Do Black Friday Shoppers Care About Starving Children?
Karen De Coster
LewRockwell.com
December 31, 2011
I can’t help but pay attention to all of the sound bites and visual propaganda that are passed ’round the Internet without a thought, especially on Facebook. The latest “visual” that has stirred the senses of the “give me a sound bite I don’t have to think about” crowd is a new take on a very old theme – “Define Necessity.” Here’s version #976, for those who think this image is a new discovery:
This feel-good image is promoted by the same folks who spend countless $$$ on iPhones, eating out, endless purses and clothes and video games and $10 movie tickets, and other so-called “unnecessary” items.
The photo on the right is probably taken during a Black Friday, credit-card-and-bankster-fueled spending spree. No one has been more critical of the Fed-fueled and therefore crazed consumerism typified by Black Friday than I have, much to the chagrin of some of my readers. After all, as individuals and as a society, we need to save much more and spend much less, if we want prosperity. Keynes was wrong here, too, of course. But are spenders, even nutty spenders, responsible for poverty, starvation, and degradation here or in other countries? Of course, not. However, these two images, as spliced together, convey an inconsistent meaning, one that the simpleton folks who promote the image can’t seem to grasp.
The image of the shopping frenzy, on the right, may not be very appealing, at least to me, because the people in the picture are pursuing plastic toys and other useless crap. My own personal opinion is that most kids have too much junk – needless toys that sit around on the floor and become the broken remains of someone’s hard-earned dollars. Thus the mass of consumer bozos, on the right, may deserve much criticism for their behavior, financial recklessness, and addiction to subsidized credit, but they live in America, a country where, in spite of the oppressive statism and economic tyranny from Washington D.C., and the pillaging of Main Street from the Wall Street banksters, they can still utilize enough of the (limited) free market forces to bring comfort, leisure, some excess, and previously unaffordable luxuries to their lives. This is, and should be, the goal of any enlightened society experiencing technological advancement and increasing productivity.
Unfortunately, so many people are taken intellectual prisoner by cheap images and dime store sloganeering. What the image-driven masses don’t understand is how people become poor and stay poor. The photo on the left certainly seems to invoke all kids of emotional impulses and knee-jerk reactions prior to the brain cells kicking in. We see grotesque, malnourished children reaching for … something … probably food. The folks who spend approximately 10 seconds processing this image, and draw the wrong conclusions, don’t take into account the fact that the world is awash with food. Too much food – especially grains – is subsidized by governments (especially the U.S.) to produce high profit margins for corporate state giants, and then this very profitable slop is paid for with government tax plunder and shipped overseas to Third World countries.
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