Black Friday in America, a day of death and violence

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, in the USA is a day of deep store discounts, long lines, frenzied mindless consumerism and violence. Black Friday received its name due to the heavy shopping that usually made retailers profitable, thus they operated in the black (profits) as opposed to the red (loss).

Photo: Black Friday in America, a day of death and violence

Black Friday in America, a day of death and violence

To watch an image of Americans breaking down doors at 0500 or earlier to get into stores is reminiscent of a third world hunger stampede when grain is made available. But no, there is no grain at the end of this stampede, only Chinese made goods, the same goods that have driven many of these mindless consumers out of their well paid jobs. The images to those outside the USA are horrible. People, bursting like stampeding cattle, their eyes consumed with only mindless Christless, soulless greed.

Often these stampedes end in the deaths and injuries of either store workers or of the herd animals they have allowed in. Some times they even start to kill each other over this Chinese junk. This year was absolutely no exception.

On the death roster, it was a relatively light year, one employee in a Long Island NYC Walmart was trampled to death and several other employees were injured. Four customers, including an eight month pregnant woman were also taken to the hospital. This after a crowd of 2,000 ripped down the doors and charged in. The other fatalities were two men who gunned each other down in a ToysRUs in Palm Desert California, when their women started fighting over toys.

The injured list is of course quite a bit longer but it is the fatalities that get the most attention. Fights and stampedes happened through out the United States.

It is something to contemplate, that in these ever more desperate times, not only are people who are suffering the worst jobs market in 20+ years, the worst credit and bank panic in 70 years, willing to part with their money in such quantities but they are willing to fight each other over what is in truth only luxury items. If this is a precursor to American consumer behavior and harder times are on the way, than what will become of the people of America when it is no longer luxury items they are fighting over but actual critical things such as food?

Will the United States once more show how greed is a deadly sin? It has shown the world once again that Wall Street greed is deadly to all humanity, this time with the Bank Panic of 2008. Of course this is not the first time, the Bank Panic of 1873, the backing of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Great Depression, the backing of Hitler and the Nazis, the Savings and Loans collapse. There are many examples obviously. But it was always said that these were the elites succumbing to Christless, mindless greed, throwing caution and any care about fellow humans to the wind. Are we now going to see that this is not just the elites, but actually the whole of the modern American culture.

It is beyond a doubt that the stoic, Christian culture that built America, that taught hard work, diligence, sacrifice, is gone. The question now is: how far has it sunk into the abyss of degradation?

Stanislav Mishin

The article has been reprinted with the kind permission from Stanislav Mishin and originally appears on his blog Mat Rodina