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I had an epiphany in my local Target store the other day that I fucking HATE Christmas. It’s not really Christmas itself that I hate but I loathe what it has become under the same 'suck out the marrow' form of looter capitalism that has sucked the soul out of this country and turned it’s inhabitants into mindless consumerist zombies. Laissez faire, tooth fang and nail fuck you capitalism has done to Christmas exactly what hit has done to every thing else, it has destroyed, debauched, devalued and dehumanized it to the point where it is every bit as rotten as the proverbial triple-decker toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce.The big ‘free’ market “up yours” of Wall Street hack and current U.S. Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson’s big whoop de fucking doo subprime rescue plan which really doesn’t help many at all other than the same high rolling parasites who have been fleecing America ever since Reagan’s war on the middle class kicked off a quarter of a century ago. It really is nothing more an act of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation performed by proxy on the rotting carcass of the housing bubble and will ultimately be as effective as a band aid on a sucking chest wound. Paul Krugman of the damned liberal New York Times says as much in his Monday column Henry Paulson’s Priorities:
Mr. Paulson’s plan — or, to use its official name, the Hope Now Alliance plan — is entirely focused on reducing investor losses. Any minor relief it might provide to troubled borrowers is clearly incidental. And it is does nothing for the victims of predatory lending.
So this is nothing but window dressing designed to once again bail out the markets while giving the pocket punditry talking points to pump up consumer confidence for the critically important holiday shopping season. In addition to Goldman Sachs lackey Paulson’s scheme Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will inevitably cave in to pressure to preside over yet another larger than necessary interest rate cut today week which may have the Wall Street pigs squealing with holiday glee as the are able to stay at the trough for a bit longer but will further erode the power of the freefalling dollar which will send inflation flying higher than that Santa's sleigh. All of this Republican happy horseshit about ‘free’ markets is just that because while the official dogma of no government intervention in the avarice and chicanery of the markets goes by the wayside whenever the looters need to be bailed out. Crony capitalism ensures that the game stays rigged with the full compliance of the government then used by the moneychangers to keep the working folk at a disadvantage and drowning in debt. HO HO HO!
The induced euphoria of the additional rate cuts will allow for enough seasonal glee for those who only read the headlines or take the thirty second assemblages of sound bytes over at CNN as real news to go forth and shop therefore allowing the financial gamesters to show profitable fourth quarter results. The biggest thing as far as the actions of Paulson and Bernanke though is to keep the tanking economy patched together just long enough so that it can be dumped on the feckless, soulless, win at any cost even if it means stabbing your party base in the back Democrats. Welcome to Washington Hillary, you have just won two endless wars and a depression which you and your rotten, conniving party of pollsters, idiotic consultants, flim flam artists and hangers on couldn’t be more deserving of due to the great betrayal of 2007.
But I digress…
As I walked through the Target store I was for some weird reason acutely more aware of my surroundings than usual and amazed at the cacophony of the shrieking of little brats throwing tantrums over what the newest gadgets and trendiest toys that they wanted on that very day rather than waiting for a visit from Old Saint Nick. It was mass madness with a run on cheap DVD’s, gauche outdoor Christmas decorations and cut rate electronics. The store’s aisles were filled by poorly dressed, shuffling mainly corpulent creatures who were babbling incessantly into their cell phones and filling their bright red plastic shopping carts to overflowing with Chinese made junk. I don’t know if anyone has seen any of the latest holiday shopping commercials but the one for Best Buy where when the family is on the way to grandma’s house daddy comments that mommy can open her gift from you know where as soon as they get back home. There is this smiling old lady standing out front of a nice house and waving as the mini-van approaches when mommy says “I think we’ve done enough here” and they whip their vehicle around and head for home leaving grandma standing there with her mouth open. Nice message, just fuck grandma so mom’s fat ass can get home for her new I pod shuffle.
As my good friend Dr. Bob so eloquently puts it:
I could go on forever and far be it for me to rail against materialism because I buy some of this shit, too. However, it’s like the old Peanuts strip where Charlie Brown is busting on his friends for being so greedy and hypocritical at Christmas and finally Violet (I think) says, you are no different than we are because you are just as greedy as the rest of us. C. Brown responds, “I am too, I feel guilty about it.” At least I can see the forest and the trees.
What kind of a people are we becoming, when everything we see on TV is like one big Survivor episode, a Machiavellian society where any lie or betrayal is ok as long as it’s done to win the game. Or get the beer. Or the new I-phone. If the youth of today seem like selfish jerks (and maybe they aren’t because everyone who is older hates on kids), maybe they have a reason. They’ve been programmed to do what feels good and to lookout for number one. Sacrifice? Doing the right thing? Please.
Like when people say, “Oh, you really have to be nice to others and care for the less fortunate this time of year.” Really? What about the other 11 fucking months? Do you think Jesus won’t figure out that 30 days of good, Christian behavior doesn’t quite outweigh 270 days of being a selfish prick? You should be nice to people year-round, unless you have a good reason not to.
