Three-stranded braid of failing Cs: Christianity, Capitalism, Consumerism

Scrooge.

What a word.

Invented by Charles Dickens back in the 1840's as the name for his deplorably wealthy antagonist in the story "A Christmas Carol". Now, in modern English, a Scrooge is a miserly, greedy "person" who deprioritizes actual people in order to better fixate on money.

Those scare quotes were deliberate. I'm not saying filthy rich pigs aren't technically people too. I'm saying that once a person becomes filthy rich, their choice to stay that way is a daily sacrifice: their own personhood, slaughtered on the altar of wealth.

Their souls for gold.

For what is the hoarding of wealth while children starve, if not a willful denial of the humanity of others? And what is the denial of A CHILD'S humanity, if not a willful denial of one's own humanity?

Back to Scrooge.

In the off chance you have never encountered the plotline of “A Christmas Carol” before, I'll share the synopsis: Ebenezer Scrooge is a businessman who hoards more money than he'll ever use. He pays his loyal employee, Bob Cratchit, less than a living wage, and has the blind audacity to demand longer hours and ever higher productivity from poor Cratchit. Even as Scrooge rakes in profits he dreams, endlessly, of acquiring more. No amount of money can ever satisfy.

Scrooge gives nothing to charity. In fact he views kindness and generosity and empathy as weakness.

Scrooge doesn't come right out and say 'empathy is a weakness', probably because the word “empathy” was not in the English language when Dickens wrote his iconic story. Still if "empathy" had been in the vernacular I highly doubt Dickens would have had Scrooge actually say "Empathy is a weakness" because Charlie (Dickens) wouldn't have wanted to destroy suspension of disbelief for his readers.

I feel like in those days many readers would have scoffed at the idea-- it would seem too cartoonishly evil to be believable dialogue....

.... Back then.

But these days?

Today? That dialogue would break immersion for being too true to life.

We have heard real, live embarrassments like Elon Musk come out and say exactly that! We've even had comparatively poor but still objectively (and shamefully) wealthy capitalist bootlickers like Charlie Kirk say the same.

FYI: Adjusted for inflation Scrooge's net worth might be estimated at around 4 million. Scrooge was a wealthy business man, but he only had one employee as far as we know. Compared to the pigs of today, that's little league greed. Still, that level of wealth was enough for Scrooge to stand as an absurd caricature of greed. Now, for comparison: when he was murdered, Charlie Kirk's net worth was around 12 million dollars. That's 3 times scroogier than Scrooge himself. Unconscionable. But Kirk's net worth? Still a lot less than half of one percent of Musk's downright, demonically evil net worth of 490 BILLION...

Just thought it could be helpful to slap some numbers on the proudly-anti-kindness crowd.

Compared to our real-life scrooges, the fictional Scrooge was almost laughably poor!

Think about that for a second-- the infamous Scrooge had round 4 million dollars to his name and the world's wealthiest man, in history has around 490… billion.

The numbers are so big I literally can't wrap my head around the scale. So I'm gonna do some math (yuck).

The highest hourly rate I ever earned was 25 $/hr, back when I worked as an assistant manager in a grocery store.

Full time, that's around 1,000 dollars weekly, or 52,000 dollars a year-- never mind tax considerations for this hypothetical. Let's just pretend that zero of my hard-earned dollars were skimmed by the US government. A blessed hypothetical! I for one would love to imagine that my taxes were never used to drop bombs on civilians.

Now if I never spent a dime on rent, food, diapers, clothes, or transportation: how long would I have had to work to get to 1 billion dollars?

Sorry in advance, the answer is depressing:

1,000,000,000 divided by 52,000 equals 19230.7692308.

In other words, at my highest wages ever, I'd have to spend NOTHING and work for 19,000 YEARS to earn 1 billion dollars.

All that for one measly billion!

Musk has 837 billion dollars. (I know, earlier I said he had 49o billion. That was true back when I started typing this up, sometime around Christmas 2025. Today is 2/26/26. In that short a time Musk has almost doubled his cruel and senseless accumulation of wealth. Shithead is projected to become the world's first trillionaire any day now.)

I'd like to offer you a brief intermission here.

Take a moment. Stretch your legs. Vomit if you have to.

If you're still shaking mad, or too worn down to know what to feel, please know: you're not alone.

Maybe a couple more minutes, and some music to help you process.

Here's Amyl and the Sniffers:

Okay. We're back.

For the record. Back when I made a grand total of 25 dollars per hour, I worked really fucking hard in that job. You can literally ask anybody I worked iwth if I ever came across as lazy and they'll laugh in your face.

As a manager, I gave myself the heavier work to try to make everybody's shift a bit more livable. I threw myself into it like madman, to the point where sweat just pour out of my body, every single day. And after a long shift I'd go home physically and mentally exhausted-- and then I'd literally ring out my sweat soaked shirt and shorts before tossing them in the wash.

At that time I was eating a 5,000 calorie diet every day and not gaining any weight.

