It applies perfectly to the airbrushed reality used by media and advertisers to stimulate envy and consumption in the West.

There is no doubt that this sort of “kitsch”-based communication has been used to mold society - which until recently was in the captive thrall of one-way mass media such as TV and print.

I speak as a member of the American generation trained to hold liberal opinions by the TV shows like:

Courtship of Eddie’s Father
Julia
All in the Family
Maude
One Day at A Time
Kate and Allie
Three’s Company

… and the beat goes one with Ellen DeGeneris and that new show about polygamy…

So: obviously totalitarian regimes do not in any way have an exclusive claim on politically motivated kitsch (although it’s interesting that American political kitsch has been largely the product of the Left).

“As for my own ’suffering’ I wouldn’t claim it’s anything worth talking about.”
Thanks. Then why did you bring it up?

“My political beliefs never cost me anything…”
We already knew that, didn’t we.

“…and my Jewishness has luckily never come into contact with the masses of ‘Red America’ who claim to love Israel and have never met a Jew.”
Thank God for that. Please stay safely ensconced in Manhattan, or West L.A. or whichever liberal enclave you are in. I’d hate to have those lowly red staters think you represented all Jews.

“I guess people tend to get riled up so much by these internet discussion because there’s nothing at stake.”
???If there’s nothing at stake, what is there to get riled up about? And exactly who is it that’s riled up? Seems to be you mainly.
I think there’s a great deal at stake, debate of ideas is everything we are, in the end. We are not animals only interested in a meal and a safe place to rest.

A bit?

I doubt historians will ever catch on, but if you’re ever curious about why the U.S. didn’t follow Europe down the road to late 20th century ruin, you’d do worse than to study the twin impact of Graham and King.

Evangelicals still pack a pretty substantial influence, but to the average joe who’s actually paying attention, they’re a lot less scary these days because:

A. The politics of the Evangelicals themselves has changed substantially (and is continuing to do so, mostly in a liberal direction, but recently turning left like the mainline denominations before them).

B. The “left” that once allied to with the liberals to take over American institutions has become a lot more scary itself, especially to liberals.

I have to ask whether L.A. lived through the late 70s-early 80s when Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition were at the top of their game. It was extremely creepy, especially if you lived, as I did, in the Virginia Beach area where Robertson built his palatial headquarters. That place was intended to dominate and overawe people with the apparent power and wealth of Christian evangelicism. If I recall correctly, Robertson’s influence on local politics was pernicious. Compared to that time, evangelicals’ influence today is negligible.

I don’t think the Republicans are dominated by evangelicals any more than the Democrats are dominated by Communists. There’s influence, yes, and the fringies on the left and right get lots of press because they’re so outrageous. We would be wise to keep an eye on them. But cries of “theocracy” and “welfare state” seem a bit premature.

Personally, I would be happier if the Republicans and Democrats would openly distance themselves from the fringe. That is, stronger denunciations of Pat Robertsons stupid press statements and no more seating Michael Moore next to former presidents at the national convention. Is it too hard to say “These people are welcome to their opinions, but their views do not represent those of our party?” I guess…

Back to Art…

I followed Grackle’s link to check out Jerub-Baal’s homepage. Again, I’m not an art expert but I found J-B’s paintings both beautiful and thought-provoking. I hope this is proof that an artist can succeed in stimulating the viewer without being puerile or offensive.

All conscientious propagandists seek the ideal Catch 22 dilemma. I’m not saying they are conscientious propagandists, however, but they do seek and have accomplished a Catch 22.

Regarding the “two-state” lefties mentioned. It seems to me they’re safe in paying lip service to a solution made unlikely (at best) by the fact that the palestinian leadership refuses (to put it charitably) to support it. Yes, I’m aware that with their newly minted position in the eyes of the world, Hamas has temporarily dropped its call for the complete and utter destruction of Israel. It’s a miracle! Can I get a Amen!??

But that’s not really what I wanted to write about, which got too long to be a comment so I moved it here.

The Right is philosemitic, huh? The Right which, in this country, is dominated by fervent evangelicas who want the Jews back in Israel so that jesus will return and all the Jews will be wiped out? Do you mean Pat Robertson, who claimed that Sharon’s stroke was because God would strike down anyone one did anything against this dream of a jews-only Israel? Or Jerry Fallwell, who only just now decided that maybe all Jews weren’t going to hell? Or President Bush, who had an argument with his mother that Jews could never get into heaven and called Billy Graham to back him up? That’s the moving force behind the American Right at this moment. They have no concern for the well-being of the security of the jews in Israel or elsewhere except as pawns and they are the largest anti-semtiic group in the country.

