More Post-Thanksgiving Thoughts

The Atlantic's Hanna Rosin examines the connection between the prosperity gospel and the Subprime Mortgage Market. Did you know that inner-city pastors were targeted by subprime lenders as gateways into subprime markets? (That story's on page 2...)

I've never been to catholicanarchy.org before, but they have an interesting take on Thanksgiving. Not sure what I think about it, but it's worth reading if it provokes some thought about Christian citizenship. Of course, I know exactly what I think about a wholesale slaughter of turkeys...mmmmmm....

Time Magazine once more reassures me over my choice of cancelling my subscription this year. "The 00's: Goodbye At Last To The Decade From Hell." I disagreed with the first sentence, violently, and continued to disagree until I stopped reading, two pages later. Some points:

a) we fought two major international wars, and are still fighting them.
b) they inflicted virtually no hardship on anyone in the States except those poor forgotten souls fighting them, those in the Twin Towers when they fell, and those directly related to the above. The rest of us were numb, happy, bickering consumers who replaced our old iPods with newer, shinier, more connected ones.
c) near death economic experience? see above, iPods. We still have 'em, we're still buying them, and now there's a droid. The poor have cable TV and the rich still have last year's luxury items. No one has starved, there have yet to be any mass migrations, and tenant farming only exists among immigrants.
d) Hurricane Katrina was the largest natural disaster in our nations history...claiming only 1500 lives. Meanwhile in Asia, 200,000 die in a tsunami. We have no knowledge of hardship in America. None. We are fat and too dumb to be happy. "Are you better off now than ten years ago?" Absolutely. I'm not dead, I have no major diseases, I secured health insurance and a steady, menial job, and I have an iPod. From the perspectives of both the rest of the world, and the rest of history, I'm still wayyyyy above average. Life is good.
e) additionally, I'm living in a time of unprecedented local growth and productivity. Indie music has made creativity mainstream and accessible, and urban gardens, community groups and co-ops are flourishing. The internet is revolutionizing the way we interact and create. People are turning away from bigger and glitzier and towards better and more interactive. And cheaper.

That's about where I stopped. Maybe I'll finish reading later. Self-pity and whining--the mark of the spoiled. Grrrrrrrrrrrr....