An inside look at Reverend Billy Talen’s Church-of-Not-Shopping

Reverend Billy is a clown and a prophet. All dressed up, he is a serious clown, self-honed and bearing sharp claws in the best tradition of court jesters. At the recent True Spin Conference in Denver Colorado I had a chance to meet the Reverend Billy of The-Church-of-Not-Shopping. Reverend Billy is an outwardly cartoonish persona constructed by actor Billy Talen. Talan has been at it for so long and so intensely, however, that it is difficult to see where Talen ends and Reverend Billy begins. Even while he was discussing his mission during his presentation at True Spin, he was prone to erupt into his preacher voice, standing up and beckoning those present to heed the central tenet of his Church: that we “Not Shop.” Although Reverend Billy is famous for his anti-consumerist sermons, he also preaches on numerous other social justice issues. One of those other concerns is that free-flowing conversational and intellectual space—the place where naturally-occurring culture used to thrive—is now jam-packed with the profit-seeking messages of corporations seeking to deny us the natural flow of our social interactions. "They want to sponsor our stories." He is concerned that corporations have filled our heads with their music and their values, and their buy-oriented slogans, largely displacing us of our ability and desire to construct original thoughts through natural conversion. Billy argues that we need to ramp down the shopping because on a daily basis we are selling our very souls when we unnecessarily buy. We have remade ourselves into commodities, and our unwitting plan is to deliver ourselves to our sponsors. Pop quiz: according to Rev. Billy, what is the best thing you can get someone for Christmas? Answer: nothing. Why should we stop shopping? Reverend Billy might answer you with the Title to his 2007 documentary: "What Would Jesus Buy?" No words really work well to introduce you to Reverend Billy. Take a moment, if you will, to allow Amy Goodman to introduce him to you. Those who think Reverend Billy is only a clown fail to listen closely to his serious message, perhaps because of the outrageous way with which he delivers it. But make no mistake that Billy has carefully constructed both his message and his means of delivering it. He delivers it in a way that seems absurd in order to bring a modicum of attention to his message. You see, Americans love their shopping their conveniences, and they fiercely resist any suggestion that they need to change their ways.

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The one who’s name must not be mentioned.

No, I'm not referring to Voldemort of the Harry Potter movies. I'm referring to Sarah Palin, who I've resisted mentioning, because she has been serving as the perfect freak show for our conflict-obsessed media, which uses her freakness simply to sell faux "news." Or maybe not. Depending on who you listen to, she might actually be the future face of the Republican Party, despite the fact that she has never uttered an idea useful for solving a real-world political problem. Or maybe, as Andrew Sullivan writes, she is not a political phenomenon at all, but a religious leader. If you doubt Sullivan's claim, check Palin's recent quote, which Sullivan quotes at length in this post from The Daily Dish. Sullivan's characterization of Palin doesn't surprise me, though; I've come to see most religions as special cases of politics. Both are elaborate systems that use vague and largely unsubstantiated fables and threats to enable small elite groups to coordinate and control much larger groups of people, for better and worse.

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Eisenhower warns of the military industrial complex

In this video from 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower explained the grave implications of the existence of the military industrial complex. In my opinion, he was spot on in this speech (which was his exit speech from the presidency), and this phenomenon of the MEC explains the horrifically warped U.S. national budget and our equally warped sense of national priorities for decades:

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Exhibit A regarding Congressional dysfunction

How is it that one senator can stifle government function? Tim Rutten of the LA Times explains:

In the face of these daunting issues, what was it that preoccupied the Senate on the eve of its long weekend recess? The legislative drama du jour is the standoff between the White House and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), who has put a personal hold on more than 70 executive branch appointments until the Obama administration agrees to fund a couple of pork-barrel projects he has earmarked for his state. One involves tens of millions of dollars for an FBI laboratory focusing on improvised explosives -- something the bureau doesn't think it needs. . . . Unless the administration agrees to give Shelby what he wants, he intends to invoke an archaic senatorial privilege that allows him to prevent the chamber from considering any of the administration's nominees to executive branch vacancies, no matter how crucial. Without the 60 votes to force cloture -- another archaic convention -- there's nothing the Democrats or the White House can do.

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Going down?

Writing at the NYT, Bob Herbert thinks that the U.S. desperately needs to turn things around. His concern is "frantic, debt-driven consumption, speculative bubbles, exotic financial instruments . . ." He's not buying talk of our economic "recovery":

We don’t hear a lot that is serious about the sorry state of the nation’s infrastructure or the trade policies that crippled so many American industries or our inability (or unwillingness) to compete effectively with China when it comes to the new world of energy for the 21st century or our abject failure to provide a quality public education for the next generation of American workers, scientists, artists and entrepreneurs. Speaking at a conference here on Wednesday, Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania said that if we don’t act quickly in developing long-term solutions to these and other problems, the United States will be a second-rate economic power by the end of this decade. A failure to act boldly, he said, will result in the U.S. becoming “a cooked goose.”

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