At the tail end of 2004 I was listening to the news a lot. Anyone familiar with the trajectory of a journalist's year will know that December is a month whose news includes weekly updates about "consumer spending." We return home after an afternoon spent Christmas shopping and are greeted with news reports about how we Americans are doing in our important, possibly even patriotic role as consumers. Sometimes the analyst discussing the numbers will even venture to suggest (as they did in 2004) that the numbers are low because "people are putting their holiday shopping off until the last minute," making us sound like a nation of delinquents, almost brow-beating us into the preformance of our consumeristic duty. It often seems like these reports are meant to egg us on, like those thermometer signs they stick out in front of school or church when raising money for a new building. "Come on" the implication seems to be, "keep buying stuff! It's your duty." Only in this instance, instead of the mercury rising to the point we can afford new blacktop on the playground, we are trying to elevate it to the point where retailers can deliver their fourth quarter earnings reports with a smile.

In 2004, the patriotic call to consume followed quickly on the heels of the Novermber elections. The Presidential race seemed to have dragged on for an eternity, clogging the airwaves and the papers for a year and a half. This election year everybody was worked-up about the outcome. There was a common sentiment that it was suddenly important to pay attention to the campaigns; that by watching the debates on TV, and debating at home, we were constructively engaging in politics and protest, doing our part in the democatic process.

Looking back at that year, though, the time and energy average people like myself spent paying attention to the presidential elections seems grossly misallocated. There is no denying the power of the president to determining the course the nation takes through the four years of his term. But to say that our spectatorship in the Presidential campaign is somehow an effective means of creating change seems sadly naive. Listening to the debates on the radio while we cook dinner is not a constructive act for change. Bemoaning our candidate's loss is not a constructive act for change. Even those of us who have the spirt to travel to Washington D.C. and protest often find that we are edged out of the public eye, enclosed like lambs in a pen by the crowd managment abilities of our state. Is traditional protest still a constructive act for change?

A president has a lot on his plate, and much of what he does during his time in office is not of his own choosing. When we stand up and protest George W. Bush, most of us engage in an act of hypocrisy, since we are already tacit supporters of so many of the decisions he is about to make. How many of us who protest the Iraq War, or the idea of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge can honestly say that we are not willing consumers of the fossil fuels those policies are meant to provide? Nearly all of us who protest those events are, even as we angrily mutter about W's stupidity, simultaneously driving the market forces that work W's arms and lips like strings on a puppet.

A visitor to the US from outer space might be forgiven for believing that there is only one referendum on the course our nation takes every four years. But in reality, there is a referendum that happens every day in the way we choose to live our lives. Getting to choose at all is our blessing and our burden. And, of course, there are many things which are completely out of our hands. But when I think about patriotism and duty, it seems to me that our most important obligation is to try to make good decisions in the referendum that happens every day. What we choose to buy, and not to buy, is our most profound political act.

Do we buy into the assumption that strong consumer spending in December is a good? Do we heed the call to get our shopping done before the 24th? Do we buy into the the idea that the Presidential debates, primaries, conventions are more important than our participation and engagement with the boring minutae of our city council hearings? We claim to be democratic, but so often, we willingly buy what is handed down to us from above.

The Ex-consumer project is an attempt to focus on the poltical act of deciding what to, and what not to buy. It is my hope that by paying attention to the material decisions I make each day, and ideally creating a forum for the discussion of those decisions, that I will be able to become politically effective. I believe that if more citizens became interested and involved in making decisions about their material culture, the greater will be our ability to make decisions about our ideological culture.

So often, "environmentalism" implies a finicky, anal-retentive attitude towards the world; represented by the scrawny peacenik, compulsively sorting his recycling into different barrells while the rest of us sit back and enjoy our lives, knowing that none of it matters anyways. I want to turn this stereotype on its' head, proving that it's more fun to be a producer than a consumer, that it is interesting to try to find out where the stuff you use and buy everyday comes from, and that it's a fun hobby to think about how we can make better decisions about the way we live our lives. Sure, the sun could burn out tomorrow, and one day it will. In the meantime, however, I think that trying to figure out the most economical way to do the dishes could actually be a good way to stay entertained. I hope that some readers will agree that the minutae of material culture can can be interesteing (and possibly, politically important), and that they will continue to check in with the report as the year progresses.

CB 2/19/05