Posted on 03/09/2019 2:15:57 AM PST by vannrox
Do you know your place? In these days of hysterical Wokesterism, the question would surely provoke a riot of cowbell-clanging Antifa cadres, fainting spells in the congressional black caucus, and gravely equivocal op-eds from David Brooks of The New York Times. Yet it’s a central, unacknowledged quandary of our time that so many Americans have no place and suffer terribly from it.
Human beings need a place in the social order, in the economic order, and in actual geography in order to function optimally in a life fraught with the normal challenges and difficulties that reality presents.
Let’s take these places in reverse order...
It’s a fact that most Americans live in everyday environments that are, at best, not worth caring about, and at worst actively punishing to human neurology. Have you taken a good look at the American landscape and townscape lately? How do you feel venturing down the six-lane commercial boulevards lined with cartoon architecture? Either anxious or numb, would be my guess. Or a Main Street of empty storefronts? Or an avenue of looming, despotic glass skyscrapers? Or a vast subdivision of identical McHouses where the buffalo once roamed? Is it any wonder that Americans require more antidepressant medication than people in other lands? Or, that failing to find treatment, they self-medicate with alcohol, opiates, sugary snacks, and anything else that takes them out of the soul-crushing reality of their surroundings.
I don’t think you can overstate the damage we’ve done to ourselves in the sheer material arrangement of our national life. A decade ago, I sat in on many zoning board meetings called to approve new WalMarts and other chain-stores around my region of upstate New York and southern Vermont. Inevitably, the companies organized a claque of locals in the meeting hall — itself a depressing, low-ceilinged chamber of cinder blocks and fluorescent lighting — to fill the seats and yell in support of “bargain shopping.”
That was some bargain they got. The chain-stores got approved and the Main Streets died, but that wasn’t the end of it. This dynamic also destroyed networks that gave local citizens an economic and social place. Locally owned business people were the caretakers of the town. They took care of two buildings — their place of business and their home. They sat on library, school, and hospital boards and donated money to running local institutions. They employed people who lived in town and there were consequences for treating them well or badly. There was even a time in this country when local business people wouldn’t dare to put up an insultingly ugly building.
A lot of this economic behavior has produced the social perversities of our time. Exterminating an entire class of local merchants has eliminated the heart of the American middle-class and grotesquely concentrated the nation’s wealth among corporate leviathans who comprise one percent of the population. It also eliminated the place where young people learned how to do business, preparing themselves to try ventures of their own, and to make a place for themselves in the world.
What is your place now? A cubicle in the marketing department of Old Navy? An aisle in the Home Depot? A desk in the Diversity and Inclusion office of some State University, pushing to sort the student population into racial and sexual categories because all other ways of belonging in society are gone? Or do you occupy ten square feet of sidewalk with a tarp and a shopping cart? None of those places are liable to furnish a personal sense that life is worth living.
Those of you out there still sincerely clamoring for “change” might start asking yourselves if you have a clue about finding a place worth caring about in this country and what it might actually take to get there, including the revision of a lot of ideas in your head that you take for granted. Hint: if you’re looking for it in the current political leadership you are probably wasting your time and energy. If you’re looking for it in some group identity, you may not ever discover the power in your own individual ability to make choices for yourself.
We have very similar rules in my household.
An individual does. Individualism is a keystone of America. Let the man speak as he chooses. It's what a patriot would do.
I have been struck by the sheer number of social events, church events, reporting cf what every kid is doing in school, who has come to visit who, which businessman is staying at the local hotel, who won what at various fairs, birth and death celebrations.
What has replaced the local mercantile? It is the local drug dealers, much like the godfather. You need a problem solved or some money, he is more than willing to help you not only with drugs. He likes the power and prestige in the community.
The Homersexual community is linked on one common thing too. It is a well structured network that we don’t even begin to understand.
But most of all, your comments are a reminder to repeat the successes of the past. Host a local block party and start networking.
