PANDEMIC
Your Patriotic Duty Is to Buy More Sh*t
Our approach to recovery is ill-fitting and out-of-touch, not to mention disgusting
Have we learned nothing? A year ago, I wrote here on Medium that we should all “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting,” warning that both government and brands were about to usher in a massive campaign to get us all to go back to “normal.” Of course, the pandemic lasted much longer than anyone could have expected. Few knew what fresh horrors would await us as we progressed phase-by-pandemic-phase through 2020 and 2021. Thankfully, we have new hands on the government steering wheel. But that campaign is now, 15 months later, in full force from Big Business, Big Tech, and the Big Media. Case in point: the sappy, manipulative “Mess We Miss” ads from Pepsi that debuted this month. How could we possibly gather again and hug our loved ones without a Pepsi brokering the reunion? Disgusting.
Today’s nugget: CNN Business published a report this morning called “The US economy is nearly ‘back to normal’,” detailing the latest from its “Back-to-Normal Index” — a front-page story that reminded us all that our responsibility as consumers is to spend and not save:
Now, the biggest piece of the recovery puzzle is to keep folks spending. Washington’s stimulus checks…
