Monkeyfist.com

Dallas Buy Nothing Day

by Kendall CLARK

Friday, 01 December 2000

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A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. ¶ A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. ¶ A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization. -- Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

People say that Dallas is the buckle of the Bible Belt. While true, Dallas is also that little flappy thing in the back of the American Consumption Beast's gaping, gagging throat. Dallas rivals Los Angeles for hyperconspicuous consumption, only without the palm trees and good delicatessens.

At the center of the madness in Dallas is a place called NorthPark Mall, one of the original American Upperclass shopping malls -- note the very tired Frank Stella painting (which is to say, note the Frank Stella painting) on the wall. Nothing says "American Consumer Monomania is Strangling the F****ing Planet" quite like a Buy Nothing Day banner-float at NorthPark the day after Thanksgiving.

Okay, so it's too simplistic for a dissertation in political science -- a sign that it's true -- but American overconsumption is a global blight. Clearly there is high-pitched domestic support for the maintenance and expansion of American Empire. We like paying less for gasoline than anyone else; driving more (and more wasteful) cars than anyone else; we like showing up at Sunday School decked out in the latest sweatshopware; we like consuming 10 times more of the world's resources than anyone else (per capita). We sure as hell aren't giving up anything for the sakes of people in the Global South, to say nothing of, as Tennessee Williams said, our own little no neck monsters.

You must admire the sickening deftness of the Big American Lie, which not only tells us to consume more and more and more, but also that

CONSUMPTION is HAPPINESS.

Of course that's not true. But how else can the ad industry -- perennially one of the biggest economic sectors -- convince us to buy more of what we don't need in order to throw it away to buy even more. If it were actually true that living this way would make at least some people happy sometimes that would be a reason for doing it -- it wouldn't be reason enough, but it would be something.

Instead we have millions of Commoditized Desire Machines masquerading as our fellow citizens; a sick and growing sicker planet, warmed by our toxic effluvia, denuded by our rapacity; and untold billions around the world who wouldn't cross the street to take a narcotizing stroll in NorthPark Mall, but who need more food, cheaper medicine, better shelter, safer jobs, and the right to control their own resources and their own lives.

Come on, American, tell the truth. Late at night, when you can't sleep and you've stopped flipping channels and surfing sites, you hear your brain's Barbara-Jordan-Voice-of-Truth whispering: You don't need all this shit...

What do you whisper back?

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This is Dallas Buy Nothing Day <http://monkeyfist.com/articles/724>