
air with bombs, bullets and acts of inhuman terror.

We can try to shop with love in our hearts , but as long as our
governing policies are driven by racial supremacy and  disrespect for
most of  humanity, we’ll never spend enough to blot out reality, even
for just a single holiday. A religious theory of  love and peace that is
actualized into a political practice of hate and war is a contradiction
as large as the economic foundation on which it rests. Resolving that
contradiction would be a much greater good than emptying the malls of
product.

As we shop - if we haven’t maxed out our plastic - let’s remember that
millions of our own people  are unemployed, unhoused and unhappy at this
supposedly joyous time. And as many of us bewail - and many profit from
the bewailing - the fanatics who preside over our system of godly serial
killing, remember that we live in a democracy. It is ultimately  our
responsibility that these dreadful dimwits are in power. The best gift
we can give ourselves  is to replace  the U.S. government with a real
democracy. That can’t be accomplished by passive consumers or
parishioners, but only by active citizens.  Happy holiday.

Copyright (c) 2003 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.

             This text may be used and shared in accordance with the
             fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be
           archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that
            the author is notified and no fee is charged for access.
           Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on
          other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the author

frank scott
email: [log in to unmask]
225 laurel place, san rafael ca. 94901
(415)457 2415   fax(415)457 4791