Boy. Working on this piece, which at first grew so easily from the idea to write as an imbalanced, crew-cutted preacher, is now into it’s second week. Time consuming. Writing is about time. It’s about the amount of effort you’re willing to put into it, craft it, make it better, bolder, more into the brilliant unknown.
Anyway, before I drone on more, here’s the new revision. The biggest difference is that I’ve gotten rid of some tangents; some were interesting, but they distracted from the overall message. But then, with the extra branches pruned off the tree, I see weak spots, parts where what read is not as complete as what I envision. These gaps are where the fleshing out works best, examples and long sentences that both address a topic and give us a glimpse into Dwight’s mind.
Also, I’ve removed the shootout that was going to be the surprise ending, with me being shot by a small business owner and lying like a slain messiah on the floor, perhaps looking up at a lightbulb made by GE.
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Antiglobalizationderstanding
Okay folks, if I can get your attention.
... Please take your seats.
... Yes. Great. Thank you, I’d like to call to session … just a little
quiet. Great. Thanks.
First off, I’m well aware that it’s already past eleven and we’d all to start with the vegetarian potluck surprise buffet. I for one am looking forward to taste Susan’s latest faux-fish masterpiece. But before we get to that, if you’ll give me just ten minutes of your time, I’ve prepared a brief sermon for this week.
Ahem.
In case some of you don’t know, my name’s Dwight Little and I am this month’s acting elected Pasteur pesiding. I see a some new faces this morning so I’ll explain that we voted to make the pasteurship a rotating position … since Pasteur Bob left us for reasons which you all read about in the paper.
That said, it’s onward and upward to this week’s topic.
This week’s topic is a dark one, I’m afraid. But it’s one that we MUST address if we as a flock are to survive. For this week, I want to talk about our enemy.
Our enemy? you ask. Who is it? Is it Satan? Is it terrorists or the Right Wing media? Is it the moral vacuum in our media? Teenage pregnancy? Crystal methamphetamine? What? And why – some of you may say – do we even need an enemy? Why not just get along with our neighbors? If we ourselves turn our backs on hate, then let that nothing else shall hate us back. Well parishiners, I say yes, we need an enemy to hate. And in just a few seconds, you’ll see what I mean. You’ll feel the hatred, but it will be a good kind of hate. For, just as love calls on us to act, so too will hate inspire us to get off our couchs, take up a cause, and view our lives through the lense of a greater purpose. Wrapped within the warmth of hatred we shall unite against a common enemy, and forget the petty differences that might otherwise turn us against one another.
Brothers and sisters, the enemy of which I speak is all around us. It lingers at our front doors, poisons our air, makes us overweight and ignorant and lazy,teaches us to care for famous people while we ignore our neighbors, stuffs our mailboxes with credit card applications, and tempts rock stars into selling their hit songs to car commercials. Citizens, I stand before you with self-righteousness as my ally and do declare aloud the name of our enemey.
That enemy, my children, is The National Brand.
I see you nodding. If we, the meek parishoners of the humble Chapel of Local Flavor are to survive, then we must stand together against our common foe, Big Corporate U.S.A. Our elected misrepresentives in Washington long ago turned their backs on us to French kiss the Devil, while the wolfhounds of Big Bizness gorged the throat of our fair and friendly land, killing babies and pooping on our lawns. How many of our locally owned businesses have been decimated by a National Brandname Megastore Complex, with it’s slick television ads and low prices and extensive selection and free delivery? We watch helplessly as our homegrown video rental stores; coffee shops; restaurants; and bed, bath, and beyond-type establishments are one-by-one hunted down in the night, attacked, ripped apart, and left for dead in a ditch at the blighted end of town. Alone they are isolated incidents of market forces following an accepted logic, but put them together and you see a diabolical plan to plunder our town of its character, bulldozed clean and flat, to make way for the gang of big brand stores which will establish their stranglehold on our lives.
But what can we do? Give up? Go with the flow? Should we lighten up and get on with our lives? No! I say no. We will not roll over and take it like a man! We will not just ‘get with it’. We will fight. We will fight even if the war looks pointless and unwinnable. Because it’s not pointless to us. For the struggle will return to us our identity.
Now, before you shrug your shoulders and say ‘Dwight’s just talking out his ass again,’ I want you think about THIS.
