Dear George,
You guys are doing it! Slowly, but surely you are forcing America into an ideological mold. Hand-in-hand with the media preachers and the special interests you are on the cusp of doing what the ideologues of old were unable to do: Wrap an ideology around a society so tightly, it doesn’t even realize it’s been wrapped.
A fastidious neatness and order characterize all ideologies. The sparks begin to fly when an orderly ideology encounters that lumbering, stumbling, lurching, confused, nonlinear, messed up entity known as real life. Real life, in its pure dynamic, doesn’t take kindly to neatness and order. However, the new ideology does not rely on force. Gone are dogma and the party line. The dogma of the American ideology is summed up on one word: More!
Religion was the opiate of old world societies; consumerism is the opiate of ours. The unspoken message that runs through American society is that if they toe the line, they can own more toys. No matter how far down the economic ladder they fall, there’s always another credit care solicitation in the mail box to keep them well supplied with even more stuff, which distracts them from their impoverishment.
When you called America an ownership society, you were using ownership as a synonym for thralldom. Plastic shackles have replaced the iron ones of yore. In place of the loyalty oath, there is the monthly statement, the latter being more effective at keeping order. You knew what you were talking about following 9/11 when you said that our patriotic duty was to shop.
A nation distracted by mail-order catalogs will scarcely notice, nor scarcely care, as the unitary power of the executive slowly expands to embrace the legislative and the judiciary. The preachers own the courts; the CEOs own Congress. The Big Dick takes care of everything else. God bless you all!
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
9:48:37 PM 
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