The ‘anti-semitism of the Left’ is, so far as I have been able to tell, invoked because people don’t react so strongly to charges of ‘anti-Zionism’. And they react even less to the general position of the Left towards Israel, which is (with variations, of course) that the occupation should end and that it isn’t the most important thing in the whole wide world that Israel maintain via any means necessary a Jewish majority for all eternity. Maybe it would be nice, but logistically impossible. These views are not terribly controversial, even within Israeli politics.

Strangely, of all the left-wing figures whose ‘anti-semtisism’ is legendary - Chomsky, Finkelstein, Galloway, Cockburn, Said, Tariq Ali et al. - every single one of them supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So we have a basic disagreement on the history but not on the resolution.

As for my own ’suffering’ I wouldn’t claim it’s anything worth talking about. My political beliefs never cost me anything, and my Jewishness has luckily never come into contact with the masses of ‘Red America’ who claim to love Israel and have never met a Jew. I guess people tend to get riled up so much by these internet discussion because there’s nothing at stake.

If Serrano has more “lasting impact” than Rockwell for future art historians, then that would be a future in which I would be glad not to be around because it would be a future with a warped aesthetic. But the author wants it both ways: On the one hand “its all great,” on the other hand Rockwell will lack “lasting impact.” Some are apparently greater than others.

With all due respect, I don’t think artist or art critics (esp. Saltz) care about the masses. They continue to produce work they enjoy. People can view/read their work or not

I don’t believe that critics should “care about the masses.” Caring “about the masses” is a political concept & the subjugation of art by politics is part of what I believe is wrong with the ‘modern art’ scene. Indeed, Saltz & his cohorts are influenced too much by politics. Obviously, critics should care only about art.

Serrano just was tired of organized religion, that’s his opinion. Many think differently. In my book, its hard to say that either group is wrong to think or feel the way they do. Serrano doesn’t have a better or worse handle on dismal reality than any of us. We all search for something different in viewing art and come to many different conclusions. There is more to his art than the shock value.

Although I am not really interested in Serrano’s opinions on religion, if he had created a decent work of art on the subject I would sing his praises & avidly read the critics that supported him. However, I find his photographs, except for the purposefully shocking arrangement & use of various materials, very pedestrian, indistinguishable in technique from many other photographers. In fact, in some ways Andres Serrano & Thomas Kinkade are very much alike. Both seek to exploit the art consumer; one sells shock while the other markets sentimentality. Both utilize a banal & commonplace technique.

= )

My mom is always getting me Kincaide calendars and whatnot (as well as Joel Osteen books) to “cheer me up”. Her own personal propaganda effort, perhaps.

As for Kincaid, his work is pretty. For a lot of people, that does the job. He’s obviously tapped into something, as he now has a chain of mall-stores. We’ll see where it goes in the future, but he’s making a good living at it and more power to him.

The whole ‘elites vs. the commons’ thing is central to one of my biggest arguments about how art is taught, viewed, critiqued and considered in our culture. Creativity is a central aspect of human-ness. All people are creative. My neighbor and good friend George is also my mechanic. He used to be in the Navy as a flight mech on a carrier. The man could strip out a jet engine, break it down, rebuild it over night and stuff it in the plane and his pilot never blinked to push the throttle open and take off. No one will ever convince me that George is not creative, he’s just creative in a different way than an artist. Drawing and ‘draftsmanship’ were standard fair for all students in colleges in the victorian era. Not everyone was Monet, but many learned to draw well enough to take field notes or make family portraites. We have been sold a bill of goods when art has become something only an elite few can do. Go take a painting class, or go to Dover Books and buy a Bridgeman’s figure book and learn to draw people. So, maybe you’ll hang your stuff on the wall, or your aunt’s flower painting (we have a couple of pieces by my wife’s aunt) instead of buying one of my paintings. It’s OK, because somebody will buy my work. The more people become involved with art, at any level, the better it will be for artists like me who are making a living at it.

That is the level where having art be common would also make it good.

