I feel kind of dirty when i buy shit there.

Sometimes I feel bad because even though I hate WalMart, I don't hate it as much as I know I should. There's really no question regarding Crap/Not Crap. Especially if you live where there's Meijer.

I worry about these type of things like Wal-Mart and Clear Channel. They are making decisions about content based on some pretty scary, mean spirited opinions (in my opinion) and they are omnipresent so in many places what they say goes. They gobble up the competition. I am lucky to have only lived in places with many alternatives, therefore giving me the opportunity to not support such people and in turn their views or opinions. It is hard, maybe impossible to know who you are supporting when you spend your money but with these folks, it seems blatant and obvious.

Oh, add Oberweis to the list.

Mayfair wrote:It is hard, maybe impossible to know who you are supporting when you spend your money but with these folks, it seems blatant and obvious.

i've seen the Walton joint in columbia, MO. it's rather big and fancy-looking. so yeah, you're giving your money to some folks who live in a giant mansion on a giant plot of land that's big enough to keep their horses happy. they may or may not be good folk, who knows. but they definitely have competetive prices!

They bought out Asda in England, one of our biggest chain stores. I dont know if they bought them all or just a few but the huge one near me is now called Asda WalMart.

When an American woman I knew was protesting to stop them building one near her home I didnt understand it. It's just a supermarket. Everyone needs supermarkets.

Then she explained what they're like in America. Whereas I live in a huge city with a thousand supermarkets, in small towns in Georgia it may well end up being the only place people can buy anything from. And they censor albums in America too, the cunts.

CRAP.

(I think she and her community managed to get them to fuck right off, btw)

I absolutely detest WalMart. I can't understand how anyone whom isn't absolutely destitute and stuck in some godforsaken culturally retarded small town could bring themselves to shop there.

The place reeks and seethes with the utter despair and resignation of those who work and shop at the place. It makes K-Mart, despite their troubles, feel like Marshall Fields, and makes Target into a fucking Neiman Marcus.

It's like a behemoth parasite that attaches itself to, and feeds off its miniscule hosts; its waste providing a barely acceptable sustenance to just keep the hosts going on with life; carrying out the motions that sustain its continued overbearing and dehumanizing existence.

WalMart represents to me all that is wrong with modern consumer values. Everything, and I mean absolutely everything there, is the most bland, cheap-ass, disposable, mass-produced crap. They don't even try to dress it up as stylish, hip, or quality - like Target does. The utter despair of just needing nothing more than temporary, non-durable, crap to eek you through your day-to-day existence with no forethought to actual design, engineering, or permanence.....

WalMart is Satan. WalMart is the Beast. WalMart is the essence of Soviet - it is what we as a society had worked so long to avoid. It is GUM department store ca. 1977 without the pictures of Bhreshnev.

It is Hell.....

I really don't like the idea of this place whatsoever but, where else can you buy a videogame, groceries and linens?

NOT CRAP WF: ? (a lot though)

what about Sam's Club? does everybody feel the same way about *it*? the Sam in Sam's Club is the same guy as the Wal in Walmart. Sam Walton.

and g, how on earth is Walmart the essence of Soviet? it seems absolutely pure america to me. one guy has an idea that's profitable, he works hard to put it in place, and he gets rich as shit and leaves everything to his family who are now all rich as shit for having done nothing except have the right dad. that sounds like pure America and the antithesis of Soviet to me.

WalMart is Soviet to me because:

It does not offer true choice. Every offering is based on the lowest common denomonator. WalMart offers you what it has - take it or leave it. Their entire motive it to reduce everything, what it pays to its suppliers and what is gives to you. They take everything in between. You don't tell them what YOU WANT. They tell YOU what YOU NEED. Now, how is that truely capitalistic?

It carries no pretentions, no glamour, no ouward attractiveness. These are American capitalist values. I want bare honesty from an artist; from a department store I want to be wowed with style and panache. WalMart is Soviet in it barren ugliness. Its ubiquitouness is the essence of Soviet Utility, or brain dead yokels. "You buy ugly flannel or plastic boots, comrade Kolkholznik? You like cheap plastic dinnerware? Is suitable for rural proletariet such as you, no? We have music - is very popular and approved by official decree. How about commemorative clock celebrating glorious anniversary of dead heros of great patriotic NASCAR?"

The Walton family parlayed ruthless business conduct with an understanding of the mindset of the working class and turned it into an empire. The Soviets parlayed ruthless political and military strategy and an understanding of the underlying mindset of the Russian peasantry into a world superpower. The Waltons care nothing for true concepts of supply/demand or progress and growth through competition. Like the Soviets their goal is the attainment and concentration of supreme, unchecked power.

They are evil I tell you, pure fucking evil. They exploit workers and consumers in the name of their ideology the same way the Soviets exploited the labor class in advancing their own.

Their ideology, however, includes:
-limiting access to birth control/family planning (non-Soviet)
-Cencorship and limiting exposure to media & outside culture (Soviet)
-Selling shit dirt cheap/paying dirt cheap wages (Soviet)
-Selling sub-quality cheap shit made in the third world & China (Soviet)
-Suppressing all opposition, protest, and criticism of their practices (Soviet)
-Suppressing independant organization of labor (unions) (Soviet)
-Appeals largely to rural working class though false patriotism and dogma (Soviet)

Institute of the Gods- Wal-Mart

Hopefully the Targetlungen and Shopkomädchens can bring about:

WälMartdämmerung!