The next time some optimist, all aglow with a munificent aura of credulity about him, comes running up to you to enthuse grandiosely over the innate goodness of man, be sure to discomfit him thoroughly by showing him this item:

Woman found dead in Oklahoma Walmart bathroom three days after entering store Oklahoma police are investigating the death of a 29-year-old woman whose body was found inside a Sand Springs Walmart bathroom three days after she entered the store. A Walmart employee discovered the body of Katherine Caraway, originally from Texas, on Monday afternoon. According to the Associated Press, police said it’s unclear when or how Caraway died, but it does not appear her death was suspicious. A Walmart employee said they thought the bathroom Caraway occupied was “out of order,” so they put up a sign that remained there until her body was discovered by another employee. In response to the news, Walmart issued the following statement: “We are saddened by this. We don’t know all the facts right now, but we are working closely with local law enforcement to provide what information we have that might be useful. Because this is an ongoing investigation, we must refer you to them for additional information.” Police told the Sand Springs Leader they aren’t sure why Caraway, who lived in Muskogee, Oklahoma, was in Sand Springs. Sand Springs is roughly an hour drive from Muskogee. Authorities said Caraway’s family had to make a trip from Texas to identify the body. According to Caraway’s Facebook, she is from Celeste, Texas, a small town 60 miles outside of Dallas. She is survived by her young son.

Three whole days lying undiscovered in a sepulchral toilet, unbeknownst to her son, while the cogs of retail grind away unceasingly about her final resting place. Smel-Mart, of course, is not renowned for its fragrance of incense and peppermints, so perhaps the inevitable odor of corruption might be part of the routine work environment, but a number of questions still present themselves. How often are the bathrooms in this Wal-Mart cleaned, if they ever are? Did no one else have to use the ladies’ room during these three days? It’s not as though urinals would have been present either, so anyone using the facilities would of necessity be in close proximity to the corpse, and thus able to easily determine something was awry. What was this woman doing in a Wal-Mart so far from home, and separated from her only child, besides? Was this Wal-Mart having an unbelievable sale on breadmakers (which would also account for the noticeable lack of concern for the condition of the bathrooms from the clientele)? Or perhaps the pharmacy there is notorious for its lenient policy of selling Oxycontin to all-comers, no matter how dodgy a prescription they may present?

All rhetorical questions, and ’tis very likely none will ever be answered. Suffice it to say this sad episode also acts as the perfect analogy for the heinous economic fallacy celebrated by anarcho-libertarians as the ‘consumer culture’ – right down to the ‘out of order’ sign that acts as both this unfortunate woman’s epitaph and a commentary on a society that positively vaunts its adherence to divers weights and measures.

We here at Faith & Heritage have written extensively on economic topics (see here, here, and here for examples), and while we may differ in details as to what constitutes a theonomic economy, we are in agreement that materialism – whether in its capitalist or Marxist permeation – is antipodal to God and a most worthy recipient of His wrath. Alas, it has also served as the underlying assumption upon which all post-Enlightenment economic theories have been designed. Man being an innately rational creature, say these disciples of Reason, he strives to maximize his well-being by the amassing and utilization of all things physical – whether goods, services, means of exchange, or philosophy. The capitalist largely celebrates, and the socialist largely bemoans, this state of affairs, but their inherent worldview is otherwise remarkably similar. The creation is there for man’s exclusive use only, and the Creator is either too passive or altogether nonexistent to give any but the most derisive thought towards. A seeming antithesis was eventually generated in response to this creed of robots and locusts – the gnosticism of romanticism – but as it erred equally grotesquely on the side of the ephemeral over the material, its influence stayed well clear of the new economic ‘sciences’.

Thus, it matters little whether the current year produces a classically American ‘robust’ economy of engorgement on expensive paraphernalia, or whether an SJW-inspired socialist backlash succeeds in distributing such paraphernalia more ‘equitably’. The name of the game will still be: Lotsa Crap Matters, and until the board overturns and everybody loses their turn, it will continue in that vain vein.

It is a given mantra that in the modern market economy the consumer is king. You will find this cliche repeated ad nauseum in everything from the hallowed yellowing pages of the Chicago Tribune to the ersatz punk URL of the Anarchist Notebook. Quite a step up in hubris from the old canard ‘the customer is always right’, isn’t it? Come to think about it, isn’t it true that business journalism increasingly refers to the ‘consumer’ rather than to the ‘customer’? Very true, and very deliberately done. The term customer is derived from the old English word ‘custom’, which refers to a regular series of transactions with one or more select proprietorships. The word ‘customer’, therefore, suggests a purchaser of goods or services who, if nothing else, is reliably consistent. It is a term that retains a measure of dignity for the non-producing participant in a business transaction. One can be a customer and not feel inherently ashamed over that fact. Not so a consumer, which word in its basic etymology means a devourer, a glutton, an orgiast, a tapeworm. The consumer resembles nothing so much as Pac-Man, both in mindless voraciousness and, not coincidentally, often in body type. He acts in similar fashion to a malignant cancer, and it is perhaps apropos that so many toxic consumer goods, whether ingestible or otherwise, do their part in contributing to that tragic ailment.