I hope not since I found your post very interesting. I Googled up Thomas Kinkade & took a look at his art & agree with you that it’s not worth hanging. It’s formulaic – he’s staked out a sentimental lode & is mining it for all its worth. His art looks to be the epitome of sentimentality.

I don’t find such blatant sentimentality in Rockwell. Instead I see absolute command over a variety of techniques & materials, immense compositional skills & an ability to portray an optimistic viewpoint without resort to obvious cliché. Rockwell had a talent for pictorial summation that is epitomized by such paintings as New Kids in the Neighborhood & The Problem We All Live With. The darkness is there but it’s the subtext instead of the main text & that is why I believe some dislike Rockwell – because in his work light takes precedent over dark. But a Kinkade he is not.

Not as many as can now. Walmart really does offer everyday low prices for necessities people used to have to pay a lot more for. If you don’t understand basic economics, don’t blame me.

“So being a “real progressive” means embracing a situation where the American landscape is covered with vast suburban sprawl,”

Ever been in an airplane? Covered my ass.

“and where manufacturing jobs are outsourced to China, so that Real Red State Americans can get low paying and low benefit jobs wearing demeaning uniforms and working at fast food outlets and Walmarts. Got it.”

What’s progressive about priveleging Americans over Chinese? Don’t worry, if you want to cheat instead of compete, before long the Chinese will be the ones with the higher value skills.

Obviously, I have more confidence in American capabilities than you.

“And they dislike this even more than I do.”

Then why the hell do they all shop at Wal-Mart ?!?

Steve, I have trouble believing you. I currently live in West Virginia, and spent ten years in south Georgia. The only people I know who don’t like Wal-Mart are busy-body self-styled “progressives” and those too lazy or stuck in the past to adapt to the new economic opportunities it engenders.

Also, malls must be “anchored” by two or three big stores: i.e., a Neiman Marcus, a Dillards, a Sears (for the peasantry), etc., as well as one of the big chain bookstores, such as Barnes and Noble, which many elites blame for putting small bookstores out of business. Your average mall is going to have at least one of them, and, possibly, two, if they can squeeze them in. They are not going to invite Betty, of “Betty’s Bargain Books” to set up shop there, and she won’t be able to afford the rent for any of the stores in the area around it.

Malls usually cover more space than Wal-Marts, and they’re always surrounded by acres of parking lots, theatres, restaurants and smaller chain stores. That’s a lot of land, not just Farmer so-and-so’s old cornfields. And the bus routes will be re-routed away from the old downtown areas (where a lot of the mom-and-pop stores are located)to haul passengers to the mall. As far as I can see, malls eat up more land, and create more traffic jams (ours is in the middle of town by the way, not outside it)and put more local businesses out of business than any one Wal-Mart does.

And if the problem is arable land—if we need more of it, we need more; it doesn’t matter if we lose it to a mall, a Wal-Mart or a giant Hello Kitty store! Gone is gone is gone.

I really think it’s aesthetics. Wal-Mart is perceived as tacky and blue collar. Malls, supposedly, attract a more elegant kind of shopper; they also contain all the chain stores that the elites like, such as Chico’s, Talbot’s, Bahama Bob’s.

I mean, let’s get real—the people who hate Wal-Marts were not the sort of guys who ever shopped at Betty’s Bargain Books or Kim’s Kountry Fashions! Nope, they drove to the city to shop at the “Finer” stores, being sure to stop at a Barnes and Noble on the way for a double-soy decaffe latte, hold the whipped cream, and the latest book on how America is being ruined by mass culture and doesn’ appreciate art.

Now that Betty’s and Kim’s have closed, Kim’s and Betty’s former clientele are shopping at Wal-Mart because they can’t afford the mall. And, of course, they are sneered at by the mall goers, who find them thoroughly tacky. . .

And as for traffic—I live in Southern California. You have to drive everywhere out here, even to the grocery store. One of the reasons you have to do so much driving is that if anyone tries to build a grocery store, a shopping center or even a park anywhere near a residential area, the NIMBY’S will all be out in force to protect the area’s pristine beauty and “rural” character. This means you must drive miles to get so much as carton of milk.

If Kim or Betty tried relocating their stores anywhere near a surburban area, they’d be run out by hordes of indignant homeowners, who see their shops as affronts to their pristine communities—the same sort of people who are always up in arms about Wal-Marts.

