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Saturday, November 26. 2011
The Black Friday Solution
Black Friday … good grief!My Black Friday story: the only place of business I went to was CLOSED on Black Friday! Are you shitting me? Who closes their doors on the biggest, most storied day of sales? Go figure. To be fair, it’s not a traditional retail business, not like a Macy’s or Target, but still.
So, the big story from Black Friday was on Yahoo News by 9 a.m. This just blows my mind. Some woman here in California, a well-to-do neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley no less, was arrested for pepper-spraying other shoppers! You gotta be shittin’ me! Really! The other shoppers weren’t attacking the woman, weren’t being any more rude than your average Black Friday shopper. No, the woman just wanted to get them out of her way so she could get whatever do-dad she was trying to purchase.
Oops. I take it back. The woman wasn’t arrested. She got away with it. Basically, she sprayed about 20 people milling around waiting to get an XBox at a Wal-Mart — of course. Store management is assisting the police to find out who the woman is, which includes looking at surveillance video and checking sales receipts for the people who bought XBoxes.
Also in California, the Bay Area, would-be thieves outside another Wal-Mart tried to rob a family of their purchases, at about 3 a.m., and when the family refused a scuffle broke out. That’s when one of the robbers pulled out a gun and shot the man. One of the attackers was caught by the other family members and handed over to police — who in turn handed him over to medical personnel so he could get his injuries tended to after being held by the angry and vengeful family.
Looks like California is Kook Central, but if you scan the news and Google Black Friday violence, you’ll see acts of violence, or just blind greed that causes serious injuries, from coast-to-coast. But this is interesting: have you ever wondered why, every year, the most heinous acts of greed and selfishness on Black Friday seem to occur at Wal-Mart?
There was this one video from New Jersey that showed these frenzied and angry shoppers pushing and grabbing, elbowing each other to get items that had been carefully placed in their displays by the store employees, just hours earlier. Maybe minutes earlier. In the video, one guy reached over a woman’s back and yanked a box out of her hands. In the process he banged her head with his elbow. What do you want to bet the guy gloated over his Black Friday behavior?
What is it about Wal-Mart that causes people to go insane with their greed?
Christmas … the greediest, most materialistic holiday on the calendar. The Christians like to put up their billboards reminding us to “remember the reason for the season” or “Keep the Christ in Christmas.” Usually that makes me bristle because the holiday pre-dates Christianity by hundreds, maybe thousands, of years, but contrast that message to the violent greed displayed by people Christmas shopping …
Greed is the real national religion in America. This whole notion of the “free market” is predicated on greed and we’re brought up to worship at the altar of the Almighty Dollar. Just watch the commercials for Black Friday and Christmas shopping in general. We are sent two messages: “I want __” and “I wanna get the most deals before everyone else!”In the interest of honesty, I’m no different. I want stuff. A new car, preferably a new Cadillac (what can I say, I’m old school), a new Macintosh, make that two: a tower and a Macbook Air. Maybe an iPad II as a gift for … someone special! There’s always been this dream to have the biggest estate in La Jolla, CA, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Well meaning people will say, “It’s just stuff!” True, but it begs the question: will you just hand over your stuff to me and forget about it? I’ll never say “it’s just stuff” because honestly, it’s my stuff. What can I say, I’m the guy the retailers are marketing for with their Black Friday commercials. Well not exactly, they’re after the people with a lot of room on their credit cards for thousands of dollars in purchases.
Despite my own greed, the mobs crowding into Wal-Marts and malls across the country offends me. It’s laughable, but the reason for the laughter is because we can’t believe the insanity of it. Just watch the videos, they’re on Youtube. Would you stand in line for hours on Thanksgiving waiting for a store to open? Thankfully, the majority of Americans don’t, but enough do that it becomes a national obsession. And thankfully, my friends are equally appalled by the carnage of Black Friday.
Then the news networks report the early estimations of money spent: is it up from last year? Will retailers have to add extra sales later in the shopping season? Will it help pull America out of this recession? Our entire system, our society, is based on consumption. It’s the American Way and Christmas shopping — Black Friday weekend in particular — is the apex of our social system.
It’s not just Black Friday either. It’s the entire Christmas shopping season. The crowds, the short tempers, the frustrations and disappointments; this is how we define ourselves as a nation. Get more of everything at any cost to dignity and common sense.
What’s the Occupy Wall Street movement all about? The greed of Wall Street and the international banking system, the result being the widening of the income disparity gap.
What keeps the system in place, more than any amount of money and lobbyists to pass it around, is the fantasy that any of us can become a part of the One Percent. We don’t want to change our “Free Market” system! It might interfere with our plans to become a part of the Elite.
Forty years ago we didn’t much worry about it because so many of us had good-paying industrial jobs. We made things and shipped them around the world, confident that “Made in America” meant this was the best of whatever it is you want to purchase.
Then the 1980’s hit and we slowly started turning into a nation of consumers. American companies began moving their production facilities, first to Mexico and then to Asia, any place where they could take advantage of slave labor — some call it low wages — that was enforced by the governments of the host nations. Unions are actively and violently opposed in these countries. It would raise the standard of living in those nations, but the leaders are paid to keep it cheap.
As a result, we’re no longer a producing nation, we’re a nation of consumers. Yeah, most of us work, but the workers continue to lose ground financially. But do we really want to change the system? Not really, not now. Any hint of Socialism is bad and there’s still that possibility I’ll become a member of the One Percent.
And so our social system rests upon Christmas shopping and Black Friday Weekend. Seriously, if businesses don’t do well, people could really lose their jobs, adding to the 50 million people already out of work. Retailers do 25% of their yearly business in this month of shopping so they promote the Hell out of it and it becomes the defining event of the consumer nation.
And Wal-Mart is the biggest example of that national zeitgeist. Constantly in court for lawsuits concerning workers rights, they are best known for driving small business out of business and providing their employees with as few benefits and salary as they can get away with. And they’re known for their low prices.So, when Black Friday rolls around, Wal-Mart cuts their already low prices on those items so many people appear ready to die for and mayhem ensues. And none of it would be possible without our complicity because for us, as a society and as individuals, it’s all about the Benjamins.
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