- Casey Anthony

TRUE OP-ED: ''No Need for Bombs, Terrorists... Just More Black Fridays''

Details

Created on Monday, 24 January 2011 15:06

Decadence, disrespect, self-humiliation: an American tradition when it comes to holiday shopping, and particularly Black Friday. Increasingly challenging is the stamina it takes to wait in the lines, sometimes overnight, and then hustle and bustle your way through the spectacle of November’s fourth Friday. But equally challenging is how to describe the increasingly hellish tradition of mayhem, vulgarity, discourtesy, violence and debauchery disguised as just a natural subset of American consumerism and holiday festivities.

However the depressing spectacle that is our contemporary Black Friday should not be viewed as a natural part of consumerism or capitalism. Women drawing guns on each other in toy stores; customers stabbing and trampling each other at the doors of Walmarts are in no way just peculiar expressions of any economic system. The closest to that would be food riots in nations under communism. But no, the closest thing to those truly warranted stampedes we have are our infamous Black Fridays –fat, infantile Americans clamoring and crushing each other for gadgets that will be replaced, sales that will be repeated, and shelves that will be restocked.

There is no logical reason for why Black Friday has devolved into the embarrassment it is, seemingly worsening each year, that basically amounts to a new and strange form of pornography –consumer pornography (and in the rare cases where a shopper is actually crushed to death at a Walmart, I guess it becomes snuff –holiday consumer snuff porn. Ahhh, God Bless America!).

The Liberal vs. Conservative View (of course the liberals are wrong)

Liberals want you to see this gluttony and feel guilty and sad about it, but only for the sake of feeling guilty and sad; just as long as you’re ashamed and frustrated you’ll be okay.... But as a true conservative, I want us to take that revulsion and mold it; use it to recognize that these scenes are just the murky bobbling of a pampered, Western culture run amuck with luxury, self-absorption and materialism, not an indictment of an entire economic system or society.

Such diagnosis may make me sound like a Marxist. But even Barry Goldwater could see that the “consumer porn” of Black Friday is a perversion of consumerism, let alone capitalism. It is the sort of perversion political scientist Benjamin Barber described so eloquently in his classic “Jihad vs. McWorld” (1995); an adherence to the basest, cut-throat instincts in people over nothing more than a planned shopping spree, mutating us into strictly impulsive, herd-like creatures; reckless, classless robots.

Although Not In Vogue, Ponder What Our Enemies Think

Black Friday displays our greatest weakness in many ways. The rest of the world sees this national, day-long absurd orgy and laughs (in between dry heaving). The stealthy and ever patient Chinese see the heart and soul of their largest rival bankrupt, having no trouble connecting the dots between the stampeding, superficial department store diabetics and the trillions in debt their collective mindset have indirectly handed them to steward.

The Islamic jihadists look at these scenes, too, as more proof that we are indeed infidels –crass, two-dimensional plebeians of a once great power clawing at each other to get that celestial gadget we saw flashing on one of our trashy, depth-devoid reality TV shows. They read of the pushing and the shoving and the stampeding, see the YouTube videos of adults fighting over toys for bratty kids; look at the crying soccer mom who on any other day of the year would not be having her mug shot taken down at the county lockup... Do you honestly believe such scenes do not give the jihadists a modicum of motivation, if not reaffirmation, of why ours is a culture ripe for humiliation and destruction? The Islamists see this materialistic, soulless decadence as the greatest instrument of our own demise, yet simultaneously recognize it has having enough life and allure remaining to deeply impact the Middle East and Eurasia. They fear this more than any plane or tank, hence why they are trying to hasten our destruction so fiercely.

They see us trampling each other over toys and games, the sort which increasingly demand children be sedated in front of the TV even more, gaining weight, losing social skills, or have everyone lost in the little pseudo worlds their i-Pads and X-boxes create. Seriously, are these the reasons why Americans trample each other, when so many in the world have to trample and stampede for food or medicine (reasons most of us find simply mindboggling)? This is not culture, this is calamity.

How to Change: the Conservative Solution

Black Friday has become a shameful annual exercise in consumerist culture run obscenely amuck. But unlike American liberals, I do not want us to feel sad and guilty about this just for self-flagellations’ sake.

The true conservative answer: try staying home on Black Friday with your friends and family. Have a few buddies come by and help with your leftovers. Take the kids to a park or play some backyard sports... In any case, do whatever you have to do to not end up like Keith Krantz of Buffalo, NY, who feared for his life after being pinned underneath a marauding pack of fat, pop-culture sucking, heart-disease-fueled shoppers in the doors at his local Target Friday morning. No fellow shopper came to Keith’s aid, even as his mortal screams shook the store’s lobby. It took store security and staff to dislodge Krantz and get him back on his feet (and to a hospital).

And while Keith Krantz is being crushed under a smelly pile of long-ago-crushed temperance and humility, dashed respect and refinement, the Islamists are working tirelessly at cyber strikes and turning more to trains and busses now that air travelers are becoming too cumbersome to kill. Communist China is lecturing us more and more on the dangers of our national debt, while the Indians see us committing economic suicide, and the jihadists see us committing cultural suicide. All together these entities represent, simply, the East. And with the East rising as it has been, I doubt a few mounds of crushed, cursing, pop-soaked holiday automatons do not present just one more stepping stone –in spirit– for the East to hoist itself upon and mark itself yet another victory in this long, protracted world war between cultures.

Meanwhile, another American mom is anguishing over how she can afford her daughters’ breast implants and her son’s new X-Box for Christmas…..

(P.S. this True Op-Ed was brought to you by Verizon. “Verizon: Rule the Air. Now Bend Over”)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Black Friday Shopper Arrested for Arguing

Police Called After Customers Rush Door at Toys-R-Us

Woman Arrested for Threatening to Shoot Fellow Shopper

Man Trampled in Black Friday Stampede

Shoppers Duped Into Midnight Raid at Walmart

Mall Locked Down After Fight Erupts in Food Court

Man Dies in Black Friday Walmart Stampede

Mom Arrested During Black Friday Bargain Hunt

Man Arrested for Cutting in Line During Black Friday Sale

Share this article