So I’m back to “You can keep your mouth shut and pretend to be wise,…” as self advice.

What I’m trying to say is different than “art is good if it’s popular,” but rather that in art popularity doesn’t necessarily preclude goodness – quite a different idea than Anon 5:00 PM’s unfair summation. After all, Twain was very popular in his own time, yet is rightly regarded today as one our greatest writers.

What’s “dumb,” or perhaps dishonest, is to knock Rockwell’s talent for thinly disguised political & social reasons & to try to dress the criticism up in aesthetic clothing.

as for anonymous jc, I think you;ve got it backwards. It’s not so much that anyone is trying to say popular is good and elite is bad, it’s more that we are tired of someone claiming to be elite and saying that we are common know-nothing plebes. Even a lot of we artists are tired of it. It’s boorish and bad for business.

jc

There’s not a lot of melody in Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, at least not the kind you can whistle; indeed, one of the things the riot in Paris was about was the lack of hummable melody but it’s a popular concert piece, nonetheless & gets scheduled all the time, drawing appreciative & sizable audiences.

I assume Richard Strauss is being referred to, whose atonal harmonics also resulted in melodies difficult to whistle, but Strauss gets played & sung quite a bit. With few exceptions, Stravinsky being one(Le Sacre du Printemps & L’Oiseau de feu were both composed early in Stravinsky’s career), I think that if early creations don’t get played it is largely because beginning pieces predate the improved technique displayed in mature works.

You hit a pothole here. Better extricate.

All anyone has to do is read this piece by John Ross to understand why when steve says what he says, steve is wrong.

Link 2

Link 1

On a shooting-oriented discussion board recently, I entered a discussion where some posters were saying that people in general and shooters in particular shouldn’t patronize Wal-Mart and other “big-box stores,” as they were driving small merchants, especially gunshops, out of business.

Great fortunes were once made in America in textiles. Then canals and shipping. Then railroads. Then banking. Then newspapers. Then retailing. Then oil. Then automobiles. Then consumer goods. Then computers and software. Then telecommunications. Tomorrow it will be something else. This is not to imply that telecommunications replaced textiles, or anything like that, but that the only constant in the market of consumer needs and desires is change. The free market is a continuously running play with an ever-changing cast.

jc

As to the topic…the art world has traditionally been a place for those with wealth, power and ‘manners’ to show that they are better. Art used to be the provenance of nobility, both making it and supporting it. The idea of nobility was pretty universally disliked, so we either ran the bums out of town, or co-opted them, or (as in England) turned them into decorations but left them pretty much powerless. Unfortunately, the desire to BE perceived as nobility is fairly universal. And so we have today, where the economic progeny of the bourgeois see themselves as the nobility. Naturally they also want us to see them as nobility. To see this in action in near-history, find an old ArtNews or some such art mag from the seventies. It’s almost impossible to read any of the critical theory for all of the sophomore level Freudianism, Marxism, and ad-nauseum-ism.
I think that the reason for everyone’s heightened awareness of this is that the attitudes and ideas of the intelligentsia have spread and established themselves enough to effect the debate on national security.
Oscar Wilde made a life out of skewering the elites. The elites today could use him, for they seem to have forgotten that (and I’m badly quoting here) “You can keep your mouth shut and pretend to be wise, but there is no way to pretend to be witty.”

…of course, I should probably hold on to the first part of that quote myself…

Unfortunately, that type of government oversight of private property is already the norm. In my home-town in NH the zoning laws have been changed such that I could not build a home on the family property, because of ’safety’ concerns and the ‘desire to protect the rural feel’ of the town. This has left my mom with a high property tax burden and property of practically no value, because it can’t be used.

The more laws there are to protect our own property from ourselves, the more those laws will be ‘gamed’ by the bureaucrats to the detriment of the people supposedly being protected.

yeah, urban sprawl is bad (I’m so tempted to jump out and say “Booga-Booga”) but the truth is, when people are allowed a stake in their own lives, they tend to take care of it. A hundred years ago NH and much of the rest of New England had been clear cut, and you could stand in many places in the white Mountains and see nothing but fields. Now the forests are back. Economics changed and farmers moved west, leaving land to regrow. Others took to replanting woodlands. Now the northeast is growing again in population. On the other hand many areas of the upper mid-west are being left abandoned. Maybe in 80 to 100 years we’ll get the prarries back. If you really want to stop development, institute a ‘one-child-only’ policy, but I don’t think you want to go there.

