Not Buying It

by Judith Levine

OCTOBER 25

  Paul fixes the sink. Dried, flaky gaskets in the handles are preventing them from shutting off entirely, so they leak. He goes to Mazzone, the local hardware store, where the guy puts the part together for him, comes back home, and installs it in about ten minutes. A $100 plumbing job accomplished for $4.60 in parts plus about an hour of time. My watch band breaks. Instead of going to Canal Street to buy another one, Paul fixes it with some rubber cement. I get a little thrill from each of these repairs, like a runner wringing fifty more meters from her exhausted body.

  OCTOBER 30

  I’m in Philly for the weekend, the last push before the election. I start the day optimistic and spend the rest of it trying to ward off depression. The precinct to which I am assigned is in the neighborhood of the University of Pennsylvania, a ward of falling-down buildings inhabited by students and recent immigrants, the largely transient, long-disaffected, newly registered, and therefore highly unlikely voters the Democrats are counting on to win the election. On a list of more than a hundred names, I lay eyes on only one, a woman returning home with her laundry. She won’t tell me whom she is voting for. The precinct captain, a Penn student, has given up. He hands us our lists and, on the Saturday three days before the election, goes off to play soccer.

  That night, sleeping in my friends’ third-floor guest room, I descend into a terrifying and endless dream. In it I am with Janice and Paul. Bad things are happening. We walk down a high stoop and suddenly a flood is rising around us. Paul and I jump to the side, but Janice falls into the water and starts to go under. We drag her out and push her, soaking wet, into a car. Paul takes the wheel and starts to drive fast through Brooklyn. When we’re almost home we careen into a wall, which crumbles like chalk. Paul screams and disappears into the wall. Janice and I are alone in the car and now I’m driving, but there are no landmarks. We might even be in another city. I am frantic about Paul’s disappearance. The brakes cease to work. The car is screaming through intersections, mowing down pedestrians.

  Then Janice leans over and looks into the backseat. Crumpled but fluffy, as if they’d just come from the dryer, are my bed sheets, the white and red all-cotton cherry pattern I bought last summer. She reaches back to touch them. “These are really nice,” she says. “Where did you get them?”

  The colors of the dream brighten. “Oh, yeah,” I say. “The Company Store. They were on sale. I got them for $19 each.” I glance into the rearview mirror and smile maternally. “Theyare nice, aren’t they?” I forget Paul, swallowed by the wall, forget the bodies littering the intersections. I love my cherry sheets. My panic cools like a face against a fresh pillowcase.

  OCTOBER 31

  Alec Dubro, editor of the satiric Web siteWashington Pox, comes to dinner. He and Paul have been tossing around an idea for a public service campaign about campaign finance—but not campaign finance reform. While in the Vermont legislature, Paul concluded that limiting donations from large organizations cannot be achieved without violating the First Amendment or leaving gaping loopholes through which billionaire candidates can drive their Hummers. Alec agrees.

  So we are thinking up slogans for a campaign to start creating a culture in which people consider donations to candidates part of their civic obligation. I take a stab: “How about ‘It’s not money in politics that’s the problem. It’s whose money.’ ”

  Pretty good, the guys say. Paul writes it down.

  Consumption is political, sometimes in the most literal of ways. On the radio, I hear the Israeli writer Amos Oz talking about the perennial debate in his family’s home about cheese. The Israeli cheese was the cheese of the Jewish People, the cheese of the great Zionist project. The Arab cheese was the cheese of the enemy. “On the other hand,” says Oz, his voice warming with Jewish wryness, “the Arab cheese was a little bit cheaper…and much tastier.”

  Consumption is political, and politics is a form of consumption. Getting a candidate elected takes more than time, imagination, and bodies in the street. The person running for office has to talk to at least several thousand and as many as several hundred million people. That means advertising, travel, staff—money. MoveOn calls during supper and I give them another $25. Back at the table, I find Alec verbally sketching the image of a candidate kissing a baby, with the caption, “He’s bought and paid for. By you.”

