The Wal-Mart Stampede

Sickened.

That's the best description I have for how I felt when I heard about this. I was watching the news Friday with my family. My dad and I ended up in an argument about who should be sued/punished. I argued that the shoppers should all be brought up on murder charges. He argued that Wal-Mart should be held responsible for creating the mob with its "deals", and not providing enough security. Obviously, out of the thousands of Wal-Marts in the country the only one stampeded was this one, so I held my ground.

Later I got more information on the story. Still no pictures, but more information - the crowd busted the doors down and actually walked over and around the dieing man lying on the floor so they could get to spend their money on their precious stuff. When asked to leave angry shoppers refused citing how long they'd waited in line, callously ignoring the death of an employee because they needed to get their stuff. Someone else's life is far less important than MY stuff!

So today I finally found some pictures of the incident here:

http://www.nydailynews.com/money/galleries/walmart_stampede_captured_in_pictures/walmart_stampede_captured_in_pictures.html

I was immediately struck by the ethnic race of the crowd. Obviously being a white male, I would have felt out of place there. My initial reaction - and I'm ashamed to say this - was "of course! They're black/hispanic. That explains it." We always tend to look for order and reason when something tragic like this happens. I realized what I'd done was essentially say "I would never do such a thing! I'm white!" This is wrong and - again - I'm ashamed at my initial reaction. However, upon thinking about this more, it really has nothing to do with color. Clearly this could happen to any race/ethnicity with equivalent values.

People in this country have lost sight of what truly matters. So much of our economy is based on the fact that everyone wants newer and better stuff. It's what Christmas is about, right? Getting new stuff, giving new stuff, shopping, buying new stuff. Yay!

It's gotta end folks. We're in the midst of the worst recession in decades and people are spending money like there's no tomorrow. And all because Wal-Mart is advertising 50% off on a television? A $2000 TV is marked down to $1000 and people rush out to buy it forgetting that they're spending ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS on a television! It's insane. And it's greed. Pure and simple greed.

One last word on the stampede. Even though this one occurred in a black/hispanic area, this could happen at any Wal-Mart. My wife refuses to shop there because most of the patrons (not all, just most) are mean and nasty, and this is a prime example. It's got nothing to do with race and everything to do with values. As a country we need to get back to what's important and get away from the "me and my stuff first" mentality.