When the Backbone of Consumerism dies….

Usher: I been thinkin’ Deak, about what is going to happen when consumerism ceases to be the backbone of this country.

Deacon: You think it will ever happen?

Usher: It’s inevitable. The bubble is bursting.  Madoff is enough to prove this.  Here’s a guy who’s been running a Ponzi scheme right under Wall Street’s nose for nearly 40 years!  They actually made him head of Nasdaq – how’s that for executive accountability!  The government  rebuilt it (using socialism techniques) after the first depression, but it might just be too big and unmanageable to build back this time.  Too many people, too much crisis, not enough resources 70 years later.  Other countries have tried to copy the US consumerist model and have either failed or are failing (Japan (deflation), Iraq (democracy), Russia (pseudo commudemocracy), countries in Central America & Africa (who knows what their version is called).

Deacon: So how will the “christians” respond when they:

• watch their “pastors” leave for congregations for more money
• are forced to meet in buildings with no steeples, no heat, no electricity, no flat screens and no PA systems 
• have nothing in the treasury to help the poor who show up and they have to share their food, clothing and housing with the undesirables
• forego tithe to feed their families or possibly their neighbors
• are not be able to pay back their creditors because there are no jobs or hope of jobs
• are forced to forgive those who have borrowed money from them and who they know will never be able to pay them back
• have paid all their bills on time, have great credit and are still ruined because of what Wall Street has done
• spend most of their day fending for food instead of shopping for things that end up in yard sales or landfills
• go to the landfill to find things to sell for food
• stop preaching about the good life to come when it’s obvious it has passed
• drive around in cars that are uninsured and unpaid for – but no one to repossess them
• bury their dead in pine boxes in holes they dig with their Home Depot shovels
• lose their churches to banks and lenders who either tear them down or board them up and fence them off
• end up living two or three to a room because there are no more jobs and no money and nowhere to eat out or shop….
• wake up to find squatters living in their garages, yards, barns, sheds or cars
• use their sports stadiums as shelters
• are forced to teach their own children because the governments go broke and the schools have all closed
• or their relatives/friends/brethren are put in jail for failing to pay their taxes and debt
• are turned in by their neighbors, falsely accused of petty crimes in exchange for food and favors
• are falsely accused of helping people who the government has blacklisted or cast out
• have to work every waking hour just to eat and fend for those who cannot hunt for food
• have no government to decide matters and have to carry out their own courts and judgments
• cannot get a job with their Ivy League pedigrees or their careers were founded on the model of consumerism
• are forced to beg for food or money to buy food as the only paying jobs are dishonest, illegal or predatory
• are asked to leave their neighborhoods because their wealthy neighbors are no longer accepting of them, now that they’re poor
• look out the window and see American “refugees” in droves walking down the highway heading nowhere because they have been turned away and have no money, no home, no car and no job

Deacon: I think you’re a little over-the-top Usher. 

Usher: Really?  So tell me where all the people who are losing their homes going to live?  They couldn’t pay a mortgage, what makes you think they can afford a rental (now owned by wealthy predators).  Will the christians take them in or send them to the government for help?