Black Friday they call it here. The day after Thanksgiving, when millions of Americans - fresh from their gluttonous feast which for most has nothing to do with giving thanks - flood the malls and big box stores hoping to take advantage of "door buster" sales on consumer electronics and toys and - oddly - bath towels. In past years, store workers have been trampled to death when they opened the doors and let in the surging mobs, and parents have fought over Tickle Me Elmo dolls and Cabbage Patch Kids. This year, however, the brawling reached new lows. A woman in a Los Angeles WalMart used pepper spray on other shoppers in order to get an X-Box. A man in San Leandro, California was shot by robbers in the parking lot outside of another WalMart. And in North Carolina, police had to resort to pepper spray to quell brawling shoppers. In Michigan, shoppers began brawling over bath towels, and in Arkansas a melee broke out over waffle irons. In one YouTube video, shoppers were shown madly tearing apart boxes top get the cheap cell phones within, and in other videos 
shoppers are seen surging into stores like wild animals. And why? So they can get their hands on some cheap consumer products that probably won't last one year.
I gotta be honest with ya, folks, this kind of stuff makes me sick. It makes me ashamed to be an American. If we have been reduced to rioting and brawling over crappy towels and cheap waffle irons, then we are a nation in serious decline. Apparently, anything like politeness, manners and grace have long-since ceased to exist in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Now we are nothing more than the Land of the Quick and the Home of the Taken. I'll leave you all to put that one together. And the trouble is that most of the people who are guilty of this kind of behavior have a bucket-full of rationalizations and justifications for their actions. They will claim that they have to do what it takes to be on top, that the end justifies the means, that they are only taking their fair share, that the people they shoved and punched and pummeled and elbowed out of the way just need to be faster or stronger. Yeah, I've heard all of that talk before. It's the same kind of blather that the robber barons of Wall Street
spouted when it came to light that they had brazenly fleeced their investors. They had the right to do whatever it took to make their bottom line, even if they destroyed the economy and countless lives in the process.
About this point, you're probably wondering if I went shopping on Black Friday and if I'm being hypocritical. Well, I can tell you that I did go shopping that day, but not to WalMart or Target or Home Depot or some mall. Instead, Michelle and I went to the Salvation Army store. There was no crush of people there, no one fighting it out over towels or waffle irons or X-Boxes. We weren't worried about getting punched or pepper sprayed. In fact, the store was nearly deserted. Michelle picked up some very nice blouses (one with the original store tag still on it), I got two incredibly nice shirts (one from Woolrich and one from The Territory Ahead - $2.00 each), we found a few Christmas decorations, and I got a set of 13 Popular Mechanics How-To books (c. 1962) for the whopping high price of $6.50. We came home feeling happy that we had such a pleasant experience shopping together, that we had purchased a lot of stuff that was practically new at such incredibly low prices and that we had helped out a charity in the process. You see, we have realized that we don't have to have all of the latest gadgets and gizmos to make our lives better or more meaningful, and we have learned that we don't need to shower ourselves or our family members with expensive gifts in order to have a great Christmas. We have learned that frugality is the true American Dream, not the getting of more stuff than the person next to you, but living within your means. These are ideals that this country was founded on, that made this country great, but that a lot of people in this country seem to have forgotten during the three-decade spending spree that began in 1980.
shoppers are seen surging into stores like wild animals. And why? So they can get their hands on some cheap consumer products that probably won't last one year.I gotta be honest with ya, folks, this kind of stuff makes me sick. It makes me ashamed to be an American. If we have been reduced to rioting and brawling over crappy towels and cheap waffle irons, then we are a nation in serious decline. Apparently, anything like politeness, manners and grace have long-since ceased to exist in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Now we are nothing more than the Land of the Quick and the Home of the Taken. I'll leave you all to put that one together. And the trouble is that most of the people who are guilty of this kind of behavior have a bucket-full of rationalizations and justifications for their actions. They will claim that they have to do what it takes to be on top, that the end justifies the means, that they are only taking their fair share, that the people they shoved and punched and pummeled and elbowed out of the way just need to be faster or stronger. Yeah, I've heard all of that talk before. It's the same kind of blather that the robber barons of Wall Street
spouted when it came to light that they had brazenly fleeced their investors. They had the right to do whatever it took to make their bottom line, even if they destroyed the economy and countless lives in the process.About this point, you're probably wondering if I went shopping on Black Friday and if I'm being hypocritical. Well, I can tell you that I did go shopping that day, but not to WalMart or Target or Home Depot or some mall. Instead, Michelle and I went to the Salvation Army store. There was no crush of people there, no one fighting it out over towels or waffle irons or X-Boxes. We weren't worried about getting punched or pepper sprayed. In fact, the store was nearly deserted. Michelle picked up some very nice blouses (one with the original store tag still on it), I got two incredibly nice shirts (one from Woolrich and one from The Territory Ahead - $2.00 each), we found a few Christmas decorations, and I got a set of 13 Popular Mechanics How-To books (c. 1962) for the whopping high price of $6.50. We came home feeling happy that we had such a pleasant experience shopping together, that we had purchased a lot of stuff that was practically new at such incredibly low prices and that we had helped out a charity in the process. You see, we have realized that we don't have to have all of the latest gadgets and gizmos to make our lives better or more meaningful, and we have learned that we don't need to shower ourselves or our family members with expensive gifts in order to have a great Christmas. We have learned that frugality is the true American Dream, not the getting of more stuff than the person next to you, but living within your means. These are ideals that this country was founded on, that made this country great, but that a lot of people in this country seem to have forgotten during the three-decade spending spree that began in 1980.
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