Remember right after Nineleven™ when the travel industry and retail were imploding, and Bush and that bunch were telling everybody to “go shopping, or the terrorists win”? Welp… same deal here. The State and Capital won’t do what needs to be done to keep us safe and to eradicate Covid-19, and have chosen instead to go with “herd immunity” (a.k.a. “mass death”) to serve Capital at the expense of the working class and their families.

…and speaking of serving Capital — all the sudden squawking about the “supply chain” kinda smelled funny to me from the get-go simply because every major US media outlet and their uncle all started yelling ZOMG SUPPLY CHAIN almost simultaneously, as if somebody threw a switch, not unlike all the screaming about the “labor shortage”. My suspicions were pretty much confirmed the other day when, while catching my daily 15 seconds of MSNBC, they were doing their daily Supply Chain Meltdown and one of their “guest analysts” was the CEO of Mattel.

Yeah, that’s right; that’s what this pants-crapping is all about — not enough Barbies at Wal-Mart for Christmas.

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In the midst of all the fear and paranoia following 9/11, George W. Chimp somehow thought it a good idea to show The Terrorists™ how courageous we all were by getting out and going shopping, and actually went on TV, looked us all in the eye, and told us that. That crass, shallow admonishment remained seared into my brain for some months before finally emerging as a fully-formed inspiration in the wake of the release of the latest Star Wars “prequel” with its attendant marketing blitz of toy tie-ins and Star Wars-themed McDonald’s happy meals.

The original idea, “Pig Nation”, came from Abbie Hoffman’s famous remarks regarding the keep-up-with-the-Joneses, ticky-tacky suburban house-dwelling, station wagon-driving middle-class America of the late 1960s. It seemed an even more appropriate and apt description of the modern-day McMansion-dwelling, blockbuster movie-going, SUV-driving America of the early 21st Century.

This piece also appeared in Adbusters Magazine’s annual “big ideas” issue in 2005.

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