  Like wine and shoes, democracy must be bought. But a political party is not a brand, a candidate is not a cheese, and politics is the antithesis of the stagnant exchange of the marketplace, dollar for product. The price of democracy is eternal haggling; its value must be negotiated again and again. And all the while, it must be owned and used by everyone.

  November

  The Ownership

  Society

  NOVEMBER 4

  “Let me put it to you this way,” an ebullient president-elect tells the press this morning. “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.”

  George W. Bush has won 51 percent of electoral market share and now, he says, he’s got “the will of the people at my back” (he invokes this democratic mandate jocularly in refusing to take follow-up questions from reporters).

  And what is he going to do with our windy will?

  Transform America into the Ownership Society: make tax cuts to the rich permanent, starve just about all government functions to the skeleton, and hand what’s left of the meat to a snarling pack of private corporations. The Ownership Society will mean that everything Americans own collectively will be poorer: public schools, housing, transportation, hospitals, parks, museums, courts, colleges, environmental protection, scientific research, and veterans’ benefits, to name a few. Homeland Security will scrimp on guarding the nuclear power plants; the Pentagon will forgo bulletproof vests for the troops in Iraq. Private contractors will serve the meals on the military bases and, for wages many times larger than enlisted soldiers’ combat pay, even fight the war itself.

  The Ownership Society, in effect, is a massive redistribution of the wealth from the public trust to private hands. Or certain private hands. So far, 47 percent of this recovery’s growth has gone into corporate profits, the largest share in more than a half-century. Fifteen percent has ended up in wages and salaries, the smallest share. Bush and the GOP-majority Congress are on the way to eliminating taxes on investment income (how the rich get richer) while loading the burden of paying for the government onto dollars earned from labor (how the rest of us get by). This “reform” will accelerate a quarter-century-long trend that has more than doubled the share of the wealth held by the top one-thousandth of America’s taxpayers and shrunk the portion owned by the bottom 90 percent. In 2002, the latest year for which the IRS has data, 5,650 of America’s richest individuals and married couples paid no federal income taxes at all. That’s more than five times the number in 2000.

  You might call it the Owners’ Society—the Lear Jet Owners’ Society.

  But today, two days after the divisive elections, Americans seem eager to get back to the business and pleasure of America, and as far as American business is concerned, it’s not a moment too soon. TheTimes quotes an industry spokesman who says auto execs found Kerry’s fuel-efficiency proposals “scary,” whereas they know the Bush team is “willing to work with us.” One indicator: the White House’s chief of staff used to be General Motors’ top lobbyist. With the elections in the rearview mirror, Big Auto expects sales to go up. Says Chrysler sales analyst Gary Dilts: “The guys on the showroom floor think this”—that is, the election of the most powerful man on earth—“has been a negative distraction.”

  In a similar story in today’sNew York Post, economist Steve Spiwak predicts a merry Christmas for New York retailers: “With the voting over, the negative impact of the election on consumers’ moods should dissipate, paving the way for a solid holiday shopping season.”

  I take the garbage out and run into my neighbor Jack, getting out of his car in front of his brownstone. Although the car has a
Kerry-Edwards sticker on it, the negative impact on his family’s mood has already begun to dissipate.

  “How’re you doing?” Jack asks me. He rests a large package on the sidewalk.

  “I’ve been better,” I say.

  “I know what you mean,” he says. We exchange glum looks. “But,” he adds, “life goes on!” His wife, Melanie, is balancing several more bags while corralling their two children, who are, as usual, gorgeously dressed and, just now, manifestly unhappy.

  Suddenly, I am enraged at Jack and Melanie, who are as lovely a pair of neighbors as anyone could wish for. Yes, life goes on, and if you have kids it must go on. But how will it go on if everyone just goes on shopping? I think of those suburban Philadelphians in their big houses, at this moment unloading bulbs and fertilizer from their SUVs: “Well, honey, I guess we can expect World War III in a few months…What do you think—some narcissus over by the hyacinth?”

