1A McMahon Commentary on George Saunders' "The New Mecca"

The prevailing mood of George Saunders' masterful essay "The New Mecca" is anguish, despair, and helplessness in the face of a false promise, the promise of false paradise characterized by a pseudo-religious ecstasy created by synthetic environments, the tantalization of infinite luxury, and the moral bankruptcy that accompanies hedonistic forgetfulness in which the Dubai patrons become so self-absorbed in their rhapsodic frenzy of consumerism that they ignore the suffering of the poor laborers who carry Dubai above their sagging, rickety shoulders. Saunders effectively captures the depravity of embracing the blind consumerism that is championed by the ambitious minions for whom Dubai is the apotheosis of garish materialism. The end result of Saunders' portrayal of consumer excess is a spiritual hangover, a merciless crash in which the patron, if he has a soul at all, will experience shame, guilt, emptiness, and ennui, a spiritual disease from which he may never recover.