Red Friday [a guest post]

by Anthony Jaccarino on December 1, 2008

November 28th, 2008: the Friday after Thanksgiving, commonly referred to as Black Friday. This year a few financial publications have referred to it as Red Friday, presumably because the retailers didn’t make their numbers.  All this red and black imagery has taken me to quite another place. Like the black hole of endless consumption or the blackness of despair of the lives that absolutely depend on acquiring stuff. Stuff gotten under the illusion of “the deal” is somehow sweeter than regular stuff acquisition.  But enough about black. This is Red Friday and for that I am deeply troubled. Of course we have all lost money in this 2008 Year of The Red Ink.  Bailouts are in our face everyday. Have we learned nothing this year, this decade, this life?

In Valley Stream NY a man is trampled to death by a mad crowd fighting to get into Walmart for the cheap TVs.  In Palm Desert California two people shot and killed in a crowded Toys-R-Us as they fight over Black Friday bargains. At yet another Walmart in Illinois woman is reduced to tears because someone absconded with her shopping cart and all the really good stuff she had gathered.  At least no one was killed this time. Finally, a woman in yet another Walmart in Farmingdale NY (what is it about Long Island?) heroically completes all her shopping with a badly cut leg. Another victim of stampeding crowds.

Have we all lost our minds? In 2008 the chickens have come home to roost as our over-consuming lifestyles have left us financially bankrupt at all levels of society. My hope was that this could have been a year of great awakening. A spiritual purification where all the financial losses would help people sober up and once again focus on what is important.  That clearly has not happened if we’re killing each other over good deals on flat-screen TVs. 

This reality is sinking in and I’m having my own personal Black Weekend – black in the despair sense. The reason I am so black is that we are just in the beginning of this great change occurring in our society. If we kill a few over TVs, what will happen when there are food and fuel shortages? I can only hold the apocalyptic visions of assault weapons and massive starvation for so long before I have to go eat something to settle myself.  Our survival depends on a level of sacrifice and cooperation that we have not yet achieved — and the evidence suggests we’re going in the opposite direction. Maybe it is still early and the next several waves of loss will wake enough of us up so that the tide turns. I have hope even on this black day.

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{ 2 comments }

genders December 1, 2008 at 1:34 pm

Bravo, I think.

It always disturbs me when despite the annual call to buy nothing, by and large people seem never to heard of the concept. Takes me back to Nader’s early days as an activist, when he tried to organize a one-day boycott of the Long Island Railroad–there goes Long Island again–in response to an appalling fare-hike, and nobody was willing to strike, preferring instead to piss and moan about the fare increase.

I’m hoping that Obama can somehow hold the country together just enough to get us over the hump that conceals from us the apocalyptic future that you describe.

breast enhance cream December 3, 2008 at 6:33 am

I also think, that we can go through it, because today’s situation is really very bad, so lets hope for the best.

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