I repeat, The one small thing we can do is start having some picnics and bonfires.
My farmer tenant just told me that he did this for all the new house owners in his area. The next year, someone else hosted it.
I agree, its a well funded Social Movement, and when we stop them they send their cannon fodder ( ANTIFA, Black lives Matter and others) into the streets.
It soon will bring civil war to sanctuary cities, where this civil war is already being fought by the federal government via ICE.
Thats right Kanawa, but he will need a case of tissues, he will really be cryin’ a lot. LOL.
Hope that you are surviving the winter, We have a lot of snow here in central NB. The snow pack is at 117%, so we are all praying for a slow thaw, or we will have severe flooding.
My step son is breeding British Bull Mastiffs, and I have fallen in love with them via dogsitting. Their male weighs in at 190 lbs.
https://www.certapet.com/bullmastiff/
I don't think so. Walmart is investing heavily in becoming a legitimate competitor to Amazon. Not a fan of most Walmart offerings, but they have batteries and oil filters, and as a investor, appreciate that they've smelled the coffee and are aggressively going after e-commerce, but with the added value of having brick and mortar stores where people can still get groceries or try on a jacket that they remembered seeing on the interwebs while ordering underwear.
Dear GOD, we need help !
The queers and the enemy are a strong force to resist against and it is ALL fomented by PUBLIC SCHOOLS ... that do not actually TEACH to retain, American history
America had better wake up !
Two less than educated, muzzie freshman representatives are already the camels' nose in.
as pointed out in THIS VIDEO , Almost Occasionally Conscious is very professionally scripted and she is really, really good at delivering her lines.
AND
ALL of this adds up to a very well executed plot to take over the America every drop of blood shed in every war has ever paid for.
Aoc, tlaib and omar have bonded together to get Congress to drop the headgear ban JUST FOR THE TWO MUZZIE enemies the tratorous Americans actually voted in.
THIS SHIT IS DANGEROUS !
Violence at malls does not happen spontaneously. It is guided by social media. IOW we can know when it is going to happen but the government chooses not to know.
The same government that chooses to know what YOU are doing.
I go to walmart probably once a week or so. I observe what is happening. It is interesting to try to see how they to react to the changing market
Locally a project to allow customers to use an ap to pay for items as they scan them on their I phones was abandoned. It was replaced with more scanners at the self check out. I always self check out because it is easy and quick
Meanwhile, walmart has promoted ordering on line and picking up at the store.
I asked one of the walmart employees with the cart of plastic boxes collecting goods for orders how it was going. He told me they had a hard time keeping up. Women at work caan go to walmart on their phone and pick up stuff already paid for on their way home.
Walmart has identified and is serving a niche group of customers that live on their I phones. These women should be Amazon customers but have trouble accepting deliveries while not at home. This business is coming off Amazon’s hide
Although Walmart is very large, the company seems to be able to act
quickly on change.
It seems that the great mass of walmart customers don’t trade on line because they don’t have the ability or just insist on seeing and feeling the goods
"Soon" is a relative term...
The internet can't replace a 9:00 pm run to WM for milk and bread and what's on sale.
Face it women like to "shop" and find bargains,etc.
I can see retailers in the coming decades like WM scaling down their stores and leave specialty items to be shipped to your home.
WM and like retailers aren't being replaced by the internet...
Retailing is far more then profits on a certain items. Retailers like WM make billions charging manufacturers "placement fees" "stocking fees" " advertisement fees"
Physical retail locations aren't going away...
"Soon" is a relative term...
The internet can't replace a 9:00 pm run to WM for milk and bread and what's on sale.
Face it women like to "shop" and find bargains,etc.
I can see retailers in the coming decades like WM scaling down their stores and leave specialty items to be shipped to your home.
WM and like retailers aren't being replaced by the internet...
Retailing is far more then profits on a certain items. Retailers like WM make billions charging manufacturers "placement fees" "stocking fees" " advertisement fees"
Physical retail locations aren't going away...
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