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In reply to the discussion: My daughter has been wearing the same clothes for two years... [View all]DirkGently
(12,151 posts)The carnival, feeding-frenzy atmosphere some of these stores deliberately conjure is irresponsible and grotesque. I'm looking at you, Walmart. Target. Sears. And it's not driven by sales on necessities.
They waft visions of the flat-screen tvs many Americans cannot afford, brought down within reach for a brief time. A computer, a cell phone, a trendy toy. Things that symbolize a lifestyle norm not open to everyone.
It's not the desire for these things that is disturbing. It's the fact that retailers manipulate cash-strapped families and their completely rational desire to have a celebratory moment, or to feel like their family can have some of what other families have, into a high-pressure, potentially violent situation, just to drum up holiday-season enthusiasm.
They're chumming the waters with people's hopes and dreams. With parents' desire to do something special for their children. With the screwed up division between what America pretends its standard of living is, and what it is rapidly becoming for so many.
It's not the people that want something that deserve contempt. It's the people playing with their needs to jack up a quarterly profit figure; patting themselves on the back for a bone-crushing stampede driven by pent-up want, then marveling at how ugly it becomes.
Good luck to you, and to all of us, Black Friday "door busters" be damned.