62 Comments

And I really encourage anyone who wants to dig into the politics of consumer culture to pick up a copy of TH Breen's "The Marketplace of Revolution."

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-marketplace-of-revolution-9780195181319?cc=us&lang=en&

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I couldn't care less about North Face's bearded lady or rainbows everywhere, and I don't think I'm alone. I find it silly, but *shrug* so much about modern America is silly.

I've tried to figure out what about the Dodgers, Target, and Bud Light made the difference, but I think it has something to do with the horrid imbalance of power. Dylan Mulvaney insults women every time he does one of his girlhood routines, but "misgender" him and he's crying crocodile tears and saying that using the wrong pronoun should be illegal.

Target put the sexualization of children front and center because they don't think people would notice as they try to up their ESG score by catering to a group that is threatened by the very idea that what they're doing they might have a right to do, but only be the grace of the rest of us as we don't see it as healthy or natural. As one person I read recently said (it might even have been you), how on earth do you reconcile the body positivity movement with let's lop off body parts to cosmetically change you into a stereotype of the sex you're not. It doesn't work. There is also no way to explain a "tuck friendly" bathing suit without a lot of awkward conversations about anatomy. (Trust me, I can't even wrap my head around "tuck friendly." WTH?)

Finally, you can't draw a picture of Mohammad, even a flattering one, without backlash for offending Muslims. In a majority Christian country, saying Merry Christmas is a microaggression. But the Dodgers can invite and honor a group that's very existence is dedicated to the twisting and mocking of the cherished beliefs of millions of people.

And that is in the end the sum of it: you cannot ask for respect you yourself are unwilling to give, and you don't hide behind kids to validate your own fringe ideas about sex and gender, and you don't give quarter to those who do.

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Sending this to everyone I know. This is long overdue. Thoughtful organization and disciplined commitment to the cause may be the only thing that saves us. Plus there’s something sublime about the unwashed masses taking economic power back from the narcissists in charge.

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There was a really embarrassing typo in the emailed version of this, but I fixed it.

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Well if you think that's embarrassing try accidentally buying "tuck-it" athletic underwear to discover 2 months later, after opening the package...that they...er...cause chaffing.

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LOLOLOLOLOLOl!!! !! ! ! ! ! !

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No worries mate! Blame it on Alexa's transcription.

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Vote with your wallet. Do not give money to people who hate you. Here are the demoralized dozen ESG WEF Wehrmacht corporations to avoid: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-build-a-killer-business-and-bd6

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I’d like to see those drag nuns do something courageous. Like grind on Mohammed or something. That’d be a hoot!

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In Riyadh. "We demand that you respect us."

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Didn't fly too high in Doha et al, some half a year ago 😉

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Plenty of mosques and synagogues in the US, no?

Queer how it's only ever and always white christian things that are subjected to this. Where are the rainbow-coloured yarmulkes? Where's the "Look like the Prophet in drag"-competitions? No black trans gospel choires around, are there?

Really, really queer that it's always white peoples traditions, faiths, way of life and cultures and languages that's always the target. You could almost start thinking that there's some kind of pattern or even thought behind it.

As an aside, purposefully destroying a peoples cultural heritage and language counts as genocide under the UN's definition of the term.

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Visit any synagogue here in Massachusetts. Rainbow yarmulkes everywhere.

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Brilliant parallel. I always look forward to your historical framing of our current moment.

I’m starting to see this more. People talking about how to keep focused on the aim of making the ridiculous consumer corporate world know that they’ve crossed many, many lines - but needing to have a strategy to it. We can’t boycott everything all the time (and Disney, in particular, does not care), and some companies have their activism as an intrinsic part of their brand. They’d rather lose money than cave. But there are plenty - like the Dodgers and even Target - who have wildly offended their main audience and should know it.

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people should just stop shopping, period. how many T shirts made by slave labor in china does a person need anyway. buy your food at the farmer's market (no brands) and you'll be healthier. if you have a backyard, plant a garden for sun, exercise and fresh produce. for the rest, try living with what you have for a spell.

hit 'em where it hurts!

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If only there were an easy way to smoothly translate human should's into is/are's... Wouldn't we be golden? 🙂

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I've been seeing people suggest that anyone opposing the gay agenda should carry out a general economic boycott for pride month, the entire month of June. Just buy the minimal, and make every corporation take an economic hit. They are all in on it, and they should all suffer. Only something as significant as that might make them take notice.

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I don't see how that signals intent. If you don't buy lettuce and ketchup at Piggly Wiggly in June, how does anyone perceive that it's an act undertaken against "the gay agenda?" Also, this lumps in anything at all gay with the aggressive sexualization of children and the degradation of religion. I don't think you can boycott "gay" effectively. Shoot a smaller target.

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Exactly! "Aggressive sexualization of children and the degradation of religion" ARE the targets, not the lettuce & ketchup. That is the focus.

