A Trip to the Store that Starts with a Letter Near the End of the Alphabet

I needed some basics, toilet paper, dog food, toothpaste, vitamins; some non-basics, watercolor paper, cheap paints, glue. So you know where I went, had to go, where else is there any more in this town? Downtown is now banks, restaurants and antique stores. Gone are the hardware stores, the pharmacies, the grocery stores, the dime store that held out until just a couple of years ago is gone too. So I am forced to the one place that replaced them. Entering the door, walking just past the entrance, I was immediately immersed in the over-lit tackiness, the roaming shoppers with looks of despair and poverty. Forced to consider only the slim choices available there, noticing that the prices seemed to be much higher than they should be for simple things like silverware trays- I use them for organizing things, gosh they used to be a dollar, now they are $7? Toilet paper was higher even than in the monopoly grocery store here in town, and on through the isles, more depressed looking people, more non-choices that dictate what we buy. This store used to have a great and varied vitamin department, been gone for a few years replaced by just one or two brands. I try to be a thinking consumer, one who considers the cost to the environment, health and the welfare of the United States in general and I found myself going up and down the isles almost in a state of shock at the lack of quality, the lack of US produced products, the lack of healthy choices available in every department. I got all excited when I spotted a bag of frozen wild caught salmon until I turned the bag around and found it was a product of China, I'm not eating fish from a country who pollutes with abandon. Where are the Alaskan salmon? So what I found was isles of food loaded with sugar and trans-fats; clothes all made elsewhere- obviously the cheapest made possible; products full of petro-chemicals and fragrances, toxic to humans and the environment. But where else could I go without driving to a distant city? We are forced now to consume what is bad, what is cheaply made; forced to forget the days of choice and quality; forced to submit to ugly and unhealthy. Is it a straight line from the store to the doctor's office? Is this what is going on? Pay for your crappy food, consume it for years leading to health problems that were avoidable all along. Is it some kind of panacea for the new population of slaves, letting us think we have freedom, freedom to shop, to spend our hard earned money? I have to find an alternative, but where? We have no independently owned grocery stores any more, no independently owned pharmacy, no locally owned clothing stores, what choices are left?