Thanksgiving, the holiday that gotten eaten alive.

[woo me with science]

35. "Commercialization of socialization": Marvelous label, and interesting post.

I would stress that the commercialization of socialization is deliberately orchestrated by those who profit from it.

People "choose" commercial ways of socializing because our society is increasingly structured around the commercial options, and we drown in propaganda that tells us that they are the only valid options we have. This while corporate politicians restructure our society to replace non-corporate options with corporate ones. Defund those public parks and libraries. We are building a corporate sports center.

We drown in sick, corporate messages about Christmas and every other holiday. How many commercials have we seen this year already with the underlying threat that somebody won't love or respect you if you don't go into debt to buy them all the crap that Madison Avenue says you need to buy, in order to show your love? Now we will have hordes of retail workers forced to work on Thanksgiving, a day that our society previously set aside as important for spending time with family and friends and counting our (non-corporate) blessings.

It is one more pernicious step in the corporatization of our value system; good Americans will obediently work, and future Americans will not even question the fact that people shop and work on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, like every other holiday that has been corrupted into a profit opportunity, will reinforce the corporate values of working and consuming above any other message.

I'll repost the Noam Chomsky quote posted by limpyhobbler, because it fits here:

"...The other one is not discussed so much, but I think it’s pretty important. This is an extremely atomized society. People are alone. It’s a very business-run society. The very explicit goal of the business world is to create a social order in which the basic social unit is you and your television set, in which you’re watching ads and going out to purchase commodities. There are tremendous efforts made, that have been going on for a century and a half, to try to induce this kind of consciousness and social order."

(See entire post by limpyhobbler in Good Reads: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1016&pid=19730)