[Insert Charlton Heston Quote Here]

You know those dystopias where millions of poor people live in swelting or freezing apartments, eating cheap food and generally leading miserable lives, while on television they watch, in either raging frustration or masturabatory fantasy, as people far more beautiful than they are drive cars they'll never drive, wear clothes they'll never wear, and eat food they'll only ever encounter at a wedding or a funeral?

That's your future:

Mass affluence is over ... The top 10 percent of American households, the trade journal adds, now account for nearly half of all consumer spending, and a disproportionate share of that spending comes from the top 10's upper reaches. ... In actual life the odds of someone's worth amounting to $1 million dollars has shrunk to 1 in 22. ... Before the Great Recession, Madison Avenue conventional wisdom put great stock in the $100,000 to $200,000 income demographic, a consuming universe populated largely by men and women 35 years and older. Targeting this $100,000 to $200,000 cohort no longer makes particularly good marketing sense. ... If current trends continue, no one else but the rich will essentially matter to Madison Avenue.

Madison Avenue declares age of Mass Affluence is over.

Wow, the cognitive dissonance here *hurts*

I don't remember how I got there, but I stumbled upon a websited dedicated to "Evangelical Catholicism." The writer was talking about using incremental changes to restrict women's rights further, and an one point mentions "... defeating our powerful but blundering foe. Exposing their inhuman, vile international agenda is a start."

What is this "inhuman, vile international agenda?" The link goes to the Planned Parenthood Federation's declaration of sexual rights:

IPPF works to promote sexual and reproductive rights for everyone. IPPF realises and believes that sexual rights are a part of human rights. Therefore, IPPF believes that having sexual rights adds to the freedom, equality and dignity of all people. The IPPF declaration is grounded in and informed by international agreements such as United Nation Conventions.

1. IPPF recognises that sexuality is an important part of being human throughout one’s life.

2. IPPF supports a vision that aims to respect, protect and advance the rights of all persons to sexual autonomy and to promote sexual health and rights within a framework of non-discrimination

3. IPPF believes that it is important to create accountable structures, and to encourage government policies and laws which will make sure that these rights are protected for everyone and where possible promoted and fulfilled/enjoyed.

...

The IPPF Supports the following rights:

The right to equality, equal protection of the law and freedom from all forms of discrimination based on sex, sexuality or gender

The right to participation for all persons, regardless of sex, sexuality or gender

The right to life, liberty, security of the person and bodily integrity

The right to privacy

The right to personal autonomy and recognition before the law

The right to freedom of thought, opinion and expression; right to association

The right to health and to the benefits of scientific progress

The right to education and information

The right to choose whether or not to marry and to found and plan a family, and to decide whether or not, how and when, to have children

The right to accountability and redress

Those inhuman, vile bastards!

No, seriously, how detached do you have to be from the human condition, how divorced from your own body and its desires, how much of a hermit from your own soul do you have to be to describe the list above as "vile" and "inhuman?" I feel sorry for EC, but I would never suggest that his patriarchal, authoritarian agenda is anything but, sadly, fully human.