Everybody seems to have a take on the fatal door-busters sale at Wal-Mart on the first day of holiday shopping, giving a grim meaning to the retail jargon Black Friday (there was also the less-noticed Toys 'R' Us shootout). Here's mine:
Who lines up at 5 in the morning to mob a store, much less waiting all night for the honor, as apparently was the case at the suburban New York mall where the Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death? Apparently they are the same people who required police to be called for crowd control at 3 a.m. And the same people who stomped the victim and walked on, and are now being sought by police. According to the New York Times:
Indeed it was. "Jdimytai Damour, 34, was thrown back onto the black linoleum tiles and trampled in the stampede that streamed over and around him." Mr. Damour was a temporary worker, failing to enjoy even the niggardly "benefits" and wages that Wally's real employees get. Wal-Mart has been criticized for security so poor that a mob could stampede and kill a 270-pound man. What kind of company allows this to happen?
People may talk about stressed consumers trying to get bargains. Sorry, I'm not buying. This incident is a sign of the basic soul sickness of a nation where too many people have become nothing more that "consumers" sucking greedily on the corporate matrix. Not citizens. Not stewards. Not fellow souls on a too-short journey through a cold world. Consumers.
Consumers would do such a thing. Just as they would abandon the local merchants on their main streets to shop at a company with the predatory and anti-employee practices as Wal-Mart. They have made it the largest employer in many states. Their countless and thoughtless votes at the cash register helped destroy American manufacturing and create store shelves where every product is made in China. They think sweatshops are spas to lose weight put on while consuming. They wonder what happened to the good jobs their parents had and they blame unions.
They live out in the suburbs, where both this grisly crime and the Toys 'R' Us shooting took place, living lives spent endlessly driving in single-occupancy vehicles, endlessly nursing their frustration and rage over their endless driving, so confused and thoughtless are they about their own consumer choices. They choose anonymity behind suburban walls and are smug about the supposed crime and homelessness of cities -- although if demographic logic holds, most homeless originated in suburbia. They plaster stickers supporting the troops yet can't find Iraq on a map, much less understand the way their consumer behavior led to our military quagmire. Yes this is a broad, unfair brush, but it paints accurately enough.
This is the soul-sick nation that won't be healed merely by electing Barack Obama. One has to wonder, how will these people react as they learn the truth.
The truth that oil production has flattened and will head down. The truth that no magical hydrogen or battery car will appear to allow them to continue their "consumer lifestyle." That global warming is real and will prove dangerous and costly. That a nation that doesn't produce things of values, that has been living off debt, tax cuts and swindles, can't keep running up the tab forever. That the casino culture is dead and there's no free lunch. If they would trample a man to death who stood in the way of their bargain on adding a fourth flat-screen TV, on credit, to their nearing-foreclosure split-level...What will they do when they learn the hard, stubborn facts of our lives going forward?
The nation and our politicians often refer to the "American Dream" and the "American Way of Life", but it is never defined. It is stories like this that bracket how shallow and selfish that dream and life have become. But from the beginning, that dream and life have mostly involved taking from those that are not like us (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) with no apology and righteous indignity. There are no regrets and no introspection. Its no wonder the dream and life edge closer to savagery.
Posted by: eclecticdog | December 02, 2008 at 03:42 PM
The Long Emergency will quickly become the Long Nightmare when the mindless consumer society begins to realize that not only did someone move their cheese,they ate it and stuck them and their children with the check.
Posted by: mike doughty | December 02, 2008 at 10:07 PM
If you have no knife and you need to make a meal for yourself, it's difficult to do it with bare hands. Having a knife in this situation is very valuable. Once you do have a knife, maybe a second or a third in various sizes is also useful (but less so than the first). Having a hundred knives is a waste, it won't make your meal any better.
Lots of people seem to lose track of the concept that we own "things" in order that those things provide some useful purpose. Money is a means to an end, and ownership is a means to an end -- they are not ends in themselves. The end is what we do with our lives.
Then again, it is quite possible that shopping crowds have become like soccer crowds where some percentage go there just to enjoy the mayhem, not because they have any particular interest in either shopping or soccer. People are bored with bullshit media entertainment and want a bit of real-life action, even if it does come at someone else's expense.
Posted by: Tel | December 03, 2008 at 06:56 AM
I was one of the hundred or so that waited in line outside our local BestBuy to get a laptop for my daughter. I think the difference between the low-key, congenial atmosphere outside our store and the mob scene at the Wal-Mart is the expectation of fair dealing.
When I got to the store around midnight, some guys were running a bean-bag toss tournament in the street next to the sidewalk, which provided the rest of us with something to do for the next few hours. At 3:00, the BestBuy managers on-duty came out and announced that the door-busters would be allocated by coupons that would be handed out, starting at the head of the line. When the coupons were gone, so was the right to get the item. At 3:45, the managers came back out and began to hand out the coupons and everything remained peaceful and friendly while the process continued. At 5:00, the doors opened and everyone filed peacefully, but quickly into the store.
What kept things orderly and peaceful was the expectation that no one would be cheated out of a chance at a limited item and that there were rules and that they would be obeyed. (The store manager announced that anyone line-jumping would be kicked out of line and not permitted into the store until everyone in line was in the store. That put a stop to any pushing and shoving at that point.)
Posted by: AlphaGeek | December 03, 2008 at 11:41 AM
I don't want to be superficial here, but years ago (decades ago, actually) I visited New York City as a youth, only to find that some of the stereotypes were true. Cabbies really did drive like complete maniacs. I've never seen driving like that since. Pedestrians, when present in a crowd, completely ignored traffic signals, knowing that in-town traffic was unlikely to commit mass murder by mowing down an entire crowd crossing against the light. The city inhabitants (well, a number of them) seemed to think that they had a reputation to keep, and the attitude behind it was at best rough and ready, alternating narcissistic rudeness with an almost sociopathic aloofness. Of course, I saw the city through the relatively rosy lens of a tourist dealing mostly with those whose livelihood depended on tourism, but the somewhat bleak sensibilities of 1970s era films depicting NYC life contained more than a grain of truth. I've no idea to what extent the city's culture has changed since then.
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | December 07, 2008 at 07:23 PM