Fighting the Urge to Shop at the End of the World

In the era of Trump, consumer nihilism is an alluring (if empty) temptation. The week after Donald Trump was elected, my friend Jennifer Wright tweeted about wanting a handbag. We engaged in a back-and-forth of mutual enabling of the purchases we were tempted to make with the justification that they would make us happy, culminating in me concluding "I think we might be trapped as flawed, sympathetic characters in a dystopian novel on nihilism at the core of capitalism?!?" At the time, I thought ...