Quick! What's the spin?
Is this a right-wing Christian values group?
Union blue collar?
Socialist liberals?
Well, the quick answer at the time of this writing is: I have no idea.
I don't know who is funding this push, but this simple and seemingly innocent lovey-dovey meme shared on my Facebook wall this morning went through me as a reflection on a lot of what's the core problem with our society today.
Let's break it down for every ounce of it's logical invalidity.
"Because I believe in family"
As Thomas Sowell stated, part of the core problem with our society is that "I feel" and "I believe" are considered fair substitutes for "I think" or "It reasons that..." Believing something works for matters of faith, for matters of personal conviction, and in the context of this little button really isn't too terrible. The person is being asked to boycott X, but only because they enjoy Y. What strikes this as invalid in the applied usage, is that Y only correlates to X because of one misguided belief. The second presumptive statement that I take issue with is a common political technique. "Because I believe in family" instantly limits your opposition to taking the assumed stance of "not believing in family" whatever that would actually entail in practice.
"I pledge to not shop on thanksgiving"
The money line. The "sacrifice" this person is willing to make, is to NOT go shopping. Pay no mind to the reality of defining "going shopping" in an age of e-commerce, but pay attention to this level of dedication and effort to a cause. This is just as ridiculous as the concept behind a "gas off" day where people skip a day to buy gas...as if you don't just have to turn right around the next day and fill up.
If you need the things you are buying on thanksgiving, you'll just buy them the next day...the store won't be hurting overall.
This brings me to the final "point" of this pledge button
"Everyone deserves a holiday"
No.
No one DESERVES a holiday.
Oh the other side of this thought is that minimum wage worker who can only afford the big turkey dinner the following weekend after payday...after they have gotten their bigger check from working overtime/holiday hours. Even if not overtime, who are any of us to tell someone else when they should be too good to work?
Just because thanksgiving is a traditional family holiday, doesn't mean that the world stops. No more than for any other holiday. The person working at Walmart on Christmas eve isn't a poor downtrodden slave, they are working...earning a living...and trying to get by. They don't need the idle patronage of random facebookers telling them they should go home instead, because they deserve it.
So Mr. Button pusher, I will do quite the opposite. I will purchase whatever I feel like on any day I feel like it. The businesses that understand the free market have taken a calculated risk in opening their doors on a holiday, and part of that risk is paying the wages of their employees that are showing up to work, and doing their jobs as they are paid to do.
I will not not encourage and enable a society that "feels" like a certain day is cruel to work simply because a couple hundred years ago someone ate some turkey?
The same type of person, who would look you in the eye and say "You deserve to be off on thanksgiving!" is the same person who slides a piece of chocolate cake in front of you despite knowing you are on a diet. "You deserve a piece, one piece isn't gonna hurt you..."
I recently had the pleasure of taking in a local production of Les Miserables, the setting of the play in during the french revolution so I couldn't help but to conjure up images of Anne Boleyn shouting "Let them eat cake"
The line, for those unfamiliar, was in response to the queen being told the people had no bread to eat.
A few hundred years ago, people (French people mind you!) had the courage to fight and die in the streets, simply for the right to work for themselves and keep bread to eat.
Fast forward to 2013, and we Americans sit around and tell each other to have another piece of cake, no matter how fat, diabetic, and unhealthy we get. Because, well, we deserve it.
PS:
With apologies to the friends who shared this button with zero intention to initiate a political/sociological rant
