Stores opened today at 4am or earlier. Yesterday’s paper had more ads than any Sunday. Commercials on TV show everyone glowing with anticipation, ready to charge into the stores at the earliest opportunity, to fill their carts with bargains.

Don’t buy it. Literally: Don’t buy it. Stay home today. It’s not that I wish to shut down the economy. I wish to shut down the treatment of potential customers as sheep or Pavlov’s dogs. I wish for people to consider that maybe they don’t need all this crap and, if they do, maybe they should buy it when they want to, not when the marketers want them to.

Capitalism is just like patriotism: The louder and more insistent it is, the more we need to stop and wonder what we’re being driven to do. mjh