A persuasive essay by your lovable comrade Sacrieur...

So we all know Thanksgiving is the bomb. A national holiday, and even if you didn't know much when you were little except LOL PILGRIMS and John Wayne, Thanksgiving was like getting rock 'em sock 'em robots. Loads of delicious goodies and treats plus you didn't have school. Sometimes it snowed and you could run outside and go sledding after. Cousins came over and played. You know, the good things in life.

I used to think that Thanksgiving was insulting to the Native Americans, that we would feast in honor of a people that we massacred. How dare we! But my opinion has since changed upon realizing that it was honoring the Native Americans by customarily getting together and sharing hospitality with friends and family. It's a toast to the generosity a native people showed people on the brink of starvation so many centuries ago. Perhaps we have forgotten this and attribute thanks to our deities or friends and family, and I certainly think it should be a day of giving and appreciation.

However, the day after, and increasingly, Thanksgiving day, is being consumed by an ugly monster rearing its head year after year, growing more fierce each bout. Black Friday, it's called. A venture by businesses to give the best deals of the year before Christmas, inspiring a crowd of people to go out and shop with a blood fever of consumerism. And indeed, this fever kills some in the process, and we have all heard stories about fights breaking out over the last of an item. This, all due to some corporations who are exploiting the opportunity -- an impending Christmas -- to increase the size of their own pocket books.

How dare them! Or so I wish to shout from the top of rooftops. It is perhaps more insulting that not only is this behavior directly selfish and destroys the meaning of Thanksgiving, but also implicates complete disrespect -- to the point of hate speech -- of the Native Americans. Because once again, we Americans are exploiting them once again. We had once celebrated their generosity, and now we take it for granted and turn it into profitable and selfish ventures? How many retail workers must give up their holiday to go to an understaffed and overworked environment?

It is this, I fear, that is destroying American culture. Our own greed rears it's ugly head. Am I but the lone soul that sees it? Surely we cannot let another year pass without voicing ourselves. Enough of this exploitation, I say. The days of when we exploit people for material items should have ended with the pilgrims, but we have not learned our lesson after four centuries. Shame on me, shame on you, shame on us.

How is selling things for cheap an insult to Native Americans? If we want to buy things on sale, who's to say that we can't? Nobody is forcing anyone to go out and spend all their money. They're not being exploited; they're doing it because they want to.

If those people don't want to work on Black Friday, they can get a better job. It's like saying we shouldn't have anyone work during the summer because students don't have to do any work during those months. If you work at a retail store, you're going to have to work on Black Friday. If you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't have failed high school and gotten a better job where you could take off.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY VOY!

That's probably the worst thing I've read in a long time. I hope you know it's not as simple as saying, "Oh, I'm tired of this bad job; I think I'll get a better one now." I assume you attribute those that have bad jobs to be lazy or apathetic to their situation by your statement, which I'm telling you is not the case. I suppose you're also against making health care and education more affordable to the poor, following this logic? If they want better health care, they can just find it or earn more money to get it, right?

Maybe it's because I came from a family that was not very well off, but your attitude on this subject is insulting to me.

How are we exploiting the Native Americans, again? I'm pretty sure Black Friday came about as it was the day after the last national holiday before Christmas, and everyone had the respect to not start that holiday preparation until the last holiday was over. Perhaps I'm being naive, because this has all been conjecture and I've never really learned how Black Friday came about. Let's take a quick peek at Wikipedia:
It sounds like this was a consumer-created phenomenon; it could have easily been the last Saturday before Christmas to be declared "Black Saturday" that we'd observe had the cards been played that way.

I don't think this is related to corrupting Thanksgiving or insulting Native Americans; it's business taking advantage of a behavioral pattern of our society, independent of the holiday a day prior to it.

Greed is American culture. We take pride in capitalism and personal success. Are we destroying our culture here, or showing the true nature of it? We're starting to move toward more social programs because many people have the same line of thought as you that we should be a society of compassion to the less fortunate (to some extent, at least), as opposed to one that rewards the successful and lets the poor die or go uneducated. But I digress.

Hell, Thanksgiving reeks of gluttonous over-consumption of food, and that message could be taken as more insulting to the message of coming together and sharing hospitality. The holiday to most people is just about eating a lot. I haven't ever heard anyone say they enjoy Thanksgiving because it's Black Friday Eve.

Is it? He's saying that if they don't want to work on Black Friday, they shouldn't have a job in retail. If they can't get a different job, then they should have made better decisions in life. Makes sense to me.


The solution is fairly simple, to improve your qualifications. Everyone has that opportunity available to them. The "problem" is that it isn't easy. It takes time and effort, and some people have put themselves into situations which make it increasingly difficult (ie, having children at an early age). Those difficulties are a result of their own choices though, and even then, it still isn't impossible.

Many people prefer the path of least resistance, always taking the easiest route and then complaining about the consequences later. That is why there are people working in retail jobs for their entire life.


Demon also came from a family that was not well off originally, likely far less well off than your own family, since it was in third-world conditions. Yet his father wasn't satisfied with the conditions and made it so Demon could live much more comfortably than he ever could.

You came from a family that was not well off, yet made a decent life for yourself through your own determination, which sort of proves his attitude has a basis. I think it's more insulting to people who have struggled to succeed in life to dismiss their efforts as trivial by saying "people who work minimum wage jobs never had a choice."

It seems obvious to me that nearly everyone currently in middle to upper class would also be living in poor conditions if they hadn't specifically sought not to.

Maybe it's because of the whole job discussion that took place a week or so ago with Dem0n in the Shoutbox, but I agree with Roy here. Not to mention the basis of Dem0n's statement is the assumption that people who work retail are uneducated high school dropouts.

