Look, Ma, No Politics?

I’m writing about this here because it seems off-topic for the Facebook post that inspired it. Another local landmark is failing(another month or so of so much communal mourning, I may understand Joe Biden after all. Yikes!) and, as people often do, this group made plans to hang out there a few last times.  After one such event, one man posted something to the effect of how everyone got together with no politics, came together as  Generation X, more or less, and shouldn’t we try to do that all the time?

I’ve been thinking about that for a while, and not only because it pretty much puts parts of my life’s work in a category with getting action figures out of the toilet(except plumbers make more)
It seems to me that there are a lot of political questions involved with this topic, just starting with “Why was it so important that we learn shopping as a form of amusement in the first place?” although regular readers may notice that even in my new radicalized mode, I still buy things recreationally on occasion.I think politics have been equated  with partisanship, hot takes, and doing something we don’t like to pwn the other side. Yes, those things are there, and I don’t always like them either, but I don’t think it’s wise to stop considering social questions to get a little cheap peace and quiet.

Other questions to ponder: Why don’t the people behind “us” have any money? Why are so many of the business press so eager to keep writing the same old hack “The bad old internet is why retail can’t sell nice things,” story over and over and so much less about businesses bleeding these companies dry? Why is it so expensive to get out of college now and it seems like people get so much less? What are we going to do about people like  Jeff Bezos and his seemingly endless determination to pave Paradise and put up a fulfillment center in its place.