This is part one of a planned two-part response.
I ran across Kurt Andersen’s Time article, “The End of Excess: Is This Crisis Good for America?” over at Rob Walker’s Murketing blog. Thanks for the heads up.
As you know by now if you read my blog, even though I’m third-generation Italian and by now mostly easygoing, I still possess a fresh-off-the-boat ability to let my temper boil. This post could be viewed as rooted in my more emotional heritage. I only ask that you give it chance, and a bit of time -- I admit it’s long. My snarky satire aside, this is serious business. The national problem of consumerism isn’t just the silly excess of boomers and A.I.G. executives. I work at Christian liberal arts university. I ask students -- students who mostly have their minds and hearts and actions focused on heavenly vocations: Is consumerism a problem on campus? “Yes,” they all reply. “It is one of the problems.” So does Kurt Andersen have the answers for those sorely misguided Christian youth, and all the rest of us?
It is possible I would have written about Andersen’s article. Like the shiver I got reading Robert J. Samuelson’s Newsweek piece, “A Darker Future For Us,” Andersen’s prescription for America made me quiver. But I can chill.
Until after a small exchange on Walker’s Murketing blog, that is. Mostly it was the kind of blog-fun exchange you get with online comments. Until Andersen chimed in with, “I don’t think we need to repent. I don’t think we need to do anything religious -- just the opposite, in fact. I think we need to be more reality-based.” It’s like we’re kindred spirits, he and I. Andersen knows how to be irksome, and I know how to be irked.
Continue reading "The End of Remorse: Is This Crisis Going to Change America?" »



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