More Wal-Mart 4

This is funny, but it also plays into another point I want to make about Wal-Mart:

After a long day searching houses in suffocating Iraqi heat, Lance Corporal Mike Wilson of Princeton, Kentucky recalls seeing relief in the distance.

Wilson said that looking through the haze he thought he saw a Wal-Mart and was ready to get some cold water for his men when he discovered it was an illusion.

(It's getting up around 125F in Iraq. Why are we there again?)

This average kid, plucked out of Kentucky, wandering through the desert heat ... what does he see when he hallucinates? Wal-Mart.

The store is deeply, deeply embedded in the fabric of middle America. It is totemic. Iconic. Paradigmatic. Archetypal. All that stuff. To a great many people, it represents home, the place where they see their neighbors, the place where their friends work, the place that enables them to buy stuff they could never buy before, to partake in middle-class luxuries that were once beyond their reach.

Progressives heap derision and scorn on Wal-Mart. There are legitimate reasons to do so, of course, but people tend to go well beyond those. The scorn is also heaped on Wal-Mart shoppers, depicted as obese, dim-witted, herd-like hicks.

Here's a notion: It is impossible to build a successful political movement when you view the great majority of your fellow citizens with barely disguised contempt.

David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

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  1. Maywa Montenegro Posted 8:51 am
    07 Aug 2006

    The Wal-Mart Community CenterAlthough I hadn't thought of it that way, before, I think David has a point, the  progressives' traditional derision for Wal-Mart actually reveals an elitist bent in the green movement that we will have to move beyond real progress is to be made. Also, it reveals a very simple but compelling truth. Human beings need goods and services (and Wal-Mart offers plenty of them for a dirt cheap prices). But more importantly, they need community, and odd as it may seem, Wal-Mart offers that too. My own childhood town in Tennessee got its Super Wal-Mart about 10 years ago, and rapidly it became a mecca for the locals to gather, shop and simply hang out. A strip-mall variety substitute for the "stoop sitting" of decades past.

      Don't get me wrong, I think Wal-Mart has a lot to answer for regarding wages, outsourcing, and all the other evils inherent in giant big box stores. The irony is that the increasingly isolated, gated community lifestyles we've come to associate with these mega chains is that they leave an emptiness we come to fill---for a bargain, of cours---at Wal-Mart.

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  2. Heidi Posted 11:53 pm
    07 Aug 2006

    Wal-Mart trying to be greenI hadn't stopped to think about Wal-Mart this way, but you have a very good point.  I'd like to add that Wal-Mart is attempting to do some very interesting things right now in terms of its ecological footprint.  I have to assume that there must be at least some pressure from its shoppers to provide more organic selection.  
    Your comment about the unfair characterization of  "Wal-Mart shoppers, depicted as obese, dim-witted, herd-like hicks" rings true.  Maybe if we can start to give Wal-Mart credit for the changes it is making, some of that goodwill will transfer to Wal-Mart shoppers and change these stereotypes.

    http://groxie.com

    DIY Environmentalism

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  3. amazingdrx Posted 12:03 am
    08 Aug 2006

    An oasis?Nope, it's a Walmart.
    Sam Walton would be dismayed indeed by what his creation is becoming.  A destroyer of real competitive capitalism, instead of an engine of its growth.

    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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  4. amazingdrx Posted 12:46 am
    08 Aug 2006

    160 inside a humveeThat's with the air conditioning on.  Line up, sign up!  It's like a free 24/7 sauna!
    With recession looming due to soaring energy and now food prices pushing interest rates  ever upward?  What other jobs than the military will be available to many young and even middle aged people?  
    http://www.wdef.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WDEF/MGArt...=
    And with Tenessee headed for Iraq-like temps.  Might as well join up america.

    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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