Yesterday was Black Friday, the day when the Christmas shopping season officially begins. Traditionally, the television news is filled with images of mobbed stores, long lines and the occasional brawl.
Yesterday in Valley Stream, New York, just outside the city, Black Friday became a completely tragic disgrace as a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by a mob of shoppers. Jdimytai Damour was a 34-year-old temporary worker who lost his life after being stepped on by dozens of what a witness accurately described as “savages.”
When asked to leave the store, people kept shopping. The store closed, but only temporarily. That someone was callously killed didn’t matter enough to the powers that be. Shopping needs to be done. Commerce is more important than human life.
If past and current economic crises have taught us anything, it’s that there are things that matter more than the almighty dollar. Capitalism, like society in general, only works when it’s tempered by morality and a sense of decency. If we lose that, we lose it all.
Thursday is Thanksgiving, an occasion for gluttony, but also to take stock in all that we have to be grateful for. You will hopefully be spending it with family or friends, but please commemorate it somehow. It requires no religious faith and is a uniquely American holiday.
I give thanks to whatever powers enabled my brother to get a plane ticket so he could fly to New York and spend time with family. I am thankful I’ll be feasting on turkey with the Sheahan clan come Thursday.
I’m thankful I have good friends, from all corners of the U.S.A. and the globe.
I am thankful that I still have a job, when many people more educated, knowledgeable and skilled than I have been put out of work. I am thankful I work with nice people and have a sympathetic boss who appreciates creativity. I am thankful for good music and the people who make it.
I am thankful that I have my health and a roof over my head, a cat who is less of a bitch every year, and a blog.
The column concerns the multitudes of performers, paupers and preachers who take advantage of the fact that subway riders cannot easily or legally leave New York City subway cars while in transit. It lists the kinds of people you should never give money to on the subway and includes a few people you should be generous towards if you can afford it.
Soon we may pay more for the privealige of riding more crowded subway cars that will arrive less frequently. The MTA may increase the ride of a single fare to $3 from $2 and also increase the costs of the discounted Metrocards that many regular New York commuters use to get to work. New York State budget shortfalls promise steep spending cuts everywhere. So the MTA has proven that poor service is its most reliable attribute.
It’s 2008 and there’s still no one for me to vote for. That’s not to say that I won’t have the chance to vote for a presidential candidate this year—there will be seven candidates for president on the ballot in New York State—but that there is not a single candidate I want to be our next president.
Of the two major party candidates, I’ll concede that Obama is preferable to McCain, but that’s like admitting that being hit with a brick is preferable to being hit with a rock. Either way, the next president will pursue major policies that are completely at odds with both the United States’ national interest and the will of the American people. Both candidates have shown allegiance to the same conventional positions that have defined the failures of both major political parties. Each has taken millions of dollars from corporate special interest groups.
I lost a lot of respect for John McCain four years ago when he prostituted himself to the reelection campaign of George W. Bush. When he supported illegal alien amnesty I lost even more respect for him. When he flip flopped on the issue of torture, which was the one issue that made him superior to many of his rivals for the Republican nomination, I lost even more.
Barak Obama is popular more for what he is taken to represent than for what he actually is. He’s an opportunistic politician willing to change his stripes to suit his ambitions and has done so on issues such as domestic spying, offshore oil drilling, the Iraq war and campaign financing. While he is a bright political tactician and an effective public speaker, his platform is basic Democratic Party boilerplate. After eight years of George W. Bush, perhaps we should be forgiving of those so enthrall to someone who can speak in complete sentences, but Obama has without a doubt benefited from a cult of personality that has developed around him.
Even though I’m a registered Democrat, I supported Ron Paul for President. He was the only presidential candidate to consistently oppose the Iraq war, the “Patriot Act,” and illegal alien amnesty. He’s the only candidate (other than Democrat Denis Kucinich) who consistently told the other candidates of his party how full of crap they were.
Ron Paul encouraged his supporters to vote for a third party candidate, singling out and winning pledges from Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin, Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney, independent candidate Ralph Nader and Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr. Paul specifically endorsed Chuck Baldwin a little while later.
While Baldwin’s position on illegal immigration is the best of any candidate, he is a religious fanatic whose platform is laced with promises of enacting a Christian rightist agenda on a host of social issues. Bob Barr’s platform makes him the most logical choice for me, even though his record in Congress is abysmal. So I may end up writing in Ron Paul.
I write a column called 'Notes from a Polite New Yorker' as well as short stories and poems. My writing has appeared in Ask A New Yorker, GetUnderground.com, Knot Magazine, The Black Table, Too Square, and other web sites and print publications.
