Re: Wal-Mart Becomes the Big O
[NRO Staff  03/10 05:41 PM]

An e-mail:

Hi guys & gals,

I think the organic Wal-Mart story is on its face kinda stupid, but might have long-term benefits. It can become one of the things that helps us in the CC debate separate truly countercultural living from consumerist, faddish living. (And might help Jonah see the point of it all.) OK, so it's easy and cheap to get "organic" stuff at Wal-Mart, just like it's easy and cheap for people to complain about porny elementary school kids. It's when people make fundamentally different choices with their lives that crunchiness has teeth (or should I say "crunch"?). Where to live is a big thing (we should be getting to that next week), like that NJ mom says and Rod pointed out...if you actually get up and move to the country, you've actually done something with a lasting effect.

Buying the organic brand at Wal-Mart is mostly just consumerism or ignorance, and shouldn't count for anything if it's put in the same cart as Great Value brand mass-produced cheapo eats and Chinese-sweatshop cheapo trinkets. There's no real cost to making that choice - Wal-Mart will find a way to make it cheap enough, and it's not a real change in people's lives that derives from deeply-held values. Buying organic at Wal-Mart isn't a movement for which books are and ought to be written.

So I think this sort of development muddies the waters a bit but eventually will be a clarifying thing for sorting out one's values in life. And so it's a good thing in the long run.

Best & God bless,

Christian Mastilak