This needs to be a Twitter handle, viral Facebook post and even a meme, if necessary.

For those who have never been to an IKEA, imagine it as what Bernie Sanders might consider heaven. It is a temple of modest, middle-class, home goods consumerism, complete with a cafeteria that proudly serves three meals a day.

IKEA is perhaps the most famous Swedish export to the world and indeed encapsulates what most of the world likely thinks of Sweden: clean, homogenous, brightly lit and controlled in its capitalism. Everything can be customized, within certain parameters, and all item names come with a pleasant sounding connotation, if one could pronounce Swedish words.

Best of all, near the checkout is an additional section filled with Swedish candies, sweets and Christmas confections. For a land encased in ice most of the year, the Yuletide must often be on one’s mind.

The beauty of IKEA is that you do not have to even go there to shop. IKEA is an experience in and of itself, though inevitably you walk out having purchased something, even if it is only Swedish meatballs.

Though “30 Rock” lampooned this fact, IKEA can also test the durability of a relationship. Agreeing on furniture is a bigger feat than most realize; overcoming life circumstances and quirks are easy, but personal tastes are something else entirely. A couple that decorates together stays together.

IKEA can even be a great breakfast date location. Nothing says budding romance like breakfast sausage and scrambled eggs with a biscuit and lingonberry sauce. Throw in a Swedish pastry, and you might make a match to last a lifetime.

Admittedly, IKEA feels like colonization, but in the best possible sense. It is a form of colonialism that feeds, furnishes and fills the heart with a sense of middle-class consumerist contentment. Sure, the bright yellow and blue can become obnoxious, but the ever-present red of Target produces the same sense of color-inspired nausea.

IKEA customers also tend to be just a lot of people, especially the Seattle or Portland types, who somehow think shopping Swedish authenticates their liberal identity. If you are purchasing the goods of the social democracy, somehow the consumerism feels morally validated to those who often consume their social justice anyway. Universal single payer healthcare, a 57 percent income tax rate and bitter winters will never be their reality, so might as well buy the goods of the people who enjoy that lifestyle.

In some parts of this country, going to the local Wal-Mart is a social activity, the end goal of a weekend well spent. We are better than that. We are Cougs, we are Washingtonians. Like the Swedish people a world away, we wallow in excessive darkness for one part of the year and excessive light in the other.

Though we are the crimson and gray, we deserve the blue and yellow. We must demand an IKEA of the Palouse, for the sake of meatballs and all things pleasant and Swedish.