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The pundits and talking heads sustain careers and appease ill-informed constituents by covering irresponsible, damaging behavior in a cloak of American freedoms. When I see an obese 20-something, drive through this country's suburban sprawl of large-lot, snout-house subdivisions (comprised of homes with 3-car garages and 52-inch plasma TV screens in "great rooms"), or listen to a barrage of mind-numbing 30-second ads selling us things to make us whole and complete, I don't think of freedom. On the contrary, I feel enslaved. Rampant consumerism preys upon the bored, the lonely, and the empty (demons we all struggle with to some degree). The result is a distraction from self and neighbor followed by a cultural nervous breakdown of sorts. Textbook psychology, really.
Capitalism in America today is no longer part of our once-admired free-market economy, which is where it belongs. Rather it's the very culture itself. Immediately following 9-11, capitalist extraordinaire George W. Bush told us to go out and shop (seriously, for those whose grief clouds their memory). The status-quo mentality that allows a Bush Administration to happen, who so furiously fights "big" government, have effectively (and intentionally) created a new (albeit glossier) Big Brother: the post-millenium American Capitalism - a kind of legitimized greed fostered during the Reagan administration and now on steroids. Like addiction or a sugar high, I don't see how this is sustainable in the long-term. At some point you crash.