  My life is going on, too. If I were not not-shopping I might also be nursing my wounds with a three-Mimosa brunch and a trip to Ikea. Instead, I’m biting my neighbors’ necks. Are Jack and Melanie the enemy? I’m casting around for something or someone to blame.

  NOVEMBER 7

  The privateers are swarming over the Ownership Society as if it were a done deal. In his financial advice column, Ben Stein warns Baby Boomers that to be old and poor is miserable—“terrifying.” Thanks for the news, Ben. A third of Boomers have less than $50,000 in savings, he notes, and a family now earning $50,000 a year (roughly the New York average) will need $1.25 million in principal at a 4 percent rate of return to yield the same after retirement.

  But don’t count on “miracle cures from the federal government,” says Stein. In less than a week, Social Security has gone from an entitlement to the act of a merciful god. “It’s up to us, and the time to start is right now…even if it takes sacrifice.”

  I just happen to be that hypothetical fifty-year-old, give or take a couple of years. It just happens I’ve put away that hypothetical $50,000 nest egg, give or take a few dollars. I don’t quite earn $50,000, but for the moment let’s assume I do. Bring on the sacrifice. I’m a pro.

  I Google “Retirement Savings Calculator,” find one that looks simple enough for a person who barely made it through ninth-grade algebra and doesn’t make me sign up for a $29.99 credit check in order to use it “free.” I enter my age, current savings, desired monthly income at retirement, and hit Calculate. Okay, here it is. To reach $1.25 million by sixty-five on my $50,000-a-year salary, I need to save only…$58,000 a year!

  NOVEMBER 9

  “I Shop, Therefore I Am,” a 1983 serigraph on vinyl by the feminist artist Barbara Kruger, sells at the Chelsea auctioneer Phillips, de Pury & Company for $601,600. When the gavel falls, the packed salesroom erupts in applause.

  NOVEMBER 11

  More good news about my golden years. In the science section of theTimes, I read that some robotics experts at Carnegie Mellon have designed a soft, heat-radiating pillow that will use sensing and wireless phone technologies to provide a physical touch from a distant friend or relative, “because their research found that what older people often needed most was emotional support.” Emotional support and a million and a quarter a year. But one thing at a time.

  The pillow is called the Hug. Each conversant has one. To get started, they squeeze the paw and speak the other’s name into the belly of the Hug. A wireless connection is established, and after that, each squeeze or pat of one Hug is converted by sensors into a data stream that travels to the other Hug, where a small motor vibrates inside the device, sending out a gentle vibration. It’s exactly like embracing a living person, except that instead of a person, it’s a vibrating pillow.

  Paul and I have dinner with Leonore. We discuss what life is going to be like twenty-five years from now, when the young GOPpies are running the privatized world.

  “Most of us will be poorer,” says Leonore.

  “People are going to be less compassionate,” Paul says.

  “All us old Baby Boomers will be out on ice floes,” I say.

  “Singing ‘Kumbaya,’ ” says Paul.

  And from time to time, the kids will vibe us on the Hug.

  NOVEMBER 13

  E-mail to Alison:

  Subject: The Empire Strikes Back

  Here’s a plot for a novel: Europe invades the U.S. to halt its imperial aggressions. Too bad I don’t know how to write a war novel or want to. Know anyone who needs a plot? Later, J

  Reply from Alison:

  Subject: RE: The Empire Strikes Back

  Sell it on eBay.

  Yr pal, Alison

  NOVEMBER 15

  A disaster-dividend bulletin in the mail: a promo on heavy, glossy, red stock that reads, “What’s Hot! A Profession with Respect! Cardiovascular Monitoring Technician is in big demand. Earn $1000 a week plus!” It goes on: “The demand for CMTs is endless because the leading cause of death for men and women is heart disease…. Starting salaries are great ($1,000 per week)!”

  Analysts are weighing in on Bush’s “health security accounts,” under which workers would be allowed to divert some of their Social Security taxes to private investment accounts. “Bush’s plan is asking you to swap an insurance policy for a lottery ticket,” writes James Surowiecki in theNew Yorker.

