Dallas Buy Nothing Day

Nothing screams "American consumer monomania is killing the planet" like a banner-float at Northpark Mall in Dallas, Texas, on Buy Nothing Day.



Dallas Buy Nothing Day
By Kendall Clark


   Buy Nothing Day Banner Float; NorthPark Mall, Dallas People often
   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 Flannery O'Connor said, our own little
   no-neck monsters.
   
   You really must 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 --
   perenially 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
   can 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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Posted on Monkeyfist at http://monkeyfist.com/articles/724