What kind of a customer, crammed chock-full with the innate sensibility that underlies all reasoned economic relationships, would ever plunk down good cash (or a credit card #, or Paypal, or Bitcoin, or whatever) on a piece of plastic chintz like a fidget spinner, an ugly whirligig toy for the entertainment of cretins? Enough cretins did so (paying up to $460 in some cases!) to make this gizmo a big fad in the first half of 2017, despite the fact that even Wikipedia refers to it as a ‘useless machine’. Some of the spinner’s biggest fans are A-list power broker female and homosexual CEOs, who tout its (you guessed it) ‘stress-relieving’ capabilities and are thus willing to waste amazing amounts of shekels buying them in bulk – all to enable them to majestically close deals before slipping home for a glass of claret with their significant partner of either or no discernible sex. Consumerism in action, friends. At least some of the goods for sale in Tyre and Sidon had utility.

The marketing of fluff takes on more sinister connotations when it is done so with the express purpose of pandering to the lusts of the radically atomized individual to the negation of his cultural identity. (Culture, here, being defined as the relationship between the racial and the theological – in this instance, white Christianity.) In his article ‘A Traditionalist Critique of Capitalism’, David Carlton explains the purpose behind this strategy:

The reason that the new capitalist/managerial elite are motivated to actively dissolve national and cultural distinctions is that this creates a homogenized world full of mass consumers. Capitalists who own and operate multinational corporations would prefer that people consume that which can be easily mass produced as opposed to that which is locally manufactured, grown, or crafted. This is true whether we are discussing food, drink, cars, electronics, clothing, or produce…To accomplish this goal the Establishment promotes pseudo-morals such as anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-discrimination, anti-bigotry, and tolerance. The goal isn’t to bring peace between hostile nations and tribes, seeing as warfare has actually increased substantially under the ascendancy of capitalism. The goal is to create a world suited for mass consumption.

It’s hard not to see this agenda in action in the following item from RT. Though it does not involve anyone connected with the capitalist/managerial elite, it nevertheless documents the logical and inevitable ends their strident efforts beget:

Black barber cuts Confederate flag into white man’s hair in Oklahoma A black barber in Oklahoma has sparked a social media frenzy for the unconventional haircut he gave a white customer. The customer explained that his strange request for a Confederate flag was meant to pay homage to his favorite rapper. A customer who “seemed kind of scared” walked into the Fade N Up barbershop in Oklahoma City Saturday, and requested a haircut depicting the logo from the record label ‘Slumerica,’ barber Demontre Heard told KSBI. The unidentified customer was a fan of the label’s rapper Yelawolf. Heard commented on the difficulty of the design, saying,“It was going to be too much, so he asked if I could do the confederate flag in his head.” “In the back of my head I’m like, ‘what kind of stuff are you on?’” Heard continued. The customer opted to remain anonymous… Photos were taken by the staff and posted to Facebook, where different opinions clashed. Some showed their anger on social media towards the unusual haircut. Some customers at the shop supported both parties involved in the incident. Nidal Schawareb, said, “people portray [the Confederate flag] in different ways” adding, “with it being part of an album cover, I see it. I understand where that goes.” For Heard, the whole incident ultimately just came down to business. “You have the right to… your opinion,” he said, “but at the end of the day your opinion doesn’t pay my bills, and I have kids to take care of,” according to KSBI.

So what we have here on the one hand is a white man, enamored of hip-hop kulture, sufficiently versed in what the Battle Flag stands for to feel trepidation when asking a black barber to make it a reality, but keen to go along with it as honkies like Floyd the Barber from Mayberry can only be counted on to screw it up. On the other hand we have a black barber and the rest of his client base, bemused by the entire affair and basically shrugging it off with a dismissive air of ‘Hey, it’s your dime.’ A most surreal scenario, and one in which the customer (sorry, consumer) comes off looking decidedly the worse – not in the least because the finished product is a decidedly crummy representation of the flag. Such deliberate self-inflicted humiliation would have been unthinkable in a society that does not encourage the wanton spending of monies on frivolities, and inflated on a far vaster scale it translates into the West’s desire to exterminate itself via its own financing.

Some would take solace in the fact that there is a robust anti-consumerism movement afoot that emphasizes sustainability, local production and transport, ‘tiny’ houses, etc. Certainly, that can only be looked at as a welcome backlash against mall kulture. However, with hostile mainstream outlets like Fortune covering this movement from every conceivable angle, it would be naive to not perceive the infiltration designs of the corporatocracy against it. It doesn’t take too intense of a web search to come across sites dedicated to marketing strategies towards this niche – including this one, written by a Boston consulting firm in 2009 and thus laughably convinced that the Obama administration was about to usher in a brave new world of responsible consumer choice. The lessons to be taken away are summarized at blogpost’s end:

Align your brand with the new realities – is it time for an extreme brand makeover?

