American holiday miracles are made on Black Friday every year. It’s the day when 80-inch flat screen televisions can practically be bought with food stamps and coupons seem to grow on plastic shopping mall Christmas trees. It’s the day when morning talk shows are all Turkey Tetrazzini recipes and electronics experts. It’s the day when clearance prices are the norm, and middle class suburbanites can flex their bargaining muscles without feeling like cheapskates.

Black Friday can be a bit tricky though, much like democracy itself, what with the masses hysterically converging at Walmart and Kohl’s, fighting over radio alarm clocks at Circuit City and Best Buy, and body checking each other at Sears and Target. Our founding fathers dealt with unruly factions by establishing the Electoral College; I’d recommend dealing with the angry mobs by fully embracing the dehumanization of modern society via online shopping, since avoiding rigorous consumerism the day after our country’s oldest holiday is pretty much out of the question.

Luckily, the thing about Black Friday 2008 is that you can feel pretty damn good about it. You can feel really quite patriotic, as your holiday spending contributes to the vague resuscitation of our downtrodden economy. Yeah, maybe greed tanked the American economy, but who’s to say that greed won’t help pull it out of the shitter too? Well perhaps not, but they say denial is the first step in the grieving process, and the United States is definitely grieving the loss of illusions of our economic grandeur.

So get out those Black Friday coupons, and strap on your helmets if you plan to brave the mall stampedes. It won’t be pretty, but it may be less of a blood bath than spending quality time with your family, depending on how dysfunctional you are.