December 4, 2008
Wal-Mart Stampede: America’s Dying for a
Discount
“Worker Dies At Long Island Wal-Mart After
Being Trampled In Black Friday Stampede.”
Let’s take the time to reread those 14 words
of a recent New York Daily News
headline, eh? Slowly, to let the meaning
sink in.
Worker Dies At Long Island Wal-Mart After
Being Trampled In Black Friday Stampede.
Sometimes the metaphors just write
themselves, don’t they?
If one wishes to try to find the ideal
cultural emblem to represent the America of
2008, some symbol that tidily sums up the
stuff and substance of the early 21st
Century United States in a neat little
nutshell, there’s a lot to choose from – the
Mooseburger, the mortgage-backed security,
and many, many more. Me, I’ll settle for
this one modest headline.
In the story behind the immortal words
Worker Dies At Long Island Wal-Mart After
Being Trampled In Black Friday Stampede
lurk central, elemental truths about life in
the United States. From these words, we can
learn what we value, what we live for, what
we die for and what we’ll kill for when, as
they say, push comes to shove.
Oh, sure, we were all shocked and horrified
when we learned that a seasonal temporary
employee at a Long Island Wal-Mart had
attempted to unlock the store’s doors in the
early morning hours of November 28, and had
been trampled to death for his troubles.
“It’s terrible,” we clucked into our
leftover turkey and stuffing. “Just awful.”
And then we watched again as the story was
repeated at the top of the hour. “We’re not
like that,” we said to ourselves as
we gobbled the last of the pumpkin pie.
So if “we” aren’t like that, who was the
“they” who, for the sake of a discounted
Playstation, stomped the life out of a young
man earning $7.00 an hour? “They” are
accountants, beauticians, plumbers,
insurance salesmen, stockbrokers, elementary
school teachers and church deacons. “They”
are hockey moms and soccer dads and anyone
else who, for the sake of being one of the
“lucky” few to save up to X-percent on the
consumer item of their choice, is willing to
rise early in the morning to stand in the
cold and dark outside of a bland suburban
big-box store packed to the gills with cheap
Chinese-made crap destined to be discarded
and forgotten by the time the next “Black
Friday” rolls around. “They” are our
mothers, our fathers, our brothers and
sisters, nephews and nieces, daughters and
sons.
And “they,” surprisingly like “we,” have
been gulled into blind acceptance of the
notion that it is somehow necessary
or desirable or important to
Get More Stuff, even when we already have
quite more than enough.
On the morning of November 28, just as
today, the American economy was busily
swirling down the sewer, thanks in large
measure to decades of unfettered borrowing
and buying. Together, “we” and “they” had
acquired flimsy overpriced dwellings,
purchased via abundant adjustable-rate
mortgages, and packed them to the gills with
gaudy furniture and useless trinkets and
instantly obsolete electronic toys and
slave-labor-made Indonesian fashions, all
purchased on our handy 29-percent-interest
Citibank Mastercards.
But it still wasn’t enough. So, on November
28, even as our jobs were under threat and
our McMansions faced foreclosure and our
cable television lifelines faced temporary
suspension of service, there “they”/”we”
were, lined up outside the spotless glass
doors of the Long Island Wal-Mart, gazing in
drooling wonder at the glistening and
brightly lit consumer items inside. And when
our moment came, we pounced, Mastercards at
the ready.
Once the last boot of the cross-section of
society entering the Long Island Wal-Mart on
November 28 had stomped the face of the
young store clerk into a bloody mass, we
were left with a few reminders as to the
behavioral DNA of the American herd.
As Americans, we want what we want, and we
want it now. We feel entitled to what we
want, and nothing should stop us from
getting it. We are at our most powerful as
the faceless members of a large and
unthinking herd. And given half a chance, we
will revert to our most base and animalistic
nature and behavior when afforded the herd’s
comforting anonymity, whether we’re barging
into Wal-Mart or downtown Baghdad. And we
will act in accord with the programming the
television has inculcated in us, even
against our own interests. Every time.
So it is that we stand on the cold exterior
of retail America’s palaces of synthetic
pleasure, gazing rapturously in the
direction of a pasteurized-process American
Dream, hanging tantalizingly just before us
but always just slightly out of reach, with
blood dripping from our heels – and waiting
for the next opportunity to jam ourselves
through the door. First.
©
2008 North Star Writers Group. May not
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