Shut Up And Listen 93

Christmas Commercialism
Last week on the front page of the site, I talked about Christmas and commercialism briefly. I bitched about those who are always complaining about the commercialism of Christmas and are really just bummers for the rest of us. I made a comment about how people today are commercial beings and all the bitching in the world isn’t going to change that. And someone called me on that line and chewed me out. I then retorted and made them see it my way. But because of that, I thought I might speak briefly about Christmas, commercialism and what I meant.
	First off: commercialism is not bad.
	It’s really not. Commercialism is neither bad nor good, it just is. Some bad things happen as a result of it, but so do a lot of good things. Don’t bad mouth the whole thing because a few bad things happen.
	Personally, I don’t like the way capitalism always works. It often ignores the plight of the less fortunate and tells them to get the fuck off their lazy asses and be like fucking Bill Gates or move to Russia. That isn’t exactly the best way to set up a society or economy, really.
	But what people who bash commercialism often forget is well, people are greedy fuckers and always have been. People want stuff and until you can somehow change the way humans fundamentally function as a whole then that’s not going to change (and I mean as a whole; you get one person acting greedy and the rest will fall in line). 
	What I want to also address is why is commercialism so bad? Let’s look at what I got for Christmas as an example, okay? I got a discman, some CDs, some books, some clothes and some DVDs. Now what there is a “luxury” really? CDs, books and DVDs all constitute art, and from what I understand, most of these anti-commercial people like art, so those have to be good. The clothes are all necessary items (and trust me, there’s no over-paying for my clothes; I get the cheap stuff). So all I really got were pieces of art and shelter from the elements. 
	How is this necessarily bad?
	I’ll agree that art such as books, CDs and DVDs are sometimes overpriced and for some, all about the money, but so fucking what? If when some people look at a CD and see dollar signs, how am I responsible? When I look at a new CD, I either see a quality piece of music or some total shit. Sometimes the two views match and sometimes they don’t, but that’s life.
	Really what people who complain Christmas is too commercial are complaining about is that some people go for items that are so fucking overpriced just because of a name brand or something. See, to me that’s total shit. Like I said above, I always try to get cheap clothes (in monetary value only though) because there’s no way I’m paying for a brand name. I got a pair of shoes for Christmas that are just like the ones I’ve already got because for one, they’re nice and I like to stock up before they decide to stop making the style I like and also because they’re nice AND cheap. They’re like thirty bucks. How fucking great is that? The last pair of shoes I had lasted me almost four years and cost $35. That’s $8.75 a year, $0.729 a month, $0.02 a day, and so on. 
	Commercialism isn’t bad, people. Some of it. The overpricing and brand-naming and just buying shit because it’s trendy. That shit’s fucked up. But remember that commercialism also brings you cool stuff like the new Hunter Thompson book I bought yesterday with a gift certificate or High Fidelity on DVD (go buy it if you don’t have it!). Does the system need changing? Yes, but don’t slam the whole thing because of a few fuckheads.

Next week: the super-happy, mega-sized, fucked-up, year-end special!