In the middle of a recession, war, and as terrorists killed nearly 200 people and wounded hundreds more in Mumbai, India, shoppers trampled to death a security guard at a Wal-Mart on Black Friday, intent on being first to grab bargains. This did not happen in some Third World country. It happened in Valley Stream, N.Y. And the store didn’t even close for the day. Maybe there was not a Wal-Mart close enough for shoppers to refocus their passion for cheap Wiis?
We may never know who was responsible for killing 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour, a temporary worker. And we know little about his hopes and dreams — did he have children, a family? But his death is one more incomprehensible and irrational event in a year filled with irrational behavior, even by some of the smartest of the smart.
Witness the price of oil plunging despite no change to the fact that we are not replacing what we are pumping. And witness the bailing out of banks and their chief executives responsible for exponentially exacerbating government programs that encouraged risky lending. And witness the chief executives of America’s Big Three auto companies beseeching Congress for billions in aid after flying to Washington in corporate jets and after years of building hulking, gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles anathema to common sense and public desire.
This problem is beyond privatizing profit and socializing risk, as Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings and other astute commentators have been saying. That is merely bad for the economy.
What we face is something bigger. It is an inability to live within our means. America is a nation of outsize dreams and outsize appetites. But we have forgotten the rule of law that made realizing those dreams and desires possible and the golden rule that shapes what it means to be a good husband, co-worker, neighbor — and customer.
What makes this all the more depressing is that it was only seven years ago that terrorists hit us. Remember when everybody was a New Yorker and United We Stand was our motto? How quickly we forgot those attacks and turned to flipping real estate.
It falls on our president-elect, Barack Obama, to not only calm a nation and a stock market, but to help right the culture. He is no savior, but he can set the tone for what we should respect — hard work and saving being two of those items. If he can reacquaint America with her core values, that really would be “change we can believe in.”