Like scarfing down blocks of cheese and cartons of ice cream just to break even.

That’s crazy. And it's not exaggerated.

Do you think Elon Musk works hard like that. Do you think he's ever worked that hard a day in his life?

I'd go so far as to say that the majority of hourly workers— even those with enough self respect to half-ass it— they probably work harder than Elon ever has. And you know what's undeniably fucked? A lot of these laborers in the working class are grinding multiple jobs, all for a lot less pay than they deserve. Did you know that the federal minimum wage in the USA is an insulting 7.25 $/hr?

For those who believe he has earned it, how hard do you believe Musk must work to actually deserve almost one trillion dollars?

Back to Scrooge....

Scrooge didn't work hard. His employee did.

Scrooge was disgustingly rich. Not Musk-tier human monstrosity rich, but still… rich. Meanwhile, hard working Cratchit and his family languished in abject poverty.

But remember-- Dickens couldn't come right out and have Scrooge pull a Musk or Kirk and openly admit to being anti-empathy.

So how did Dickens sHoW nOt TeLL?

He revealed Scrooge's shriveled heart by establishing his disdain for well wishes. When poor overworked and underpaid Cratchit wishes Scrooge a merry Christmas, Scrooge replies: "Bah humbug!"

Bah Humbug is Dickensian for "Fuck the holidays and FUCK sharing!"

Here Scrooge isn't merely depicted as a psychotic asshole....

His status as a parasite is emphasized. His wealth is siphoned out of the suffering poor, yet he won't spare a thought for charity. And for all that accumulation of wealth, Scrooge is still unhappy.

Bah

Humbug

Dickens used this character to describe and condemn archetypical greed.

And once again, this fictional bad guy who was universally understood to be a total and complete moral failure had a net worth that was only around 25% of Charlie Kirk's net worth, and less than 1 thousandth of one percent of Elon Rancidpieceofshit Musk's net worth. (Disclaimer: Musk's middle name might not actually be Rancidpieceofshit. I just took a guess. Didn’t want to waste time looking up more details about one of the most deplorable men to ever exist. But it sounds apt. I like to think it's possible I guessed correctly.)

By the way:

There are also ghosts in "A Christmas Carol"-- four spirits who show up to admonish Scrooge for being so suck-ass. One ghost is the condemned spirit of his dead business partner, a greedy bastard who died and went straight to hell. His name was Jacob Marley. In the story, Marley warns Scrooge to be less of a festering douchebag, or he’ll be damned too.

The next ghost to show up is the "Ghost of Christmas Past". He shows Scrooge who he used to be, before he became a wealth obsessed cunt-- he forces Scrooge to relive his own willingness to give up the good things in life, all in pursuit of more arbitrary gold. This ghost also reveals the minds of the friends and lovers that Scrooge has spurned over the years, they laugh at Scrooge behind his back, criticizing him for his pathetic and unhinged sense of personal entitlement.

The next ghost to show up is the Ghost of Christmas Present, who gives Scrooge the Christmas present of spying on Cratchit's suffering family in the moment. Scrooge peeks in on Cratchit's malnourished son who is crippled, weakly, and ill, but still far stronger than Scrooge in his capacity to love. This ghost forces Scrooge to weigh his power to help alleviate suffering against his total unwillingness to part with his money.

The last ghost is the Ghost of Christmas Future, who reminds Scrooge that one day he'll die, and the legacy he leaves behind will be one of being a Rancid Piece of Shit. As a quick aside, the ghost also points out that if the Cratchit's boy goes untreated he will surely die. This ghost concludes by revealing that unlike the heartless Scrooge, the boy’s early death will be mourned.

Anyway, in a story full of ghosts and fancy, the last plot point is actually the least believable: Scrooge has a change of heart.

That's just not a thing that happens in real life.

The more a person dips into the filth of wealth, the more it saturates their souls. Entitlement skyrockets when people get a taste of excess, they convince themselves they've earned it. These billionaire freaks will use any excuse to justify the outright evil of hoarding while "lesser" people starve and ration their meds.

They run good PR campaigns, but they're all bad people. Or "people", as it were. Because remember, their willingness to collect more and more money while there are literal children starving to death is an act of great sacrifice.

People who are willing to be this rich are sociopaths, devoid of empathy or decency.

Example: for a long time, public sentiment around Bill Gates was that he was an okay billionaire... "one of the good ones", because he sent a small portion of his ill-gotten money towards charities. Now we know there are no good ones.

Turns out Gates secretly dosed his wife with antibiotics after giving her an STD that he contracted on Epstein's playground for sex predators. But I probably can't legally make that claim, so to paraphrase a worthless sack of garbage: "That's what people are saying. I'm not saying it-- but many people are."

We never should have needed the Epstein file wakeup call to write off Gates and all the other scum floating at the top. Remember: Microsoft is complicit in Israel's war genocide effort. Like all international corporations and like all the rich pigs behind them, human rights take a distant back seat to the rabid pursuit of profit.

And again, hoarding while people starve is just plain evil.