OK, that’s an off-topic rant, sorry, but advocating government land takings (which is the practical result of land use legislation) strikes a nerve.

Coming to this part of the discussion a bit late. Art is definitely not my area of expertise, so I’m really glad to be able to follow a discussion among people who have studied the issue more thoroughly than I have.

Learning is good.

Are you saying that people couldn’t afford cars before Wal-mart?

You can be a reactionary if you want, just don’t even kid yourself that you’re looking out for the little guy.

So you think being opposed to Walmart and seeing miles of miles of farmland turned into suburbs that are in fact usually financially out of reach of “the little guy” is reactionary? Got it.

Note: there’s also the not inconsiderable matter of the millions of Chinese little guys getting their first chance in millenia thanks to Wal-Mart. Dismiss them or be a real progressive - your choice.

So being a “real progressive” means embracing a situation where the American landscape is covered with vast suburban sprawl, and where manufacturing jobs are outsourced to China, so that Real Red State Americans can get low paying and low benefit jobs wearing demeaning uniforms and working at fast food outlets and Walmarts. Got it.

Most of the people I actually know are lower-middle class folks in what is left of blue collar jobs. They fly flags and do fireworks every Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day. They are religious (Christians), and they have very traditional beliefs, customs, and expense patterns. And they dislike this even more than I do. But, hey, they just don’t know what’s good for them, right?

Most of the suburban sprawl and Walmartization benefits them in no way. The suburbs are actually ex-urbs for people with frequently leftoid politics who work in big cities and then commute to their homes. Their average salary is 2-3 times that of the locals, with the result that neither the homes, nor most of the stores in the local malls, are within reach of the “little guys.” The influx of ex-urbs, in turn, further de-values the dollars the locals do make. It also leads to all kinds of liberal interventions in terms of laws and regulations. Right. Just what we need.

The same thing goes for literature, music, film.

The whole thing is set up for people to be as outrageous, and therefore, as attention-getting, as possible.

I would demur a little bit on the subject of serious music. Strauss, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Bartok and Prokofiev wrote a lot of “shocking” music in the first couple decades of the 20th C. But, to the extent that that kind of music has any audience at all anymore, I have found that among those works the ones to have survived the best are the ones with the better melodies. What can I say.

As to pop music today, well. I find it hard to believe that people will be listening to hiphop in 20 years. But it’s already be around for 20 years. So ….

Data? Particular (inefficient providers of basic goods) small businesses do go out of business. Others (more specialized, offering better service) arise. Without this process, we’d all be Amish, and not coincidentally, not having this conversation.

“pretty soon it will take you 45 minutes to cover a distance that you used to be able to cover in ten.”

Maybe you used to be able to cover it in ten, but it took me two and a half hours by foot. Now I can afford a car thanks to Wal-Mart.

You can be a reactionary if you want, just don’t even kid yourself that you’re looking out for the little guy.

Note: there’s also the not inconsiderable matter of the millions of Chinese little guys getting their first chance in millenia thanks to Wal-Mart. Dismiss them or be a real progressive - your choice.

The above quote from a comment in Part II contains much of what’s wrong with ‘modern art.’ There is a fascination & glorification by modern critics & modern artists of the pathological & the morbid that frequently descends into artifacts(I refuse to call them art) created for nothing but the shock value of the piece. This rot eats through almost all the arts, not just painting; it’s certainly all too evident in poetry, novels & sculpture.

Pop music is also enthralled by it but fine music mostly escapes simply because a musical composition, by the universal nature of the art itself, does not lend itself well to the proselytizing of morbidity & the desire to scandalize.

True, Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps was considered scandalous & caused a riot at its premier, but the listener of today would find nothing but an exciting piece of music – no politics, no denigration of religion, no overt statement about society’s imagined shortcomings. Le Sacre was infamous for only a short while; once time erased the colloquial & historical elements surrounding its inception it became just another piece of good music. Future viewers of Piss Christ, if there are any for other than historical purposes, will not have this advantage; they will be visually assaulted by Serrano’s symbolic vulgarities.

