The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.
To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore, the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.
A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it. The shopping cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.
The Internet
The above quote is a meme/commentary that has been on the internet for sometime. The power of Dissident Right memery is that, unlike leftist mumbo jumbo, it cuts directly to the core of a specific issue. Occasionally, these memes target larger themes, such as the everyday decisions for preserving a functional society. In the “Shopping Cart Scenario,” one simple, customary task illustrates if a member of the public is both an ethical citizen and also capable of maintaining civilization. The decision to return the shopping cart, after it has been emptied, also indicates if the person has high or low agency, impulse control or lack thereof, respect for their fellow shoppers, time preference status, and a myriad of other qualifiers.
Outside of the ethical ramifications, there are practical reasons to return your shopping cart that aren’t addressed in the quote (although implied by the nature of the subject). As I’m sure our dear readers can attest to, un-returned (we’ll call them “neglected”) shopping carts are considerable nuisances in parking lots. They tend to roam, based off a stiff breeze, and cause vehicle damage, minor but still a headache. Neglected carts also block parking spaces for other shoppers, visually spoil the location, and require employees to police the neglected carts. Additionally, the more neglected shopping carts spotted at a location, the higher likelihood that the store will be of lower quality, both the store and its patrons (think Walmart vs Target or Food Lion vs Publix).
The type of person that willfully chooses not to return their shopping cart is a brutish subhuman, to be frank. Also, while a predominant racial group appears to be the chief culprits of neglected carts, this writer has also witnessed lower-class Southerners guilty of it, too. In fact, I recently saw an obese White woman, garbed in a Realtree hoodie and Cookie Monster pajama pants, flippantly push her emptied cart aside and casually watch it roll away and bash into a parked Corolla. She then heaved herself into her lifted F-150 and drove away, apparently untouched by such a malicious breach of basic decorum. My blood boiled and I thought to myself that only something like Conan the Barbarian’s Wheel of Pain would be a fitting punishment.
Joking aside (somewhat), what would become of those guilty of neglecting their shopping carts, specifically in a Free Dixie? Our fans have been clamoring for proactive solutions, not just daydreaming of secession and an unchained South. The only merciful recommendation that I can purpose for such a violation of established social norms would be to revoke voting privileges. I suspect a great many of those guilty of not returning their shopping carts are probably low-information voters or don’t vote at all. However, there’s a significant chance that those who do visit the ballot box, and neglect their shopping cart responsibilities, don’t share our values. Proscribing them from engaging in the legislative process, because they lack basic civic dignity, would weed out the feral oafs from mortifying the law-making direction of our polity.
Furthermore, other measures should be implemented against the cart neglectful, such as banning them from establishments, legally allowing duels (in such circumstances whereby a neglected cart struck someone’s property), horsewhipping (optional), and other locally confined solutions. In a Free Dixie, localism will rule the day, so any formula designed to curb individuals from abandoning their shopping carts would be within the purview of that local administration. Capital punishment for such an offense may seem unnecessarily cruel to Tidewater patricians, but nations like Texas and Florida, particularly Florida and other wildlands of Dixie, may require more conclusive deliverables.
Of course, much of this brief screed is clearly meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but it won’t stop our more hysterical detractors from bewailing these reasonable recommendations.
Universally hated by feminists, wine-moms, Yankees, hipsters, and weirdos. Last known whereabouts: the Tidewater. Dissident support here: Rick Dirtwater is The Boat Shoe Beat (buymeacoffee.com)
Must be a Virginia thing like wearing loafers w/o socks but most of us call your “shopping cart” a buggy.
In a Free Dixie, a unified language, for the purposes of enforcing law and order, must be established. Therefore, and whereas, a cart for the purposes of shopping, will be and for evermore called, most correctly, “Buggy”.
Simple curiosity will be normalized once again!
What a joy to read this today.
We have more than enough -isms for us to just secede from the English language and make our own rules.