Ah, so here we are, crossing the threshold into a craven new world.  Welcome to the Obamanation.

Finally, thanks to this great year of 2009, I am beginning to understand why Greed and Envy are two of the seven deadly sins and Coveting is a topic in no less than two of the Ten Commandments. The reason is that these activities make us failures. They make us want what we can’t be bothered to earn.  They make us think we are owed things we’ve done nothing to deserve.  They make us the opposite of Little Lebowski Urban Achievers... they make us fail to achieve.  And not in that good way that the Dude figured out in The Big Lebowski either, you know, the one in which the way you choose to live affects only you?  No, no.  I mean in that bad way that affects everyone around you and demands that we all, rather than strive for personal excellence and success, just fail equally so that we can all piss and moan together at equal speeds and cadences.

And what brings all this to such clarity on this seemingly average Monday on which I write this?  Well, today I called Blockbuster.com to cancel my account because of a dissatisfactory change in their service and was given an explanation based on the concept of the Redistribution of Wealth.  I kid you not.  I actually laughed on the phone.  That is, before a great sadness overwhelmed me.

In case you don't know, the reason Blockbuster Online renting has been thus far better than NetFlix renting, was that instead of putting in the mail a DVD and getting another in return, I could actually bring the envelope to a Blockbuster store, and receive for it a free DVD to watch while I was waiting to have that particular DVD replaced by a new one through the mail. This allowed me to get double the movies that a NetFlix account would.

Now, naturally, there are some trade-offs, but I understood that in order to have one thing, I couldn't have another.  One can't have everything, after all, can one?  One trade off was that, unlike NetFlix, Blockbuster doesn't rent films above the rating of R, meaning that any art house (or otherwise) NC-17 films I might want to see, I couldn't get from them.  They also had less DVDs to mail out than NetFlix, since they were stocking both warehouses for mailings and stores for renting.  Fair enough.  I choose to deal with a lesser selection in order to receive more at once.  I choose quantity over quality.  I, knowing I couldn't have it all, choose the 3-at-a-time mailing program at Blockbuster.com, and stuck with it.

Now, Blockbuster Online has changed its rules: When you return a Blockbuster Online envelope to the store and exchange it for a "free" in-store rental, that rental is added to your Online cue, and another DVD is not mailed to you until you return your "free" in-store exchange to the store.  In other words, whether it comes from Online or In-Store, you’re getting only three at a time, instead of six.  In even clearer other words, now there was absolutely no difference between Blockbuster and NetFlix when it came to amount versus cost. (Actually, this isn't true, as NetFlix costs a dollar less for 3-at-a-time.)

So today I called to cancel my account.  The very helpful young woman I spoke to, in order to dissuade me from taking my business from Blockbuster and to NetFlix, did two things: 1) She offered me an explanation of the reason behind the change, and 2) She offered me a free month to try it out before deciding.

And so we come to the crux of this story: The reason behind Blockbuster's new policy.  Instead of being honest and telling me that Blockbuster was, obviously, losing money on this free exchange deal, giving away an extra three DVD rentals for every turn-around, and made the change in order to increase their profit margin (which, in this new America would be a terrible thing to admit to), she informed me that the change was made for the following reason.  Allow me to paraphrase, minus the abundance of "ums" and "uhs" she also included proving, to me at least, how uncomfortable she was with this absurdity she was being forced to spew:

 

"Blockbuster has made this change so that more people will be able to rent more DVDs. By making this change, we hope people will be more likely to return their DVDs sooner, allowing a greater number of people to rent them, so everyone can see more movies when they want to. This way everyone can see the same amount of movies."

 

I'm not kidding.  The response I got could only have come under this Obama presidency. Rather than telling me her company wished to make a larger profit, something that would be their right (at least before January of 2009) or that they were too far in the red to BUY more DVDs to make available to more people to be competitive with NetFlix and therefore to make a higher profit in the open market, I was told that by allowing my service, that I was paying for, to be limited, others, whether paying the extra for the online service or merely renting piecemeal at the store, would be able to see an equal amount of movies as I did. Again, this is regardless of how much they were contributing monthly to the financial well-being of Blockbuster.  My Blockbuster experience, in other words, was being redistributed so that everyone, regardless of personal investment in their entertainment, could have the same amount of entertainment.

Brilliant.

And so I coin a new term: The Obamanation.  Not only does this rather cleverly (not at all) combine the words "Obama" and "Nation" signifying a nation molded in the image of its far-seeing president, but the word also mimics, and thereby takes on the definition of, the word “Abomination”, which this current state of affairs really is.  The definition of the world Abomination is as follows:

 

Definition 3 from Dictionary.com: 

Abomination: a vile, shameful, or detestable action, condition, habit, etc.: Spitting in public is an abomination.

 

Please note: I would much prefer people spit in public. 

Thanks to the example being put forth by both parties in our governmental system, and the trail being blazed with nothing short of hellfire by our new President, we now live in a country where not only don't we strive for individual success, for accomplishing the most we can and gathering the greatest amount of wealth we desire for us and our families, and by extension our nation through the miracle of the free market, but instead live in a nation where the acceptable explanation to give me is that by sacrificing some of the service that I will still have to pay for, someone paying for less service will get the same amount of service I am.  And I am supposed to not only understand this, but also embrace it and perhaps even, thank Blockbuster for this opportunity to help the less “fortunate” (or willing) have a better film renting experience.

Truly, this is an Obamanation.

As a side note, I will conclude the story:  Since the old saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I accepted the one month free, because, really, why don't I deserve to have something I'm not paying for and otherwise can't afford to?  Now I will have a month of NetFlix for which I am paying and a month of Blockbuster Online which will be free, doubling the amount of DVDs I get. And why?  Because I deserve it.  And why is that?  Well, if I am studying this craven new world correctly, the answer to that question is, "Because I exist and because I want it but don't want to have to earn it."

It does make one wonder what will happen when all of Blockbuster’s customers decide to take them up on their something-for-nothing program and feign cancelling to get one free month.  What happens to a business – or, for that matter, an economy – when everything is given away for free and no one is turning an “evil” profit?  Will Blockbuster need to be bailed out?  Will the government then have a controlling interest in the otherwise “private” enterprise?  What changes might the Obama administration make to how Blockbuster conducts its business?

I look forward to one day whining about how few movies the government allows me to rent at one time, so that everyone can see them too, and how I had to loan my DVD player to my neighbor for half the week, since he doesn't have one.  Or maybe we'll all just gather at libraries, after waiting on excruciatingly long lines, to watch movies since the DVD players have been taken from those who have them, to make them equal to those who don't.

Or maybe, in the future of this Obamanation of the American dream, I won’t be thinking about movies at all, but rather wishing that the amount of bread I got after waiting for hours on line was actually enough to feed my family in a healthy way, rather than to just put an equal morsel in all our bellies as the people next door and across the country.

Am I going too far?  Perhaps.  But perhaps not.  One can never truly predict the deadly and far-reaching effects of such an Obamanation.

- Christian De Matteo