HAHAHAHAHAH

You're making the assumption that there is little to no inequality of opportunity based upon the financial status of a family, and that success is the direct result of determination. While this is what the U.S. strives for, it is certainly not the case now. I read a good article on this in The Economist recently, but it appears they do not have the full article online; you can try this abridged version as well as this article using one of the same graphics as the full article on the subject if you're curious.

So while you have a valid point that decisions greatly impact the future success of a person, I disagree that it is the primary factor in many families' success or lack thereof.

Children born into a position in their parent's company (as opposed to following their own interests) choose the path of least resistance and take the easiest route. The same person working in retail today could easily have been more successful if the opportunity were easier for them, I think is what your statement ultimately alludes to.

That was not my message, as I hope I clarified above; I'm saying that in many cases, determination is not the deciding factor of whether someone is or isn't as successful as someone else. Furthermore, Demon's statement was that someone who was already in a poor situation (being from poor life decisions or some other factor is irrelevant) can just quit their job and get a better one, which is just inaccurate in the practicality it implies (i.e., it is rarely the case that someone in their present position can immediately find and get better employment).

Yes, everyone seeking to become very unsuccessful is guaranteed to do so; however, it is not the case that everyone seeking to become very successful is guaranteed to do so.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 22 2012, 7:31 pm by Roy. Reason: Grammar

It should be obvious when you apply to a place like Wal-Mart that you will have to work during the holiday sales. If people don't realize that this will cut into their Thanksgiving/Christmas, that's their own faults. Black Friday's been going on forever; it's not like it's a new thing that just thrown upon the employees. They knew what they would have to do when they got hired. They shouldn't be complaining now.

That fact that you're using some bullshit strawman logic to make me sound like a horrible person is insulting to me. Why is it so terrible for me to say that they can get a better job? Because the economy is awful and jobs are scarce? Because not everyone has the opportunity to get a decent job? Okay, there plenty of "bad" jobs that are easy to get that don't operate on Thanksgiving, such as pizza places. Those jobs are ridiculously easy to get, and you don't have to have any education to get hired. There are plenty of advancement opportunities, probably easier than at a retail store. My previous boss didn't have a college education and she made a decent amount of money through that advancement.

Also, the fact that you're insinuating that I don't want people to have healthcare makes you seem like a worse person than me, which of course, nobody will agree with, since you're a saint and I'm awful. Not having enough money to afford healthcare is one thing. Working a job in which the holiday schedules are made clear to you and still bitching about it is another.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 22 2012, 8:51 pm by Dem0n.

It's just a typical right-wing attitude, which stacks almost everything down to 'personal responsibility' and tries to minimise all other aspects of why someone's life ends up the way it does.

Certainly there are lots of people who are ill, bullied at school or just have bad parents that don't treat them in a civilised way (this happened to my ex, who overcame terrible parenting but ended up emotionally wrecked and with poor life skills because of it), which permanently fucks them up for the rest of their life and there's not a lot they can do about it. But right-wingers turn a blind-eye to that and make it all about personal responsibility to explain why someone ends up working as a janitor while someone else works as an accountant. The major influence for people's life trajectories is really just luck.

I do reject this idea. I believe there's a lot a person can do about a lot of things.

I also reject this. Luck may explain something like becoming a multimillionaire or grave misfortunes like cancer, but for nearly everything inbetween I think there is a lot to be said for personal responsibility, work ethic, and perception. "What a typical left-wing attitude you have." I find both extremes silly, obviously there are factors people can't control, but by controlling what they can a person can still do an awful lot for themselves.

Lanthanide, yours is just a typical left-wing attitude, which stacks almost everything down to 'luck' and tries to minimize all other aspects that are actually relevant to why someone's life ends up the way it does.

Certainly there are lots of people who are ill, bullied at school, or just have bad parents that don't treat them in a civilized way (this happened to someone I know, who overcame terrible parenting but ended up emotionally wrecked because of it), which permanently fucks them up for the rest of their life and only makes it somewhat more difficult for them to advance in social or economic status. But left-wingers turn a blind-eye to that and make it all about luck and circumstances to explain why someone ends up working as a janitor while someone else works as an accountant. The major influence for people's life trajectories is really just themselves.


I also reject it, because it's certainly untrue. I know people who've been "permanently fucked up" by traumatic childhood experiences, had personality disorders, were born with learning disabilities, and even a combination of all three, and still managed a relatively successful life for themselves. A lot better than working a minimum wage job their whole lives, anyways.

See, you said "better job," not "different job." That wording alone changed your message entirely to me, and I admit I overreacted because of the way I read it (as you can probably see from my previous post).

I didn't mean to insinuate; what I interpreted from what you said was aligned with the train of thought from the interpreted statement, and I was showing (admittedly aggressively; sorry for that) that it's unreasonable to take such a position on the reasoning from my interpretation. So I think we agree here?

I agree with you (sans forever == ~10 years ), and if this is what you had originally meant, then I apologize for misinterpreting it.

However, Wal-Mart opening at 8:00PM on Thanksgiving for an early Black Friday is, in fact, something new, from what I understand.

There is indeed a lot to be said for the actions of the individual, but I think it's a far cry to put everything on them. Rarely are they able to control what opportunities are available to them or what environment they grow up in, but it is indeed up to them to seek and take advantage of the opportunities that are available. So I would agree with you on this.

I try to avoid anecdotal evidence over statistics, because I have the opposite experience. I wouldn't know how to find a study on this (what terms to use, etc.; a quick search didn't bring anything up), but I agree with you and would go so far as to say that these impediments are not preventing success, even if they hinder success.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 23 2012, 12:51 am by Roy.