Examining the deleterious impacts of modern urban culture on the American social fabric and its future prognosis.
For the first installment of “Is American Urban Culture Beyond Repair?”, we’ll survey the national retail scene.
U.S. retailers, I can assure you, are utterly unique in the world in terms of keeping even run-of-the-mill personal hygiene supplies worth a few bucks under lock and key due to rampant theft — particularly in the post-Floyd era, after he martyred himself to emancipate razors and tampons from department store shelves.
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If there exists a land outside of American borders where common, cheap goods like toothbrushes are secured behind glass, I haven’t seen it — and I’ve tramped all over the Third World. (Which begs another question, one I plan to explore at some point coming up in this series: Why, if poverty is the main driver of crime in urban America, does wanton retail theft not exist at nearly the same rate in much poorer countries?)
CVS in California is locking up their products from beauty to hygiene...
— Wall Street Mav (@WallStreetMav) August 20, 2025
This is crazy... pic.twitter.com/TgPUV6F5dS
In our first exhibit, a feral child at a local Walmart randomly destroys merchandise while onlookers watch.
Eventually, in a nearly perfect microcosm of the social forces at play here, an ad hoc team of store clerks and good Samaritans attempt to intervene to stop the wanton property destruction… until a white woman, almost certainly a Kamala voter, steps in to aid and abet the child’s vandalism, as products lay broken and strewn all across the floor: “Don’t yell at her. Don’t film her. Don’t stop her. You don’t know what she’s going through!”
Watch as this child destroys a Walmart and a white woman steps in to stop staff and other customers from restraining her while she wreaks havoc. “Don’t yet at her. Don’t film her. Don’t stop her. You don’t know what she’s going through.” pic.twitter.com/9JMJTkMckA
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) December 2, 2024
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Here, an Ohio woman goes merchandise-harvesting (the term “shopping” implies she might have intended to buy something at some point) at Target.
Here is the timeline of events:
- Makes her way through the checkout line
- Declares after her items are rung up that Target ought to comp her loot, worth $1,000, as a spontaneous form of reparations
- Threatens and assaults manager after her request is politely refused
- Backs security guard into office, screaming threats
- Asks “Do you know who I am?” to police officer when he shows up like she’s the mayor or something
- Feigns indignance when she is asked to present ID
- Describes her attempted larceny as her “Rosa Parks moment”
- Does the black power fist at officers to “make a stand”
- Gets arrested for menacing and disorderly conduct after her ten-minute civil rights sermon
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How ever could this lady have got it in her head that she could simply demand free stuff on the grounds that society owes it to her because of chattel slavery?
Was it the BLM mantra, parroted in liberal media for year, that looting a Gucci store is actually a novel form of reparations?
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Now, when retail outlets make the entirely rational business decision to lock up products most likely to be pilfered — or even close their stores in certain urban neighborhoods entirely, it suddenly becomes a civil rights issue.
There’s a lot more to say on the rhetorical question — “Is American Urban Culture Beyond Repair?” — and I plan to do just that in the next few weeks/months.