The good news is that except for a few Serranos that are elevated by Saltz-like critics & made famous(for a time), no one makes a living at it. It turns out that most art consumers, even the trend-chasers & well-off in Manhattan & Hollywood, will not buy this stuff, perhaps because of a dim recognition that it is aesthetically worthless. This is why the un-anointed try so hard for subsidization by taxpayers through government grants for the arts. Who else is going to pay them? How else would they survive? The true kitsch of today can be found in the galleries & lofts of Soho.

Meanwhile, local towns and cities have a drop off in revenue because the malls are in the middle of the settlements, shutting down not frou frou boutiques but things like the local drug store, the local paint store, the local hardware store, the local furniture store, you name it. About the only places that are not affected are hair salons, I don’t know why.

Meanwhile, these small towns abandoned by small businesses become perfectly reasonable alternatives for living space.

I’ve seen this several times. I don’t really like it, and none of the rural and semi-rural folk I know like it, but it’s reality. Maybe it’s inevitable. I don’t know. But if I were looking to make agitprop to pump up the American people, I wouldn’t make a movie about Walmart and suburban sprawl.

I do think there’s a tendency to abandon current settlements to create sprawling bedroom communities. The reason for the tendency is obvious; a real estate developer is going to make a lot of money taking a 400 acre $4 million plot of farmland and turning it into a bedroom community with 1,000 homes and a Walmart strip mall complex. But that’s the problem, these communities are built to make money, they aren’t built to function as a community, or to be easy on the eyes.

However, anyone who studies the subject knows that there are in addition environmental limits to how much you can do before you start diminishing everyone’s quality of life, and I’m not talking about the traffic jams, either.

My further concern on this issue is that I think it’s prudent to have a lot of open space and potential arable. We, as a nation, might need it some day. But whatever. Those that want Walmart and sprawling suburbs as a way to get back at what they mis-perceive as leftist elitism will get their wish. Except the leftist elitists don’t care. They usually live in big cities anyway.

As to Wal-Mart vs. small stores. Malls built near an existing community are a good way to square the circle of multiple independent stores in a small space. But again, malls are generally not built near existing communities (where property values are higher), they are built on Farmer Jones’ old corn field, where the cost is much less. It’s only after that that the surrounding corn fields (if they haven’t been bought by the developer already) are ripe for planting with acre after acre of ticky tack.

They despise Wal-Mart because, as you pointed out, they perceive it as tacky; the sort of place where guys where guys in baseball caps and women wearing plastic sandals shop, and where you can’t find Prada for love, money or credit cards.

Neiman Marcus is just as vulgar as Wal-Mart (if more swanky and flamboyant), and the shopping malls it anchors put as many—if not more—small stores out of business as Wal-Mart, but it is perceived as chic and hip, and therefore above criticism.

(By the way, speaking of health insurance, etc., does anybody out there know what the policies of some of the swank department stores are, and how much they pay their employees, what their health plans are?)

And please, I don’t want to hear about how the left loves mom and pop stores, and how it deserpately longs to shop in them! You guys snubbed them when they were open, sneering at them as being low-class, and not carrying the latest trendy stuff; you didn’t patronize them then, so don’t start crying over them now!

I really do wish somebody would do a study of Left-wing kitsch, and the snobbery and vulgarity of many so-called progressives. . .

I’d be happy to support any legislation that protects our arable and woodlands, that centralizes and monitors housing and mall development, and that encourages small businesses and agriculture. Happy, because that’s the reality I would prefer. But legislation on these matters may just encourage sloth and lack of accountability. That’s the problem. You can’t legislate people to prefer a more individualized, de-centralized, community-oriented culture. But insofar as Wal-Mart is a symbol of the decline of this, I don’t like it.

And I would note that very few of those concerned about local small businesses have shown any interest in tax and regulatory policy changes that would make life easier for small business operators.

I don’t think so. Wal-Mart is just another symptom of centralized consumer outlets that put smaller, specialied outlets out of business, that withdraw arable for the building of more and more malls, and the subdevelopments and McMansions that inevitably follow, along with the over-taxing of the traffic infrastructure, water and power infrastructure. Those are reasons I don’t like Wal-Mart, anyway.

Of course you get what you pay for and if people are that concerned about getting something cheap at Wal-Mart, they will build, the smaller businesses will go out of business, and the fields, cultivated and uncultivated, for miles around will be turned into developments, and pretty soon it will take you 45 minutes to cover a distance that you used to be able to cover in ten.