toothpaste as a portent

I’m not one hundred percent certain but I believe the end of days is much nearer than we ever previously believed.  Sure, I’ve read Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” seen Kevin Costner’s “The Postman,” and tweaked my mind a long, long time ago with books like “Alas Babylon” and “A Canticle for Leibowitz.”  I’m not talking about post-nuclear total annihilation here.

I think that the beginning of our modern Depression Era has gotten me to thinking about the collapse of Capitalism in the Marxist sense of the word.  The talk of our government bailing out this industry and that industry seems to have socialistic tendencies flying directly into the face of the tenants of the so-called free-market economy.  I would really like to understand in the “so easy a caveman can do it” way of what happened to our economy?

Have we really lived with such errant information from our government about the dire conditions of our nation’s economy?  How could we have fallen, so quickly I might add, from a balanced federal budget, into the realms of a situation governed by greed, exploitation, and rampant disregard of business principles and ethics?  Who has been lying to us?

I remember watching the movie “Wall Street,” all those years ago and thinking that it was just an isolated episode—a parable provided to us through the jaded eyes of Oliver Stone.  Now it looks like Oliver Stone was simply twenty years ahead of the curve.

I know, I sound like a total conspiracy theory nut job but, Oliver Stone seems to have the same type of clairvoyant insight as Vince Neil showed on the first “Surreal Life.”  I remember listening to Vince throughout that show, shaking my head and thinking, “You know what, Vince is right.”

Motley Crue’s Vince Neil is right!  When Vince is the standard bearer for common sense, something has happened.  We have gone “down the rabbit hole.”

What really brought me to the brink of this revelation, or rumination, was a recent trip to Target.  I had a seriously short list of errands.  My intention was be in and out of Target before anyone got hurt.

I was about three minutes into the tour when I hit the toothpaste aisle.  In and of itself, that is a loaded statement.  Toothpaste aisle–just think about that for a minute.  An aisle of a mega-store dedicated to teeth care products.

            I know there are flosses and brushes, mouthwash, and countless other oral hygiene products.  But, my God, how much tooth paste is available in America available for purchase?

            Mind you, I am usually a careful consumer carefully weighing my options between Hunt’s tomato paste, maybe going with the added Italian seasonings, versus the Western Home generic version.  Personally, I don’t know if there is a difference but I usually go with the Hunt’s.  Hunt’s seem to know what they are doing, and the extra seven cents it costs me makes me feel extra warm especially when I compare it to the free-range organic variety.

            But tooth paste, when did this become an industry unto itself?  An industry that I’m sure employs many people and one that touches nearly everyone in the county at least once and sometimes twice or three times, a day.

            I needed a tube of Crest to brush my teeth in the shower.  I prefer the tube with the big lid so I can stand it up and let it settle down instead of using the G.I. Joe Kung-Fu grip to try to eek out every last drop of the paste out of the classic tube.

            Oh there are the classic tubes with the little caps and others with the big flip top caps.  There are also little squeeze bottles that are not tubes at all.

            It’s not like I am George Bush totally memorized by the scanners in the grocery store here.  I have been brushing my teeth regularly throughout my life and I am aware of some of the innovations of the industry.

            What totally blew my mind was the seemingly endless myriad of choices.   Which of my own horrible oral issues did I need to address?  Whitening, tartar control, weekly clean, pro-health, cavity protection, sensitive teeth?  Did I need baking soda, gel, classic formula, striped, or flavored?

            The flavors ranged from vanilla mint to green tea to wintergreen ice to burstin’ bubblegum.  When did Starbucks buy Crest?  I didn’t want to have a toothpaste experience; I just wanted to brush my teeth.

            I imagine that in the Soviet Union, just about the time that Oliver Stone made “Wall Street,” a comrade could probably buy only one type of tooth paste in the Moscow Target.  Maybe that was even a commodity that was only sporadically available.  I suspect you couldn’t get a tiny squeeze dispenser of vanilla mint sensitive teeth gel with fluoride.

            So, are we, as a nation of hyper-active consumers, so desirous of the perfect container of toothpaste that the government will someday, perhaps sooner than later, need to bail out an industry that is clearly making vanity products?  Today’s toothpastes don’t seem so dissimilar to those wacky AMC cars of the past.  Would we as taxpayers want the federal government to subsidize the Hornet, Matador, Pacer, and Gremlin?  Those cars had their day and that day has passed.

            Personally, I would rather brush my teeth with some indistinguishable minty flavor of white paste by choice and sponsored, in part, by the laws of supply and demand rather than some other crazy flavored sparkling gel contributing to the situational apocalypse of over-consumption and fueled by commercial hype and shaky business practices.  On the other hand, I don’t remember Mad Max ever brushing his teeth on his way to Tomorrow-Morrow Land.