We’ve all watched enough Discovery Channel to know this planet’s biological diversity is disappearing quickly, leaving only a motely remnant of the hearty rodents – rats and cockroaches and plastic surgeons – alongside the large tracts of corporate food production development projects where genetically enhanced cows graze on kiwi fruit and hemp. Now I tell you that our nation’s economic diversity is dying a similar death my children, leaving only globalized behemoths which conspire to control our minds with their advertising and sexy models. These monsters then twist and degrade our society, taking us to lower levels, all for money. The executives who pull the levers and tighten the nooses have only one thought: get rich while avoiding death and prison. And yet, without realizing it, we’ve allowed our lives to depend entirely on the whims of corporate boardrooms. These companies we claim to hate pay our salaries, deliver our email, grow our food, provide our entertainment, our healthcare, our dental insurance, and our education. They’ve assumed every responsibility we were willing to give them; they’ve thought up new needs in our lives we hadn’t had the time to realize we needed. Then they’ve put politicians on their payroll and bought our sources of news, and they’re mixing their way in politics and religion, and don’t tell me the churches of America aren’t political action committees in their own right, and don’t you agree that these smart-as-lawyers corporations are very aware of that? The greed-fueled corporate intelligence thinks about things most of us would find morally repugnent, like how many lawsuits McDonalds was willing to settle out of court because they knew that the coffee was scaldingly hot … unnecessarily hot … and they exoected a certain number of lawsuits per year which they would settle, but they also knew that super-heated water made heir coffee grinds produce more coffee. They weighed the costs of the lawsuits against the savings in coffee and said, ‘OK, let’s do it’.
How do we fight this? How does our lemonade stand of David stand a chance against the tower skyscrapers of Goliath?
Do we organize a boycott?
Write a book?
Write a movie screenplay?
Stick it to ‘em on 60 Minutes?
Or start a class action lawsuit and turn our suffering into cash we can
spend any way we like?
We have options, some – obviously – better than others. But I wanted to understand this issue better and decided to do some research. What did I do, you ask? I acted like a normal person. I did what was convenient, not concerned at all with the grander, political implications of my shopping dollars. I just did what felt good and easy and safe. I put my currency in the coffers of enemy and accepted the goods and services which he offered to me in return. And I took careful notes. My hope was that somewhere, perhaps under the belly of the Beast, there might be a soft patch in the leathery hide where a brave knight could plunge a Holy Sword of Truth and in one swoop deliver us back to a better time when we could sip soda at the drive in and get a haircut from a bald man in his fifties.
Ladies and gentlemen! If I may … present to you … in my left hand you see a membership card for Blockbuster. And in my right, that’s a a Safeway Club card.
Please, please. Quiet. Now. obviously, for years we’ve been taught to fear these objects, and I apologize for bringing them onto hallowed ground. But I show them to you as proof … Proof that they are just pieces of plastic. Think of them as mere scales from the media-breathing beast, souvenirs for a valient knight on his return to the village saved and the fair maiden grateful.
And what, you may be wanting to know, does our brave warrior report of the enemy? Ladies and gentlemen, lardies n’ germs, I stand to report that the forces of evil are too strong to resist.
That’s right. I will not lie to you. Corporate America is winning and will keep on winning. But why? Why because it makes sense. And if you’ll give me just a few more minutes, I’ll tell you how.
Let’s look first at movie rentals.
Normally, I am willing to walk eleven blocks down Castaway Blvd then turn right and climb Widowmaker Hill, to arrive perspiring at the doorstep of Nicki’s Flickies. I hope she’s got the newest release starring The Rock and Jennifer Anniston. She doesn’t. ‘Here’s the waiting list,’ she says. ‘No thanks,’ I say; I don’t plan my movie renting that far ahead. Some other movie, perhaps? They just got back Groundhog Day and Stripes, so the Harold Ramis and Ivan Reitman sections are complete. See, Nicki, despite my repeated suggestions, insists on organizing her movies by DIRECTOR!!! Please Nicki, I don’t know the directors. I only know the title. ‘No,’ she decides, exhaling mint-scented tobacco smoke. It’s her store and she knows her customers, all seventeen of them, all currently in the store, their noses up close to the boxes reading the fine print.
