The ability to consume.\u00a0 That is our heritage.\u00a0 Damn the economy.\u00a0 To heck with the environment, education, and the sinking stock market.<\/p>\n Our ability to — no, our NEED to consume seems to know no bounds.<\/p>\n Note that this is not the consumption that our forefathers celebrated the first Thanksgiving.\u00a0 Back then they called consumption a disease.\u00a0 Among other things, consumption was more likely known as a “progressive wasting of the body”<\/a><\/strong> … not picking up something at the country store.<\/p>\n Based on what I read in this morning’s papers, we should go back to the old meaning of “consumption” — that of a deadly disease.<\/p>\n It is bad enough that two people pulled out their guns and died in a shoot-out at Toys R Us<\/a><\/strong> after their respective female companions got engaged in a bloody brawl.<\/p>\n But that a crowd of shoppers would actually trample to death the poor WalMart employee<\/a><\/strong> who has the unfortunate job of opening the door in the morning?<\/p>\n This, my friends, is sick.\u00a0 Shopping meets greed meets madness meets total lack of disregard for any one meets violence.<\/p>\n Welcome to the new Kris Kringle.<\/p>\n Here’s my advice.\u00a0 Don’t shop.\u00a0 Take a day off.\u00a0 Go check out the folks at “Buy Nothing Day<\/a><\/strong>.”\u00a0 Or at least shop online.\u00a0 Apparently a lot of people of are<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n I am thankful for a lot of things.<\/p>\n Not shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving is one of many.<\/p>\n Happy Holidaze.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the aftermath of the trauma of 9-11, President Bush gave us this advice: “Go shop.” In so doing our President told us to go out and feed our nation’s greatest addiction and increasingly what many consider to be one of our last remaining economic assets:\u00a0 consumption. The ability to consume.\u00a0 That is our heritage.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[18,6,7,4,5,156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/kriskringle-300x270.jpg\" "\\"kriskringle\\"")
<\/a>In so doing our President told us to go out and feed our nation’s greatest addiction and increasingly what many consider to be one of our last remaining economic assets:\u00a0 consumption.<\/p>\n