Extend the life of your brand by making money out of “re” branding: eg, repair, resell, renewal, or refill, etc.

To increase brand relevance, enable consumers to help themselves – eg, tools, mobile apps, widgets

Open up your brand and make it part of the community of greater good – otherwise, it will be excluded

One little company that has definitely taken these cloak-and-dagger tactics to heart: Monsanto, which is undergoing a massive re-branding overhaul after its purchase by Bayer, including a potential name-change. But a ‘consumer’ isn’t going to care overmuch that his genetically modified marijuana is certified ‘local’ because it was grown in Guatemala and is thus a lot closer to home than Bangladesh. As long as his retailer of choice (because it’s the only choice) stays adept at scrubbing his cranium, he will retain his coerced loyalty.

Don’t expect today’s church to be doing diddly squat to meaningfully oppose consumerist thought, either. Oh sure, they’ll trot out their simplistic sloganeering about ‘the reason for the season’ every Christmas, and they’ll nod in ecumenical approval whenever Pope Jesuit I issues an encyclical tut-tutting commercialism when one could be engaged in spoon-feeding Haitians or lobbying first-world governments to implement carbon taxes instead. At heart, though, the pathetic shepherdz who presume to positions of church leadership are as immersed in gluttonous heterodoxy as the culture they claim to stand against. Witness Marcus Pittman and his juvenile lusts for drone technology, junk food, and Amazon’s operational management procedures…all in service to his own personal conception of ‘God’s glory’, naturally. Witness Joel McDurmon and his catering to blacks and their shekels by re-imagining American Vision as a forum to promote liberation theology and reparation payments. Witness Tim Keller and his catering to sodomites and their shekels by allowing an excruciatingly twee interpretive dance, performed by three twinkletoed men disgustingly meant to represent the Persons of the Trinity, to be performed during one of his sermons. Witness David Bahnsen. Hell, just witnessing him is more than sufficient, isn’t it? These gray-bearded elders are no mere embarrassing aberrations, but textbook examples of the types of Caiaphases the laity have had inflicted on them.

The societal effects of consumerism, both present reality and those things still to come, are odious. To cite a few examples:

Once a people gets used to having all their goods manufactured overseas by peons and shipped to their front door for convenient wastage, it doesn’t take long for that mentality to infest every organizational structure. One manifestation of this disease is the ‘new normal’ of subcontracting – not content to merely parcel out select tasks to specialists, but to dole out the entire job, while King Spit sits on his golden throne, collects his glorified finder’s fee, and sighs about how tough business is. The permutations available for theft and power-grubbing when everybody’s a middleman are nearly limitless.

Fealty to Christ is patriarchal, obsequious, narrow-minded, and weird. Every empiricist worth his salt knows that. One way to compensate for this gaping void is to transfer that faith to a particular set of emotionally attached consumer brands. Drive a Dodge Ram just like your daddy, swig down Budweiser because their Super Bowl ads are epic, and get insured by Progressive because their spokeswoman Flo is hot. Inculcate children in this mindset at an impressionable enough age and they’ll be ready to move on to the bigger things in life later on, such as slavishly devoting themselves to a sportsball team or diligently voting R or D every two years.

Of course, if God is dead and fragmentary satiation killed Him, then it stands to reason that His natural order will be subject to every possible whimsical gratification that can be imagined. Welcome to the Huxleyan world of designer babies, kiddos, coming very soon to a test tube near you! What proud prospective parent, delighted over the prospect of being delivered of a cool retro Cabbage Patch Kid they can be amused by for the rest of their lives, wouldn’t be eager to ensure that said distraction came tailor-made to his/her/its specifications, from eye color to IQ to extensive genetic enhancement so that the urchin might live to be 250 years old? And what better way to ensure the extermination of the Caucasian race is accelerated? A boring paleface doll??? Ewwww!!!! Bro, do you like buy vanilla ice cream, too??? Go for the mocha pigmentation, which will complement the earth tones on your Nella Vetrina love seat! And half a million internet outlets ensuring us that the ongoing mongrelization of the West will result in some spectacularly gorgeous hybrids can’t be all wrong, either!

Our God being a Creator rather than an imbiber, an economy that glorifies Him will be one in which the producer of wealth – real wealth, as opposed to the makeshift fiat variant – is justly rewarded for his toil, and one in which custom for his wares is geared towards further wealth creation, whether in the operation of other crafts or in the rearing of stalwart families. All else is vanity, vexation of spirit, and fit only for the fiery furnace. All those who insist otherwise may continue to pay obscene amounts of coin for gender-fluid fashions so that some homosexual designer can continue to make payments on his yacht.