Here outside of the dome, in contact with what much of the rest of America is like, I already feel alien. I am certain I shan't feel the same in a major metropolis, like New York City, which I shall soon attain. But for now I am being re-acquainted with the Mall Culture.

The difference in mores between we city dwellers and 'burbans is easily quantified:

• they live in the culture of the car, and we take public transportation;
• they shop at chain supermarkets and strip malls, we visit the neighborhood fruit market, the vegetable market, and then the butcher;
• they think of Barnes & Nobles and Borders as bookstores, we go to places with funky names like Black Oak Books or Green Apple Books which only exist within walking distance of our homes;
• they don't see anything wrong with going to the nearest mall, we haven't been in a mall in years and find them Theme Park-like abominations in which we feel totally out of place because of the sterility.

But we urban dwellers are foreigners, in a more profound sense, intellectually. Our reading habits are different. Our view of entertainment is a thing apart. And we revel in the analysis and disquisition which are not part of the modus vivendi of the Great American Mall. That is the part of San Francisco which I carry in my interior life which has convinced me I shall only be happy once settled in New York.

But today, living in contact with old friends who are part of the Mall Culture, I begin to understand anew why there are so few self-acknowledged Socialists in my country. It is not so much that these people would actually oppose Socialism, if it were accurately presented to them, as that they are shouted down about it, or marginalized, or ridiculed for even considering the possibility. Applying the notion of Socialism, much like that of logical disquisition, distracts from the compulsive will to commerce of The Mall.

Ironically, in This Writer's view, too often it is the the Mall's worst victims who are its most ardent defenders. Indoctrinated by a bombardment of advertisements, they have lost the capability of dissent. Like adolescents desperate for acceptance, the urge to conform --- even if it means conforming to discomfort --- has overtaken them.

It is this very notion of conforming to discomfort which those of us in "the Loyal Opposition" find most distressing and confounding. Conforming to discomfort is the very profile of the Credit Card Serf. That such a status is willingly embraced by so many is a testament to the effectiveness of propaganda. Joseph Goebbels must be grinning from some circle in Hell.

Even more ironic, from the point of view of This Observer, is that those who would validate themselves by criticizing the ubiquity of the indoctrination appartus --- "Oh man, I hate all these commercials and billboards!" --- at the same time place themselves in the position of consuming a steady diet produced by same. These are the self-same people who choose ABC News or MSNBC over Jim Lehrer's Newshour. They religiously read the local newspaper from cover-to-cover and are absolutely convinced they are getting gobs of information.

Yet, if you ask them about the details of any significant international event of the last thirty days, they are clueless.

The self-same Credit Card Serf who can regurgitate all the details about Monica Lewinsky has never heard of Sonya Gandhi, the leader of one of the most important political parties in the largest democracy on the planet.

Stop laughing, Dr. Goebbels!

Considering the encomiums which have been heaped on Shawn since his passing, it takes a brave man to point out the fact that Tina Brown was brought in to take the helm at the New Yorker because it was losing touch with most people in the Great American Mall, and thus, not being read.

I very seriously doubt that my own sensibilities will take this magazine in that direction. At the same time, I must accept that many of you who visit these pages are people who I have just characterized as Credit Card Serfs. I do not do this as a castigation simply because you have embraced suburbanism and all its trappings, both geographical and intellectual. What I am railing against here is the devivification of our lives by the global mercantilist regime. If I were sixteen years old and wrote this, you could write it off to adolescent angst. At 46, you must understand that I am attempting to make a larger social indictment.

It should be apparent to most thinking people by now that a New Imperialism is here. The world is not being colonized by nations any longer, but by Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Sony, the News Corporation, and Time-Warner. And these corporations and others, by buying our so-called political leaders, are rendering us speechless, nearly ineffective Credit Card Serfs. The bread and circuses are this medium, television, e-mail and video games.

A social indictment.