One can only hope that this time culture can win out over consumerism.
One of the deans of American cultural history (as well as a professor at Rutgers University), Lears has spent decades writing about turn-of-the-20th-century debates over consumerism, modernity, religion and market capitalism.
Nader's position is closer to the view, not that all government is bad but that government can be bad when not effectively held to account - reflected in his "vision of democracy that places citizenship over consumerism, communities over corporations, and public interest over private power".
"When I moved here, I was like, Where's the what?' " Like many artists, Mr. Wells has heard the critique that New York has been taken over by consumerism.
In "American Electra: Feminism's Ritual Matricide", her cover story in the October Harper's magazine, Susan Faludi argues that young feminists are frivolous fashionistas who choose Lady Gaga over Gloria Steinem and consumerism over activism, thereby betraying the cause – and their second-wave mothers, real and figurative.
Aside from concerns over growing consumerism, managerialism and diminishing job security for early career researchers, few topics engender as much debate as academic writing.
Eberstadt's vocabulary sometimes shows an impatient petulance, as when the Gypsies' aged Mercedeses are reported to have "engines cannibalized from crappier cars," the earthy adjective returning in a heated lament over the consumerism "in which people are persuaded to express their love for their children through the acquisition of crappy goods they can't afford".
By 2001, Noel Gallagher was already pin-pointing the trends and forces that have led us to the present day, hollering over the corporate takeover of not only the music industry but the actual planet, boiling in indignation over insatiable consumerism, hyper-capitalism, celebrity culture and the peddlers of weedy career-rock.
If Las Vegas epitomizes the over-the-top consumerism of American architecture, then Lake Las Vegas takes that ostentation to the next logical step, transporting it to a gated community for empty nesters who have already hit the jackpot.
Although the culture seems driven by faddishness and over-the-top consumerism, national polls report that 19 out of 20 Americans affirm a belief in God, and 4 in 10 say they attend a house of worship regularly.
But he said the "over-the-top" consumerism of the festive season was putting relationships under strain.
