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Posts tagged as “materialism”

The Simple Complex

By Christine Hall on September 16, 2013

We’re being confounded by the issues.

The press, run by giant corporations by the way, wants you to believe the problems facing the United States are complicated. From the mass media we hear that we are a nation divided by a complex range of issues which they then fire at us like bullets from an Uzi, in a constant stream. We buy into this and define our stand on an issue by issue by issue basis. All you need do is take a look at your Facebook “newsfeed” to see this process at work. Over and over and over again we express our position on everything from same-sex marriage to health care rights to the environment to Julian Assange.

The Tea Party’s Feudal Lord

By Christine Hall on July 9, 2013

It boggles my mind how the tea baggers can get it so wrong.

I think most Tea Party folks probably trace their ancestry back to Europe. Most probably they imagine they originally hail from England, since once upon a time Merry Olde was considered to be our “mother country.”

The Moneylenders In The Temple of Applebee’s

By Christine Hall on January 31, 2013


In case you’re one of the two or three people who hasn’t heard the story yet, it goes like this…

A few days ago Alois Bell, a pastor at Truth in the World Deliverance Ministries Church, was part of a group of twenty who dined at an Applebee’s in St. Louis. All in all, they spent over $200, and when it was time to go they evidently asked for separate checks. Ms. Bell’s check came to $34.93. Because there were over eight people in the party an 18% tip was added automatically in keeping with Applebee’s policy–an additional $6.29.

Ms. Bell, however, remembered that when Jesus admonished his flock to “render unto Uncle Sam what is Uncle Sam’s,” he didn’t say anything about giving a little to the poor, hard working young woman who just bent over backwards trying to make sure the experience of dining at Applebee’s was as wonderful as it could be given the fact that it was, after all, Applebee’s. So, in the spirit of Christian charity, Preacher Bell struck out the $6.29 that the computer had nicely computed and printed on her check and wrote in a big fat zero.

For How Long Is Jim Crow Dead?

By Christine Hall on January 26, 2013

In a hopeful and uplifting video explaining the voter rights brouhaha that swept our nation during the last couple of elections, President William Barber of the North Carolina Conference of the NAACP, observes, “Poor people can’t compete with the rich lobbyist, so they have to have access to the ballot in order to shape the balance of power.”

httpv://youtu.be/YmtVVmessCo

Amen to that.

Certainly that’s not unknown to most, if not all, of those who sit in our state legislatures, even outside of Dixie, and attempt to turn back the pages to the days of Jim Crow.

The Agenda

By Christine Hall on July 6, 2012

The way I see it, we’re preaching to the choir. If you’re reading this, then you most likely somewhat agree with us, or you are at least tolerant of the our viewpoint. Unless you’re a trolling teabagger, then you’re here because you want to go slack jawed and slap yourself, so you can go on Facebook and post a link to our site and tell everyone how laughable we are.

If you’re the latter, you’re going to be disappointed. You’ll not find much fodder for your amazement here. The way I figure it, we’re all voting for Obama and Mitt Romney’s full of it. There’s no reason to belittle that point and keep repeating what a scumbag hypocrite he is. It just pisses off the right, and makes us feel smug enough that we risk forgetting that we have work to do. We need to be figuring out what it is we really want.

When Customers Became Consumers

By Christine Hall on March 30, 2011

We haven’t always been a nation of consumers.

I remember when Americans were customers. We bought things because we wanted them or needed them. We would have laughed in the face of anyone with the audacity to suggest that it was our patriotic duty to consume, as Bush did after 9/11. If we were faithful to a brand, that faithfulness was brought about by value or product superiority. Companies worked hard to persuade us to become their customers, and they knew better than to insult us by assuming we were forced to use their products no matter what.

“The man who speaks of the enemy is the enemy himself.”—Bertholt Brecht.

By Reg Hartt on January 29, 2011

“There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.” – Thomas Jefferson

We live in a world that runs on a war based economy. Wars create jobs. When we have peace people find jobs scarce.

I first discovered this several years ago when a man at one of my screenings of Leni Riefenstahl’s film, Triumph of the Will, after hearing me speak, gave me a copy of Jerry Mander’s book, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.

The Government We Deserve

By Christine Hall on September 12, 2010

Lincoln didn’t tell us the whole truth when he said, “…you cannot fool all of the people all the time.” What he didn’t say, perhaps because it didn’t occur to him, was that you can fool a majority of the people all of the time, especially in the age of television and now, the Internet. Unfortunately, a majority is all that matters in a democracy. Democratically speaking, four sane people and six psychotic sickos means rule by the insane. Governments in the United States have been operating on this principle for quite a while now.

Over the last six decades, since the onset of the post World War II economic boom and the beginning of television on a mass scale, we’ve become a nation in which six out of ten of us believes we can find happiness through owning things. We’ve become materialistic on a scale never before seen in human history. All of our inner turmoils are solvable through ownership. Happiness comes from purchasing a new car, a new set of clothes, or the newest most cutting edge technological item.

From the front lines of the culture wars...

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