Weapon of Mass Consumption?

Juvenal, the Roman satiric poet is credited with coining the phrase Bread and Circuses to describe the way cynical governments stave off large scale demonstrations of discontent among their populations. With WalMart, (and Target, and CostCo, and HomeDepot), BushCo has its own supersized variant. As we know, real wages have not risen since The Last Crusader George the Chicken Hearted took office. His tax cuts as we also know have benefitted the top 1% of the wealthiest Americans - or his base - as he's fond of saying. However coporate earnings and the Dow are approaching stratospheric levels even as we are witnessing one of the lightest periods of economic expansion. In addition, while unemployment remains reletively high, hours worked have risen here in the US again (the oft quoted US productivity statistic). Not to mention the fact that we're engaged in long war with no end in sight and get to experience the overall corruption and incompetance of the BushCo regime daily. So the question remains - why are people not angry? Why are they not in the streets demanding accountability and The Last Crusader's head on a pike? The answer is simple -- BushCo uses WalMart to buy-off the general population and pay-off his fat cat Cronies. Bread and circuses out of Bentonville!

Think about it - you may be earning less, you may be working more, you may even be unemployed - but you can still buy tons of stuff! Why worry about higher wages when you can still get that flat screen TV? This is why BushCo puts no real pressure on China around its monetary policy, human rights, and Iran - not only because they fund so much of our deficit but because of the cheap Chinese products that stock the shelves that numbs the populace that propels the profits of the corporations that control BushCo which is running the country into the ground. Follow the money and it all comes back to the same thing - a Government run by corporations is Fascist to its core, though unfortunately BushCo can't get the trains to run on time - either here or in Baghdad. As Orson Scott Card has aptly observed "If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side."