OpEdNews - Page 3 of Article: <b>Religio-Facism</b>

Not feeling cool enough? Smoke Chesterfields. Feel empty inside? drink Chivas Regal. Don 't feel important? Buy a Cadillac. This was important. While the Cold War was great for expansion of the military industrial complex it produced a surplus of needed consumer goods because there was no world market. Consequently we had all of the needs met of those who could afford them and so we had to create new "needs ". Consumerism of unneeded things became the basis of the economy, and advertising became the vehicle for pushing it.

The rise of media isolation and advertising brought about massive disruption of the restored family and community interactions in the post war era. It was common before television for people to go to each others homes to "visit ", to participate in community functions and actions and to communicate and participate in our own and each other lives. Television, video games, I-pods and a society based on cars all are isolate and set up barriers between people.

Involvement in traditional churches, local government and civic organizations dropped. Shyster preachers got good at the game. The fastest growing churches today are non-denominational mega churches that depend heavily on television. Some are drive in churches so that you don 't have to get out of your cars or talk to anyone else. Most of these offer a virtual family of "common values " but really rely on association based on common manufactured fears. Confused about your feelings of alienation the increasing insecurity of global capitalism, don 't examine the cause, get Jesus and find somebody who is different to blame.

People 's power in the real world depends on communicating their hopes and fears, interpreting and processing outside information, conceiving and carrying out mutual solutions. Mass media and the automobile driven economy began the process of breaking down both family and community. We lost our place in the family, community, the natural world. In its place there was an emptiness, a hollow place, and an insatiable need we were taught to ignore in the name of rugged individualism. If you weren 't John Wayne consumer advertising had an answer, you didn 't measure up and the answer was a product, a pill, a car. No wonder Americans are so restless.

Efficiently Disconnected

Between the money invested in WWII and after Sputnik, science and technology exploded. The explosion of technology led to a quickening of life 's pace, we became more mobile, commuting further and further to work, moving further from our extended families, and home communities. We became the most mobile culture on earth.

It became easier and easier to retreat to the media hole in your living room and away from the new people in the suburbs. Every thing that made our life easier cut down on our interactions with others. Convenience replaced intimacy. The mega store replaced the meat market, the produce place, the dime store, the drug store, the hardware store, the local gas station. Fast food and upscale chains substituted for Joe 's diner. Your neighborhood business owner no longer advised you on the best purchase, instead a minimum wage teenager fronting for a national company provided you with "customer service ".

The short anti-war/materialism rebellion of the sixties ended with the generation splitting between becoming self indulgent yuppies and people who quietly went to jobs in helping professions, teachers, social workers, organic gardeners. Almost all, gradually falling prey to the steady grind of media advertising and pressure to conform to consumerism. Traveling for work was no longer just the plight of gypsies but also the upwardly mobile. Strangers raised our children and our children became strangers. But it was okay, we were the generation of the future, universal prosperity. We just didn 't realize the cost of having everything.

We drug ourselves, our children, with pharmaceuticals, illegal drugs, money, things, sex, movies, I-pods, trips, whatever it takes to mask the sad, disconnected nature of our consumer culture. Even this becomes exploited by a whole industry of therapy, thousands of self help books, and a huge pharmaceutical money making machine. Opra and Dr. Phil are our salvation, a bald Jesus in cowboy boots and with a black Mother Teresa for the upper middle class. Even the poor get their shot at virtual reality on Jerry Springer for their "15 minutes of fame ". We have tried "reality shows ", star adulation, plastic surgery, working out, meditation all in a desperate attempt to find some release from a lifestyle that is making us crazy.

Then they changed the rules; the cold war ended and they didn 't need you as a consumer anymore when they had 1.5 billion Chinese. It was no longer necessary to provide you with a level of income to support their profits. The new corporate motto is adapt or die.

For business this isn 't a problem, you just alter the product lines. For the growing upper class you make Hummers, new plastic surgeries, more gated communities. For the rest you open payday loan companies, rent to own stores, pawn shops and Wal-Marts. That 's the small potatoes though. Because politicians need media to get elected and it costs a lot of money, business now owns politics completely. Neither party will alienate them by discussing the robbing of the common wealth and the economic
enslavement of the working class. Political parties ignore it and beat the drum on minimal or nonexistent fears; terrorists, child molesters and trial lawyers.

While a few jet to the islands for the weekend, the rest find themselves bewildered by downsizing, ever increasing debt, not knowing what success even is anymore. They too are fed the illusion that it is their fault. If they would have just studied harder at a curriculum that doesn 't relate to their life, hadn 't married so early, had an abortion, maybe found Jesus, saved more money in their non-existent 401k, invested wiser. The average person feels run over, lost and totally confused about the world created by corporate consumerism. They find themselves racing for a future that may find them joining the homeless, an endless stream of low paying short term jobs, a poverty stricken old age, the bankruptcy of a medical emergency or having to mortgage their house for education for their children or nursing home care for their parents.

People walk around full of anxiety about their future but because of the constant misdirection, telling people they are the problem not their society, culture or economy, they are lost for answers. It is complex, hidden like a tiger amongst bamboo; you can feel its awful presence, smell the fear, but don 't know where it comes from. When this happens people and people have no community structure to interpret what is happening to them to tell them how to respond in their own best interests by people who share their fate they retreat to an age old responses, superstition and demagogues.

The Rise of Religo-Facism

Facism is the merger of the state and corporate capitalism. Opposite from the free markets it supposedly champions, it seeks to control free thought, free expression and markets not controlled by corporations. It is here. It controls the media, it wipes out the constitution without batting an eye, corporations line up at the public trough as they parcel up the public wealth, it excuses itself from public duty of supporting the physical and emotional infrastructure of America. Corporations extract tax money through no bid contracts given by corrupt politicians who share in the wealth leaving the debt to be paid by the taxpayer who is robbed of government support in their times of need and passing the cost to the taxpayer 's children. The politicians moving into high paying industry jobs of the companies who they rewarded with public money.

Corporations have a bad habit of privatizing profits while and economic and social costs are passed on to the public. They claim no responsibility for their products, they spend billions on advertising but claim that doesn 't mean it sways personal choice. Your problems are the results of personal choice. Don 't hold me responsible for your obesity, lung cancer, birth defects, and murder by a gun, medical malpractice, etc., etc., etc.

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