We are going to have to learn to care for one another again. Neoliberalism has turned us into selfish assholes. We have followed Thatcher’s maxim that there is no society only individuals, and in the process have lost our humanity.

Becoming cheap assholes is the other trick neoliberalism has played on us. We’re encouraged to seek out the lowest price even if it means outsourcing our jobs and transforming once American vibrant cities and towns into wastelands. Even as it means increasingly shoddy made products that fill our landfills to overflowing. Even if it means relying on child-labor in Third-World hellholes to supply us with the latest fashions that we casually toss away. Even if it means putting once vibrant small stores out of business so we can seek out the lowest, lowest price at Walmart.

Of course we aren’t all encouraged to be cheap. The marketing wizards invented a new product niche aimed at the professional/managerial/class (PMC’s). In a bit of evil-genius marketing they turned consumer ecological responsibility into this trendy elite thing priced way out of range for normal people. For example there’s the whole eco chic thing and Whole Foods and Tesla and the rest of this whole new luxury market designed to let rich people feel good about themselves while the world burns and create the narrative that buying stuff will fix our problems.

And if all of this sounds suspiciously like class-warfare designed to turn Americans against one another give yourself a cookie.

Like I repeat endlessly–evil is easy.

But, wouldn’t we hear or read about all of this on the news? The corporate media likes to portray themselves as an alert watchdog but the media is owned by billionaires, and serves as little more than the public relations arm of concentrated wealth and as cheerleader for a neoliberalism that normalizes the criminal profiteering of the monopolistic corporations that control America. The billionaire-owned media corporations are embedded in the same model of corporate profit as these corporations. Indeed, the media’s own corporate profits depend on the advertising and sponsorship of the same corporations they are supposedly holding accountable. It’s no wonder trust in the corporate media is at an all time low.

Going further, because I always do, we live in a world not, as we are told, of democratic accountability and transparency. Beyond formal, surface appearances, our system of political, economic and social control is designed to be unaccountable. We live in a world of illusion, of elites that look out for their own, that develop ever more sophisticated technological tools to manipulate and deceive us, and that have progressively rigged the system to accrue to themselves ever more wealth and power. They manufacture consent for our rugged-individualism and throwaway culture the same way they manufacture consent for endless warfare and empire.

I’m convinced that this is a huge factor in the mental health crises our society is experiencing today. We’re trapped in this system where we’re constantly being psychologically bombarded with an endless barrage of messaging trying to make us think and feel and desire and loathe specific things for no other reason than because it’s profitable.

Ultimately, being cheap has political ramifications. Neoliberalism encourages competition and an obsessive focus on maximizing “human capital”, while promoting frugality with care and concern for one another, in the process destroying any idea of republican self-government.

That’s why creating community is a revolutionary act.