From the Great Depression, we remember the bread lines. From the oil shocks of the 1970s, we recall lines of cars snaking from gasoline stations.
And from our current moment, we may come to remember scenes like the one at a Long Island, NewYork, Wal-Mart in the dawn after Thanksgiving, when 200 frantic shoppers trampled to death an employee who stood between them and the bargains within.
It was a tragedy, yet it did not feel like an accident. All those people were lined up in the cold and darkness because of marketing forces that have produced this day called Black Friday. They were engaging in early-morning shopping as contact sport. American business has long excelled at creating a sense of shortage amid abundance, an anxiety that one must act now or miss out.
This year, that anxiety comes with special intensity for everyone involved — for shoppers, fully cognizant of the immense strains on the economy, which has made bargains more crucial than ever; for the stores, now grappling with what could be among the weakest holiday seasons on record; and for policy makers around the planet, grappling with what to substitute for the suddenly beleaguered American consumer, whose proclivities for new gadgets and clothing has long been the engine of economic growth from Guangzhou to Guatemala City.
For decades, Americans have been effectively programmed to shop. China, Japan and other foreign powers have provided the wherewithal to purchase their goods by buying staggering quantities of American debt.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush dispatched Americans to themalls as a patriotic act.
When the economy faltered early this year, the government gave out tax rebate checks and told people to spend. In a sense, those Chinese-made flat-screen televisions sitting inside Wal-Mart have become American comfort food.
And yet the ability to spend is constricting rapidly. Credit card limits are getting cut. Millions of Americans now owe the bank more than the value of their homes, making further borrowing impossible. The banks themselves are hunkered down, just hoping to survive.
Live within our means and save: This new commandment has entered the U.S. conversation, colliding with the deeply embedded imperative to spend.
And yet much of the distress is less the product of extravagance than the result of the fact that in many households the means are nowhere near enough for traditional middle-class lives.
Wages for most Americans have fallen in real terms over the past eight years. Private retirement plans have just relinquished half their value to an angry market. Health benefits have been downgraded or eliminated altogether.
Working hours are being cut, and fulltimeworkers are having to settle for jobs through temporary agencies.
Indeed, this was the situation for the man working at the Wal-Mart at 5 a.m.
Friday, a temp at a company emblematic of low wages and weak benefits, earning his dollars by trying to police an unruly crowd worried about missing out.
In a sense, the American economy has become a kind of piñata — lots of treats in there, but no guarantee that you will get any, making people prone to frenzy.
It seemed fitting then, in a tragic way, that the holiday season began with violence fueled by desperation; with a mob making a frantic reach for things its members wanted badly, knowing they might go home empty-handed.