I was trying to figure out someone's complicated insurance—a strange brew of higher math and, probably, some sort of voodoo. I'm not adept at either discipline, even if they are part of my job, and especially not when someone is sitting across the table from me. I was getting frustrated at my inability to make sense of the numbers in front of me when from the radio came the sound of some idiot singing “Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, coming down Santa Claus lane...” and I was like, FUCK this. Somehow I managed to wrap things up with the guy's insurance and escape to the lab, probably turning down the radio en route, but it's an enraging thing—what purpose, commercial or otherwise, is served by force-feeding god-awful children's music to anyone and everyone, customer or employee, who finds him- or herself in a place of business? It's during the Christmas season, with the ubiquity of voices telling you that a commercial holiday is the best thing ever, so love it, celebrate it, and part with your money OR ELSE that I feel as if I've somehow woken up in North Korea. Not that NK has a commercial or consumerist culture. But I don't care to hear some silly old shit croaking on about a “holly jolly Christmas” any more than I'd care to attend, “voluntarily” of course, a mass rally/celebration of Kim Il Sung's birthday.
I'm wondering now if it's typical for a civilization in decline to enter something like a second childhood. Could be—Spengler speaks of the domination of money at a certain late stage which cultures are bound to undergo. In any case, we are ruled, or we have allowed ourselves to be ruled, by commerce. And the whole point of U.S. commerce and most of its politics and “culture” is to infantilize the populace, because a consumer economy, or at least THIS consumer economy, could not continue without that infantilization. We want our toys, we want them now, and don't even TRY to tell people for whom lies are truth, hate is patriotism, and racist/rightist thuggery is good clean fun that their cities—OUR cities—will soon be under water. And without that infantilization, a third-grade bully in the body of a seventy year old man would not have been chosen in 2016 as the chief executive, nuclear codes and all.
Merry Christmas.