Everyone who writes a newspaper column in America should be dragged through a Walmart at least once a month. I say "dragged" because nearly all work experiences are better if they're forced on you.

I go to Walmart all the time. A lot of people say they "never" go to Walmart, and then they look superior, as though they know things about obscure Hungarian techno pop bands. I don't know where those people buy spatulas and Tums.

I'm not afraid of poor people, so I don't mind the Walmart in my city. The parking lot reeks of weed, people are smiling stoned, goofy smiles, and the atmosphere is a little like a death metal concert without the death or the metal.

Inside, happy families, usually minus the fathers, drift through the racks of blouses and the huge plastic bottles of soda and the smartphones, and the concert atmosphere fades into the atmosphere of a smaller traveling carnival, the kind where all the games are rigged and a lot of the employees are dope sick.

This does not bother me. Life is not constructed to suit the fantasy of upward mobility for everyone. That's why the Walmart crowd smokes so much weed.

They drink coffee, too. I drink coffee, flavored and black, bought in a convenience store or in some "shop" with a picture of the Buddha as a happy dog on one wall.

When I shop for coffee I'm going to make at home, the only thing I look at is the price. If it's $10 a bag, it's not good coffee. If it's $5 a bag, it's great coffee. I buy beer the same way, and motor oil.

You can't beat the hope out of Walmart with a big stick. Just going there is a form of entertainment, and for some, it's date night.

So, I wasn't that surprised when I found some gun-themed coffee at Walmart.

Gun?

Yeah. You know. Guns. Bang bang. Deer hunting. School shootings. Defend your family. Defend your freedom from George Soros. Live off the land. Finally kill that lying, cheating ...

There's a company and they make a full line of coffee in bags and coffee pods, and they've got one blend called "AK-47" and one called "Silencer" and one called "Freedom Fuel" and one called "Thin Blue Line." The coffee pods are called "rounds," just like real bullets.

"Honey, you want me to jack a round of Freedom Fuel into the Keurig?"

C'mon, ladies. If your man says that to you, you know that bulletproof vest is comin' off.

It's gutsy stuff, and I bet it hits your belly like a bullet. It's probably good coffee, too. Would you sell bad coffee to people who love guns? One batch of bad espresso, and there's some guy in camouflage pants shooting through the windows of your corporate headquarters.

And it's hopeful, like everything else in Walmart. Hope hangs in the Walmart air like gun smoke.

It's a rough world. You get hired. You show up high. You get fired. You get laid off. You never see the people who own the company.

But you can sip freedom. You can drink support for the cops. You can swallow burning mouthfuls of gun, and hot mouthfuls of bullets. Every facet of your life, every moment, every warm kiss over the breakfast table, every one of these can be a gun. You can become a machine.

I love America. It's a hopeful place.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion, and read features by Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Devil's Elbow: Dancing in the Ashes of America." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.

Photo credit: Haley Hamilton at Unsplash