Seriously!

Walk up to a table of third graders and give one random kid a whole bag of skittles. If he refuses to share, those other kids are gonna complain about what grownups are too propagandized to see: that's not fair.

Now if skittle boy just refuses to make it right, then he's a little shit-- and that's just the tragedy of the commons on a little-as-skittles scale!

The rich are hoarding resources that amount to literal life and death.

Unforgivable.

That might sound extreme, but did you know at least 2.6 BILLION humans on earth agree with me?

That's the current estimate as to how many of Earth's humans are Christian.

You might wonder how I could possibly know all their thoughts.

Well, I didn't poll them but I have done my research.

You might notice the word "Christian" shares some etymology with the book I was just ranting about "A Christmas Carol"....

Ha-- misdirection!

That's not my source. While A Christmas Carol has some thematic overlap with my source for the claim that all Christians know billionaires are irredeemably evil, my actual source comes from a man who is arguably even more famous than Charles Dickens:

Jesus of Nazareth, aka Jesus the Christ.

Though he walked the earth over 2,000 years ago, this Jesus has 2.6 billion followers today. These Christian folks don't just think Jesus was a good person or a cool guy, they think Jesus was and IS God.

There's an element of mystery and mysticism here. I can't pretend to understand the theology, but suffice it to say: for Christians the spoken words of Christ are the literal Word of God.

I have read the New Testament, several times.

There are points where Jesus Himself weighs in on the concept (and sin) of being rich.

It's kind of a theme.

In Luke 9:2-4 Jesus tells 12 followers: "Take nothing for the journey, neither walking staff, nor sack, nor bread, nor money."

This quote is corroborated almost word for word in the Gospel of Mark, so it's pretty clear the early Christians believed Jesus meant that shit.

This is of course not the only thing Jesus Christ had to say on the subject. In Matthew 19:21, Jesus is quoted as saying, "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

This is echoed again in Luke 12:33

And it is expanded to the point of utmost clarity in Luke 18:25 "...It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

This complete and total admonshment of richness is repeated, almost verbatim in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.

Make no mistake!

Christ isn't actually saying it's super-duper difficult for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God. He's saying it's impossible.

Think about it.

Can a camel pass through the eye of a needle?

Ha.

No!

A camel literally can-the-fuck-not pass through the eye of a needle, and Christ said it's even harder than that for a rich person to enter the kingdom.

So every single follower of Christ knows: it's zero chance for the camel and LESS THAN ZERO chance for "the rich" of Jesus' time. What chance have the billionaires got?

Now you might insist "Through God all things are possible." And you might add "With faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains." Funny enough, both retorts paraphrased and misuse sentiments set forth by Jesus' own words in the gospels.

But. Could God actually save a billionaire if the billionaire had faith? According to Jesus: Yes.

But I've heard it said that we cannot serve two masters. Wealth and faith are mutually exclusive. Who has wealth will reject faith and who has faith will reject wealth.

It is entirely beyond debate: any Christian who has enough faith to move mountains would absolutely never in a million years be willing to accumulate a mountain of wealth.

Verily, I say unto you: the accumulation of wealth is a willful and direct rejection of Christ's very clear teachings.

Anyway, here's the meat of my write up: Billionaires should NOT exist. And Christians fucking damn well know that. Are the 2.6 billion of them doing shit about it?

Nope. Because Billionaires do exist.

Because capitalism is a thing.

Capitalism quite openly incentivizes greed, elevates the profit motive as the chief goal and delegitimizes the intrinsic value of human beings, reducing all of us to the bottom line: we are commodities that can be manipulated for labor by the elite for the further raking of profits.

We have allowed this twisted system to root and fester and thrive all over our globe.

Billionaires are the natural result-- a guaranteed symptom of our social disease.

It's not okay.

If you need more proof that capitalism is failing all of us, consider: this system enabled sadistically evil men like Epstein and his terrifying friends to run a secret cabal of child trafficking rapists.

But the Dow is over 50,000, doesn't that mean the system is working?

I guess it is working. Working miracles for people like Musk, and working it's ass off against the rest of humanity.

According to capitalism there is only one ethic to live by: increasing profits. Year after year, accumulating more.

But limitless growth is mathematically impossible.

It can only be pretended, as long as the public submit to our bleeding.

Fuck that!

You should hate Capitalism. You don't even technically have to be Christian to do it, "all are welcome".

But here's the kicker: if we want to reject this system that is steeped in blood, slavery, and sex crimes.... We must reject its comforts.

We're all guilty, by degrees.

When we buy chocolate from a corporation that buys cocoa from suppliers who use child slaves to tend their fields, we are literally supporting slavery, for one brief bite of something sweet.

We can't only blame the billionaires.

We have to see our own complicity and our own complacence and we must daily reject our lifelong programming!

Consumers. Enablers.

We're taught that we deserve treats, but those treats are built on suffering. We are coddling ourselves on crimes against humanity.

Please reject retail therapy. It's literally feeding our destruction.

Buy less.