Now compare this to my experience at the Blockbuster conveniently sitting across the street from where I live. A clean, well-lit interior. Friendly, non-smoking, smiling, physically trim staff. ‘Hey! How’s it going, Mr. Little?’ says James, the muscular young man making $10 an hour; he remembers me. ‘It’s going good, James’ I say back, even though, seconds ago, it wasn’t. But now it is, because every movie I want is in stock and alphabetized by title. And yes, the store is owned by white men from Utah who censor movies, handcuffing the creative minds in Hollywood and Hamburg, but it’s their store, and Blockbuster Inc. know its customers, and ever since broadband internet access I don’t need R-rated movie for my porn.
At the register, I notice James and the other, quieter clerk, are wearing identical tee-shirts.
$12.99 for the latest releases!
You can’t lose.
It’s just like the sides of those U-Haul vans that advertise – $29.99 per day!* So I smile conspiratorially at the bold yellow and blue letters stenciled onto their brand new tee-shirts, so new they’ve probably never been washed. They’ll probably be given a fresh tee-shirt to wear every day, a new advertisement on their chests. They’re branded with a price tag or a phrase of corporate encouragement – You won’t believe the prices! We must be crazy!!? – and if you point this out to them, they can’t even say somthing under their breath like “Can you believe the bullshit they make us do?” You can’t say that. So instead I said, ‘They really make you earn your money.’ James chuckles back, probably not getting my reference. After a second, he says, ‘good stuff,’ with a face that looks like it’s taking antidepressants; he hands me my very large receipt and change and this plastic ‘member’ card in one bundle. ‘Thank you,’ I say, embarassed for him because now I realize that he’s given up and it’s no business of mine to poke a man who’s already laid down to die.
Let’s move onto groceries … since by now we’re getting hungry. Well, as we all know, since it unionized, the Organagarden Food Cooperative closes at 7. I get home from work at 7. That’s all I know about that.
Safeway, however, beside the Blockbuster, is open until 12. And how can I not ENJOY shopping there? Becuase it’s not just about food, it’s about hey! upbeat muzak and three sumptuous aisles of wine; and a cereal aisle subdivided into Children’s, Adult, and Family sections. And if I wander past the same stocking clerk three times, he says, ‘can I help you find something, sir?’ ‘Where’s the pineapple chutney?’ I ask. At the register, I catch up on important events in the lives of attractive movie stars – Ben and Jen are back together, gonna elope this time – I’m happy for them and as I whip out my Club Card for today’s discount of between 0 and 20%. The cashier knows my name.
‘Thank you, Mr. Little,’ she says. ‘You’re welcome, Charlene,’ I chime back and enjoy a slightly awkward laugh as coins chi-chang their way out the auto-change-dispenser. She double bags my new copy of O magazine – Discover the Love Already InsideYou! – and a pack of double A-batteries for my dictaphone. �Have a safe trip home,� she says and is already smiling at the next person in line.
And now for my conclusion.
The Globalization Money Monster is a mindless, gelatinous ooz smothering our chapel of Local Flavor with its casual uniforms, white teeth, and prices that end in nines. We hear our own names in the mouths of strangers who act like they really like us. We’re offered help, but only as mandated in the employee handbook. Pleasant social interaction has been turned into a process like a hamburger on an assembly line. This, my children, is evil. But aren’t we all evil?
And don’t thsee corporations have to employ people just like us, from our own town? our own highschool class? And we’re not stupid, right? We know what’s up? We know it’s fake. So maybe it we have to temporarily say goodbye to the local muffin shop with it’s menu written in crayon on cardboard. Maybe we’re not funky like we were in the seventies. Maybe we’ve returned to the fifties and its authoritarian pleasantness. But as I said before, we must have a struggle or we will look upon ourselves and hate what we see. The hippies of the sixties had a war and an uptight society to rage against, and things were good, but once the struggle was over, once they’d won, they only had cocaine to turn to and it all turned ugly. Today, we should be thankful that we still have a machine to rage against.
No empire can forever maintain a rising earnings-per-share ratio. Moss, given enough time, will eventually crack pavement. And so too will the employees of our enemy’s numerous area locations act as undercover agents of subversive, subtle change, for though they may force a smile or read our last name from the credit card receipt, we know and they know that it’s just Workin’ for the Man. We’re smarter than that. And though as a species we may be slower to act than the corporations, it is they who will eentually do our bidding, for we own them.