In recent days people have camped out in line for big box stores and then fought each other, inlcuding with guns and with papper spray, for the best bargains.
Tents are apparently acceptable and violence no threat to national security in competitive shopping. Pepper spraying has been normalized to the point that shoppers spray each other.
We must, said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." Materialism is not limited to those whose declining incomes lead them to hunt of bargains from giant corporations producing third-rate products through slave labor and environmental destruction.
Materialism drives the policies that lead to the declining incomes. "A nation," said MLK in the next breath, "that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."It's time for a revival.
Join us at http://rootsaction.org in commiting to resist materialism, to find meaning in community and activism, and to insisting that our government move the money from the military to areas of spending that produce many more jobs and do so without the horrific side effects of military investment.