What the fuck is wrong with us? Where will it end?
Maybe it is for the best we will all be eating lizards and living in Canada in fifty years since the rest of the US will be too hot to support us. Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas.
I am also becoming sick to death of the annual right-wing spewing of low rent outrage over the perceived war on Christmas where every isolated incident of a perceived slight of the ‘Christian’ version of the holiday is pounced upon with the great War On Christmas. The overpaid bloviating shitheads like Bill O’Reilly take to the airwaves to screech at the diabolical grand conspiracy of secular liberal Grinches while large print books directed at those with third grade reading skills and destined to be moldering in land fills are written by think tank ghost writers who then find some third rate hack to affix his name as the actual author as though it gives such trash legitimacy. I just don’t get why anybody would ever buy such crap and I also include books adorned with the names of Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, David Horowitz and every other fascist freak. Hell, any decent person would be ashamed to be seen paging through one in a local book store but since the Republican target market shares the same guiltless predatory brain type as pederasts and hard core degenerates into anal kink sadomasochism they just don’t have the common decency to exhibit any sort of guilt when among the decent folk. They should just order this shit from some online conservative book club where they can find a deal where they’ll throw in the trade paperback edition of Mein Kampf along with free shipping.
The metaphorical War on Christmas appeals to the same type of low grade, knuckle dragging white trash that would drive around a beater with a bumper sticker affixed that says “At least I can still smoke in my car” the plaintive wail of a clueless peckerwood who cares not one iota that he can be dragged away by private paramilitary thugs, held for life in a dark little cell and tortured until he has the mental capacity of a piece of furniture. Welcome to the land of the fucked and doomed where something as obviously needed as a War On Stupidity is forsaken while mouth breathing freaks go to war over nativity displays and badger and harangue poor store clerks for wishing them the more inclusive “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. It’s enough to make you want to gag on your eggnog.
It’s all just more of the standard divisive bread and butter Republican demagogy to use emotional wedge issues targeted towards retrograde morons in order to distract them from the catastrophic problems that they have created during their looting spree and establishment of a surveillance society. Propagandists like Frank Luntz, Karl Rove and the the neocon disciples of Leo Strauss are vigorous adherents to the tactic of using religion to distract and divide in order to exercise control over the masses and this is yet another wonderful example of just how effective that the strategy can be in pitting the poor against the poor and allowing for the ruling elite to focus on the larger goals of laying wasted to the system itself. In an interesting footnote one early proponent of the taking the ‘Christ out of Christmas’ theory was none other than the John Birch Society and in 1959 issued a pamphlet entitled "There Goes Christmas?!" which undoubtedly is included in the Rove library of propaganda although the JBS can now be considered moderates in comparison to the Republican junta that has declared war on America.
It’s much easier for the ignorant masses to relate to the vast liberal conspiracy that challenges their God, their security and their exceptionalism than to bother with the inconvenient truths that tens of millions are uninsured, the economy is circling the drain (no matter what the cooked official stats say), the body bags keep coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and parents are putting their kids to bed cold and hungry and without Christmas gifts at all due to the rapacious post-Reagan culture of cruelty that really affect their lives. It’s always easier to look for scapegoats upon which to transfer the sins of a society in which the consequences of decadence will be coming home to roost very soon.
America’s largest retailer Wal Mart caved to pressure and is not only now saying “Merry Christmas” to shoppers with a jones for toxic lead paint coated toys and other low grade imports and according to Bloomberg has:
Two years ago, the discount chain substituted the word ''holiday'' for Christmas references and encouraged store greeters to do the same, in line with other retailers' removal of ''Christmas'' from advertising and stores.
Now, after criticism from religious groups, Wal-Mart is getting back in the spirit. For the first time, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based merchant is bringing Santas into its 3,407 stores. And, following an experiment at a few locations last year, the retailer has set up a ''Christmas Shop'' in each of its 1,500 outlets with garden centers.
''This is still a nation where the majority of the people consider themselves Christian,'' said Patricia Edwards, a Seattle-based portfolio manager at Wentworth, Hauser & Violich, with $13.4 billion in assets including Wal-Mart shares.
Only in this sad nation populated by knuckle dragging miscreants, raptureheads, singing pigs, boiling frogs, philistines and fatsos where the collective intelligence and knowledge of the average American could be rolled up into a little ball to the point where it could fit neatly inside of Brittney Spears’ navel could something as preposterous as this be happening. I mean just please explain to me just what in the fuck is Christian about Santa Claus who long ago relegated Jesus to second banana in the land of the terminally fucked and willfully dumb. But although Wal-Mart is first and foremost your holiday emporium for Christianity and patriotism don’t worry, if you happen to be a Jew who celebrates Hanukah or if you are black and celebrate Kwanzaa the all-American folks at your neighborhood superstore will still gladly accept your money for foreign manufactured crap whether you are a true American (aka Christian) or not.
