Don't Buy Social Justice Goods, Buy American Again

Photo: Ileana Johnson

There was a time when I did not care where I bought my Christmas gifts from. It was in the late 1970s when Sears and J.C. Penney delivered their heavy Christmas catalogs to our rural and urban homes and women spent hours perusing the tome for the latest toys for their kids, home decorations, furniture, clothes, Christmas wreaths and trees, bedding, and other necessities for our homes. Men bought the dependable Craftsman tools. We shopped for our TVs, camera, stoves, refrigerators, microwaves, washers and driers from Sears. The famous brand, Kenmore, came in special colors like puke green and we could order those for $10 extra.

We had fewer choices, true, and there was no Amazon monopoly that conveniently dropped packages on our front doors even on Sunday via USPS or even drones. The mailman came bearing our packages. If we wanted variety, we drove to Walmart or Kmart which had not yet become superstores to make them one stop for everything.

We knew that what we ordered by mail was made in America, with proud American labor. We did not spend any time worrying about the CEO’s socialist all-encompassing political views now expressed overtly for all to see and hear. We did not spend a minute’s time thinking about the company’s anti-American stance before we opened our wallets to shop.

Credit cards were not a common thing and you had to be quite wealthy to have a Visa, a Mastercard, or an American Express card. Cell phones did not exist for the average Joe and Jane and kid’s toys were quite advanced if they had a battery that allowed children to learn spelling, counting, addition, and subtraction. Kids had to use their creativity to play outside.

We loved Christmas time and people and merchants festively decorated with their best Christmas displays, shop keepers wished everyone a Merry Christmas and the Christmas tree had not yet become the holiday tree.

Today progressives tell us that we must not offend new arrivals with our Christmas traditions and therefore we must do away with them altogether. People who are conquered must forget their traditions and replace them with the customs of the wiser third worlders whom we’ve “exploited for centuries” and now is their time to tell us what to do and how.

The goods today are made in China, Jordan, South America, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, or other inimical countries in which workers, especially women and children, are paid pennies per hour to produce our American goods. But the goods are advertised as social justice goods which are developed sustainably and somehow, that false knowledge makes the left feel good. We all know it is advertising drivel.

The associates helping us in department stores are foreign-born or illegal and are lecturing us about the evils of America that is so socially and racially unjust and corrupt. They left everything they loved behind in their third world country they’ve hailed from in order to come to this intolerant country that is rolling the red carpet of welfare for them the moment they cross the border illegally. It was so much better in their countries, but they had to come to America to set us straight and take our generous handouts.

Companies located in places like Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, California, and Washington lecture us on our divergent political views that they aim to curtail while offering us goods for sale that we must think twice before we open our wallets to.

Some even tell us that our business is not welcome in their stores. They don’t need American customers who love our country, they are looking for globalist customers who cater to open borders and praise the virtue of the oppressed from other countries, preferably non-Caucasians.

Goods are advertised and sold as “sustainable” or “green” even though they could not be produced in a more polluted environment than that of third world countries that are flooding our oceans with their refuse because their governments don’t really care what they do to the environment they share with us. We can recycle until doomsday – none of it will make much impact until countries like China and India take measures to stop polluting like there is no tomorrow.

We were told in the 1980s that paper grocery bags were killing our trees and we must switch to plastics. Paper bags are bio-degradable. We now have plastic bags thrown about, and floating in the rivers and oceans, so the leftist solution is to charge a few pennies for them instead of providing them inclusive in the price of doing business. Recycling and burning of all trash is possible but punishing the consumer with fees and taxes is the leftist way to solve a problem they created in the first place.

I try to buy products now that are made in America, truly American, with American labor. It is much harder to do so as Amazon, Walmart, and our insane online shopping have put so many mom and pop stores out of business. We are told that places like Sears have closed so many stores because they failed to adapt to the Internet age. The very people who sold their goods first by mail could not adapt to online shopping.

One thing is sure, when all the small, medium, and large companies will be shut down because of the behemoth Amazon that offers everything online with free shipping or minimal cost, people will be left with one monopoly, fewer choices perhaps, and higher shipping costs. When a company becomes as large as most governments, dictating consumption, the outcome may or may not be ideal. History has shown that centralized governments are not very good at running economies and satisfying consumption needs.

Perhaps you don’t mind being trampled on during Black Friday for whatever specials a store may offer. Yes, you can avoid the crowds in malls and stores, save on gas, shop online and wait for the purchases to come to your door, but, what if the last store standing suddenly cannot deliver what you want or need? What if their politics conflict with yours, they know it, and they refuse your purchases? You could be left holding a full wallet, with all the cash and credit cards stuffed in it, and nothing to buy.