  I file the red brochure. Heart attacks are going to be big.

  NOVEMBER 16

  Paul and I are sitting on the stoop in the sun, assessing our collective net worth. He’s got his Vermont acres, I’ve got my ever-more-valuable fourth-floor walkup in Brooklyn. “If we cash it all in ten years from now,” Paul says, “we’ll have nearly a million dollars.”

  “But we’d be living in the cars,” I say.

  “If we sell those, we’ll be worth about a million two thousand,” he adds.

  “We’ll be millionaires, but we’ll be homeless. Homeless millionaires.”

  NOVEMBER 17

  E-mail from Common Cause’s ActForChange, in response to some (no doubt urgent) suggestion I sent them a few weeks ago.

  Dear Judith,

  Thank you for taking the time to offer your suggestion for a future ActForChange action. Your feedback is vital to us and we are taking care to read each and every incoming e-mail. Please know that your active participation in ActForChange is greatly valued and that your suggestion will be considered for inclusion on the site.

  Last year, ActForChange users generated 2.2 million e-mails and petition signatures to decision-makers worldwide on issues ranging from violence against women to land conservation. This year, with your participation, we hope to double or triple our online activism.

  Thank you again for your support. If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to let us know. Thanks for helping to build a better world!

  Sincerely,

  Mandeep K.

  Customer Relations

  Mandeep. I wonder if Common Cause, like Microsoft and the New York State Unemployment Department, is outsourcing its “Customer Relations” to Bangalore.

  Dear Mandeep,

  Thank you for taking the time to send me a form e-mail. One thing, though. I’m not a customer, I’m a citizen.

  NOVEMBER 18

  “People are good,” reads a two-page magazine ad for eBay. The photograph shows the backs of a few thick-torsoed moms and dads on bleachers, watching a small-town car race, and a buck-toothed kid kneeling before the bench in the foreground, engrossed in his NASCAR Hot Wheels. “There are thousands who love the things you love. How will you find them?” The eBay logo picks up the colors of the toy cars. Beneath it, the slogan, “The power of all of us.”

  Mandeep’s e-mail reminds me that I can’t blame the corporations or the Republicans for eroding the line between communities and markets, citizenship and consuming. People are disenfranchising themselves. Voter turnout in this election was higher than usual, but at 60 percent of eligible voters it still ranked 139th out of 172 countries. At the
same time, Americans are becoming a full-time volunteer army of the marketplace. In the hours when they are not buying, they are selling to others.

  It may have begun in the Eighties, when everybody’s handbag, chest, and butt became a billboard for Yves Saint-Laurent or the Gap. Now, PR agencies are taking advantage of the public’s desire to be of use to the corporation by hiring ordinary people to sell products to their friends and co-workers.Hiring may be the wrong word, as these “social marketing agents” are not paid. So mightselling, as the friends and co-workers are not generally informed that their interlocutors are praising a particular perfume or sausage on behalf of the product’s makers.

  Why do people do it? The firm BzzAgent at first offered free products, but most neglected to pick them up. The work is apparently rewarding enough in itself. Some participants say they like being on the cutting edge. But rather thanin front of the crowd, many seem to want to feelof it, to belong to…something. “For me, it’s being part of something big,” buzz agent “JonO” toldNew York Times Magazine reporter Rob Walker. “I think it’s such a big thing that’s going to shape marketing. To actually be one of the people involved in shaping that is, to me, big.”

  At a party, Ellen Willis says to me, “There’s a thin line between consumption for pleasure and consumption that is a substitute for the other pleasures you are not having.” Replace the wordpleasure withagency and the same is true. Forty percent of the American electorate didn’t bother casting a ballot this year. On a survey question “I feel I have more effect on (a) the U.S. government or (b) the sausage market,” how many would answer (b)?

  NOVEMBER 20

  Paul and I have to go shopping. I mean, we really have to. My father is moving into a nursing home and he needs clothes. Because he’s occasionally incontinent and laundry isn’t done frequently at the home, he needs lots of them. We’re not looking forward to a fun spree.