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Thanksgiving Day is past but we hope not the reasons for giving thanks. But when one reviews what has happened over this holiday, one has to wonder.
In desperation to be first to get discounts, a crowd of people trampled a man on Long Island. None even stopped to pick him up or to see if he was hurt. We’ve become the worst aspect of what they call us – consumers.
In his last state of the union speech, I noticed that even the President refers to Americans as consumers. It was the descriptor he used more than any other – no “fellow Americans,” or “citizens,” or even “voters,” just consumers. The people shopping at that Wal-Mart carelessly consumed that man’s life as they were racing to consume things they don’t need before someone else did.
In hot pursuit to provide incentives to reverse the world recession, we are more concerned about the economy than about hungry or homeless or unemployed people. Billions of dollars are being handed to businesses that have already proven they only care about profits – pieces of paper – and that they would rather gamble to get more paper than do business in a prudent, fair manner that provides economic stability for our country.
We are consuming the lands and soils that feed us and would feed future generations. If we consume the last inch of soil, the last drop of water, the last seed before someone else has, will we win?
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A Deer in the Target
by Robert Fanning
I only got a ten-second shot,
Comment by Tarn Mower December 4, 2008 @ 7:08 pmgrainy footage of the huge deer
caught in the crosshairs
of a ceiling security camera, a scene
of utter chaos in a strip mall store,
shown on the late local news.
The beautiful beast clearly scared
to death in this fluorescent forest,
its once graceful legs giving out
on mopped floors, think Bambi
as a faun its first time standing.
Seeing the scattering shoppers,
you’d think a demon had barged
into this temple of commerce,
as they sacrificed their merchandise,
stranded full carts and dove for cover.
And when the aisles were emptied
of these bargain hunters, who was left
but an army of brave red-shirted
team members, mobilized by
the store manager over the intercom
to drive this wild animal out.
I wager there’s nothing on this
in the How to Approach
an Unsatisfied Shopper
section in the Target employee handbook,
but there they were: the cashiers
and stockers, the Floor Supervisor,
the Assistant Floor Supervisor,
the Store Manager,
the Assistant Store Manager,
the District Associate Manager,
the District Supervisor,
the District Assistant Supervisor
and visiting members from
the Regional Corporate Office,
running after it, it running after
them, bull’s eye logos on their red golf shirts,
everyone frenzied and panting: razor hooves
clattering on the mirror-white floor tiles,
nostrils heaving, its rack clearing
off-season clothes from clearance racks.
All of them, in Target,
chasing the almighty buck.
We need to reappropriate our language now, and with gusto. First, we are citizens, and the moniker “consumer” is Madison Avenue mumbo-jumbo that acts to decouple us from our responsibility to engage as CITIZENS in participatory democracy and from fighting the rampant destruction of ecosystems and economies caused by Corporate-hood. WE are, though, as a species, no matter how you shake it, consumers of the lands and resources. So, yes, this is the story of stuff, planned and unplanned obsolesence, but in reality we are an unorganized fearful community now with little leadership of might and articulateness.
So as Winona LaDuke opines, we need symbolic acts of goodness and spiritual healing; renaming Indian sacred mountains and places and taking them back from the white purveyors of greed and destruction for whom they have been renamed and printed on modern maps has its place in this post-post-modern Middle Climate era.
I’d say that Walmart had been warned, had been informed of what the lack crowd control could do and that extra help was needed to assist in this frenzy of buying. Blame Walmart for the individual’s death. And the city and county that allowed Walmart to come in in the first place.
Comment by Paul Haeder January 2, 2009 @ 9:34 pmEnvy is one of the Seven Deadly sins, and rightfully so. When it gets a full head of steam it destroys, literally, everything around it. The American economy is built on envy–envy of how green the neighbor’s lawn is, the size of the house, etc. But speaking of this all day won’t change anything about our general purchasing habits–we will just have to live through what is coming next.
News from reliable economic sources (ie, see Gerald Celente)are saying this: 2008 saw the meltdown of the housing market. 2009 will see the total collapse of the commercial real estate market. Groups have leveraged $40-50 million dollars into $4-5 Billion dollar commercial real estate “empires” which are worthless now(Maddoff is just the tip of the iceberg). It is predicted that 200,000 to 300,000 retail stores will close nationwide and probably 2,000-3,000 MALLS will close in 2009/2010. So, envy aside, our buying habits are going to change whether we like it or not.
Evidence shows that the present collapse started at the top. Numbers like the following are turning up from the recent shopping season: 23% drop in sales of women’s apparel, 35% drop in LUXURY items. According to Celente these are Depression era percentages. This is not doom and gloom, but it is data and facts.
And still local governments plan for “retail outlets” to bail us out of what that retail model got us into in the first place. Their first choice of retail/mall placement will be on farmland, that which feeds us. Along with envy comes its shadow: madness.
Comment by Gene Derig January 3, 2009 @ 4:42 amQuerido Gene, el colapso comienza porque los humanos hemos olvidado quienes somos. Sólo al recordarlo arreglaremos todos los problemas que hemos causado a la tierra, al resto de humanos y a nosotros mismos. Pero ¡es tan difícil! I’m Chelo. ¿do you remember? 40 years ago…..
Comment by Consuelo Serrano February 17, 2009 @ 12:31 pm