American Christmas is in and of itself the ultimate triumph of capitalist propaganda as it is far more geared towards getting consumers out to the malls and big box stores to participate in the gross annual pagan festival of rampant consumerism that is the holiday shopping season than in celebrating any religious aspects. In America Jesus Christ was long ago banished to playing second banana to Santa Claus in the land where the ultimate holiday season currency is not frankincense and muir but Visa and Mastercard. While the debate rages over meaningless drivel
stress and spending overkill, racking the plastic and indulging the already spoiled and ignorant brood with increasingly expensive toys and electronic gadgets are what really make the bells jingle or more precisely beep now that cash registers have become high tech. Ho Ho Ho, Santa’s on his way and be it the politically correct ‘Season’s Greetings’ or the traditionalist and currently under siege by the liberal heathens ‘Merry Christmas’ you can count on one thing and that is that that the banks and credit card companies are singing Joy to the World off our national profligate holiday spending spree.
The firing up of the lunatic fringe is a given as demagogues like O’Reilly and his fellow GOP shills throw yule log after yule log on the smoldering fire of divisiveness and ill will towards men that is not only contrary to the peaceful meaning of the holiday spirit that Christmas is supposed to be about but ironically it is all for a cause that is as phony as that of old Saint Nick flying through the skies in a reindeer driven sleigh: brace yourself for this one…Christmas Day is more than likely not even the birthday of Jesus Christ! That’s right, December 25 is an arbitrary day picked by the Roman emperor Constantine. The true birthday of Jesus could be on Halloween, St. Patricks Day (most likely), Martin Luther King Day or even….GASP…Gay Pride Day.
And to further rebut the fallacious lie of the right I decided to do an experiment last night by hopping into my sled for a trip trough several local neighborhoods where I observed with my own eyes the blowup snowmen, Frinches, santas and even a Homer Simpson that out-numbered the presence of inflatable Jesus and/or nativity scenes by 46 to 5 and I live in a RED STATE.
HO HO HO! Let the fascist freaks go stick that in their stockings
And I will close with this wonderful little piece of sarcasm by John Breneman of The Boston Herald entitled War on Christmas: A Survival Guide that mocks the right-wingers and their seasonal sowing of the seeds of bullshit – this is wonderful.
Merry Christmas! Such a joyous time of year. Peace on Earth. Goodwill to Man.
But alas, yuletide revelers, the spirit of the season is under siege. The War on Christmas is raging and media pundits are trumpeting the news: The manger is in danger! No Santa Claus or public Christmas tree is safe from the forces of Grinch-o-fascism!
In Australia, Santa is banned from saying “Ho! Ho! Ho!” America’s surgeon general says jolly old (morbidly obese) Saint Nick is a bad role model for the children. And right here in Massachusetts, a middle school principal canceled a field trip to New York City to see “Miracle on 34st Street,” under heavy fire from pinko-cheeked extremists.
Yes, Virginia, new intelligence suggests the Christmas haters are stocking their arsenals with Intercontintental Ballistic Mistletoe and Weapons of Midnight Mass Destruction.
So, how does pro-Kringle America protect itself from this Axis of Christmas Evil? You can start by adding a few of the items below to your family’s Christmas wish list:
- Feliz Navidad Jalapeno Pepper Spray: Next time an anti-Christmas insurgent wishes you “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” one quick blast to the face and we guarantee the visions dancing in his head will not be of sugar plums.
- Uranium Yellow Fruitcake: Packed with volatile enriched uranium, this weaponized fruitcake is indistinguishable from that rock-hard, butt-ugly blob you get every year from Aunt Mabel. When deployed it incapacitates all Christmas haters in a 500-foot radius.
- The What Would Jesus Do Crossbow: Enemies of Christmas disrespect Hisbirthday at their own peril, because the Scrooge Slayer 5000 is lovingly crafted to take down a 200-pound Jesus hater from up to 300 yards away.
- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Taser: This charming keychain reindeer is actually a powerful 50,000-volt Taser capable of slaying even the most annoying Noel naysayer.
- Snow-Globe Hand Grenade: Watch as snow flakes flutter silently over a miniature New England village - or pull the pin and hurl it, sending even the naughtiest Christmas assailant straight to Kingdom come.
- Elfin Body Guard: Sure, he looks like a mild-mannered Munchkin, but this pointy-shoed little freedom fighter can subdue an anti-Christmas goon faster than you can say “Love Thy Neighbor.”
- O Tannen-Bomb: Looks like an ordinary Christmas tree, but when godless heretics gather to demand its removal, it explodes into a decorative but deadly fireball.
It’s time for all of us to move past this debasing of Christmas by moneychangers, charlatans, religions fanatics and hate mongers, because as Clark Griswold's cousin Eddie so eloquently put it in the classic National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation: “Merry Christmas, The shitter’s full”
