Once upon a time, Thanksgiving was not really a commercial holiday. It was a time to get together with family and friends, eat turkey and express thanks for the blessings that we have been given.
But in recent years Black Friday has started to become even a bigger event than Thanksgiving itself.
Millions of Americans have become convinced that it is fun to wait in long lines outside retail stores in freezing cold weather in the middle of the night to spend money that they do not have on things that they do not need.
And of course very, very few "Black Friday deals" are actually made in America. So these frenzied shoppers are actually killing American jobs and destroying the U.S. economy as well.
The absurdity of Black Friday was summed up very well recently in a statement that has already been retweeted on Twitter more than 1,000 times...
"Black Friday: because only in America people trample each other for sales exactly one day after being thankful for what they already have."
It has gotten to the point where it is now expected that there will be mini-riots all over the country early on Black Friday morning each year. The following are a few examples of the craziness that we saw this year...
-"Fights break out when stores open on Black Friday"
-"Black Friday madness at Georgia Wal-Mart"
-"Black Friday Frenzy: 2 Run Down in Washington, Man Pulls Gun in Texas"
-"Black Friday 2012: Rush at Victoria's Secret Pink at Oak Park Mall in Overland Park, Kan."
-"Black Friday shoppers smash door at Urban Outfitters"
-"Black Friday Shopping Hysteria From Around The Country [PHOTOS]"
-"Disturbance leads to scare at Westroads Mall"
-"Teens In Custody After Woodland Mall Fight"
-"Boy Robbed During Black Friday Shopping At Arundel Mills"
-"Shoppers Were So Obsessed With Black Friday Deals They Left Their Infants Unattended"
Fortunately, many Americans are starting to get fed up with Black Friday. In fact, one activist named Mark Dice actually went out and heckled Black Friday shoppers this year. I found the following You Tube video to be very funny, and I think most of you will too...
In the end, it is not that big of a deal that people want to fight with one another to save 50 dollars on a cell phone.
But this kind of extreme selfishness and desperation could become a massive problem someday if society breaks down and suddenly millions of extremely selfish and desperate people are scrambling for survival.
With each passing day our economy is getting even weaker, and the next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching. What are people going to do when the next spike in unemployment hits us and nobody can find work?
To get an idea of where things are headed, just look at Europe. In both Greece and Spain the unemployment rate is over 25 percent and civil unrest has become almost a constant problem in both of those countries.
So what kind of riots will we see in the United States when the economy gets much worse than it is now?
Already there are signs of social decay all around us, and most Americans are completely unprepared for what will happen if a major disaster or emergency does strike.
Sadly, the reality is that most Americans live on a month to month basis. Most families do not have any emergency savings to speak of, and one recent poll found that 55 percent of all Americans only have enough food in their homes to survive for three days or less.
To me, that is an absolutely insane number.
We just came through a summer of extreme drought and global food supplies have dropped to a 40 year low. Our world is becoming increasingly unstable, and the global financial system could fall apart at any time. Most of us just assume that there will always be huge amounts of very cheap food available to us, but unfortunately that simply is not a safe assumption. The following is from a recent article in the Guardian...
Evan Fraser, author of Empires of Food and a geography lecturer at Guelph University in Ontario, Canada, says: "For six of the last 11 years the world has consumed more food than it has grown. We do not have any buffer and are running down reserves. Our stocks are very low and if we have a dry winter and a poor rice harvest we could see a major food crisis across the board."When I watch my fellow Americans trample one another to get a deal on a television or a video game, it makes me wonder what they would be willing to do if they went to the store someday and all the food was gone.
"Even if things do not boil over this year, by next summer we'll have used up this buffer and consumers in the poorer parts of the world will once again be exposed to the effects of anything that hurts production."
Desperate people do desperate things, and someday if there was a major economic breakdown in the United States I think the level of desperation in this country would be extremely frightening.
So what do you think? Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below...
"Millions of Americans have become convinced that it is fun to wait in long lines outside retail stores in freezing cold weather in the middle of the night to spend money that they do not have on things that they do not need."
Add the riots and that about sums it up. When many fell prey to the glamor of materialist society they saw all that nifty stuff they got fed in the movies and on tv. The idea of dying on some god-forsaken, barren strip mall didn't occur to them. I think that's where we are at though. The pinnacle of materialist philosophy. Death by trampling in the entrance foyer to a walmart near you...
Assuming anyone survives this mess I can only see a dark age coming with the ice or the fire or whatever. Literacy is being rejected. They can read, but they can't read if you know what I mean, like the pit science has fallen into by bending over backwards for capital. Spirituality has become the drug of choice for those who can't afford alcohol or other drugs (literally and figuratively). Life has become something that happens on the shelf in a store. And oh the pride they take in their choice, which isn't a choice at all.
If I'd had any sense I would have left ages ago. But there isn't anyplace to go anymore.