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Maybe, but hard to sustain. Isolating particular bad actors and focusing boycotts on them in order to destroy their business may be much more effective.

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This seems to work especially well against companies (like Budweiser) whose customer base is largely regular folks (i.e., not elites nor one of the fringe grievance groups).

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The counter-example may be Balenciaga, the least "regular folks" brand on the planet, which sexualized children in really appalling ways, and seems to be doing poorly as a result.

https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/balenciaga-reset/

TBD!

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Excellent! Maybe there are more "regular people" than we realized? (Even among Balenciaga's target market?) Folks who kept their heads down and nodded politely while inwardly wondering how everyone around them could possibly be so enamored of the emperor's new clothes -- not realizing how many of those around them felt the exact same way. Maybe we've really turned a corner. I pray to God that's the case!

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Oh, no. That's terrible.

Anyhow.

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Enlightening. Economics drives action. When these cretins are making your standard of living decline through inflation, wage stagnation, and endless taxes ( for things that do you no good or hurt you), at a certain point you’ve had enough, if just being politically and culturally abused isn’t adequate stimulus for action. I’m not sure what that point of sufficient pain to provoke movement is for our country. Are we there yet? Inertia is a thing. My wife likes to shop at Target. It’s a routine. We’ve had some recent don’t buy at a store pushing trans crap/avoid being bombed by crazy alphabet lunatics struggle sessions to make it stop. She’s 87% on board after her sister and her mother ( who’s a flaming lib) told her the same thing. Respect my authoritae! - as if. I think avoiding all these big national brands as much as feasible will have an effect, even if the HR department and the rest of the wokesters still hate us. At least we will find out by dropping their employer’s bottom line a bit if they like food and shelter as much as normal people

I think besides the interesting history the point here is also that the incumbent system is not going to reform itself, no matter how hard we push. We have to beat them by going around them and then when they are weaker, going over them. Look at the recent debt ceiling Kabuki theater. If you voted for Republicans and you now have no idea why, that’s what I’m talking about. There’s no there, there. It’s a mirage. Anything you care about, even the most “conservative” of our representatives, 90 percent of them just helped the Democrats fiscally destroy what’s left of the country. You can’t spend two trillion with a t dollars you don’t have every year just so you can fund insane social engineering programs that add zero value to anybody except the grifters getting rich by stealing the money. The budget jumped 40% with COVID - for what exactly? We are worse off in every metric. But big DEI/ESG corps. arent. Corrupt bureaucracies aren’t. Phony NGOs raking in cash to do the Dems’ bidding aren’t. And the GOP - it’s fine with them. Now that they have the House of Representatives, they are going to show those crazed Democrat commies how real cocker spaniels roll over. Nope we are totally on our own out here. Don’t give Republicans (who also hate you) money. They have no impact and they lie to you. Let the whole thing collapse. It’s inevitable at this point.

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A long time ago I began to realize that there's really only one political party - the Party of Self-Interest. Politics is the game and it's an expensive one for us taxpayers. It's not even a new phenomenon. However, the game and the number of players has escalated to insane proportions.

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There are no limits anymore. The restraints have been discarded. It’s just an orgy of greed.

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Poor people will now need qualify for their miserable food assistance pittance by finding jobs where there are none, but the Pentagon can fail audits and get trillions.

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The Pentagon is a wasteful mess. And life is not fair. But poor people have access to jobs. There are actually over 10 million jobs available in the USA right now.

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The incumbent system is quickly going to reform itself by crashing spectacularly. We can boycott and have some impact, but massive inflation and the uncoupling of price controls on silver and some foreign currencies are going to have much greater impact. I anticipate the end of the corporate economic and governance models. It's all one thing and it's all crashing. The end of the stock company. It always could only end one way. A big pop and a long farting sound. The end of American professionalism. The end of licensure. The end of intellectual property. The end of real estate and the nest-egg home. The end of the education system adding value to anyone's labor. What are all these doctors, lawyers, and finance guys (lice) going to do when their licenses are null and void? I think surgeons will thrive in the new economy. They will be out building decks and putting in pools, because they have work ethics and skills. I don't know what all these other licensed professionals are going to do in the new economy. Some will adapt and find trades. Many people are so career oriented that they can't imagine their lives without their careers.

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I do like home renovation. 😏

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This isn't directly to the point, but one of the most intriguing parts of the Articles of Confederation is Article 11: "Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the united states, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this union: but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine states."

In the 1780s, we were still hoping to convince the Canadian colonies to join.

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"President Justin Trudeau."

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Unfortunately for the Americans, “Canada” at that point in time meant basically what is now Southern Quebec, from Quebec City to Montreal, which was overwhelmingly French and Catholic. Given how difficult it was for the 13 American English-speaking colonies to work together, the idea that French-speaking Catholics were going to join the newly independent USA was bordering on the delusional, especially since one of the so-called Intolerable Acts denounced by the American colonists prior to the outbreak of the War of Independence was the 1774 Quebec Act, which had legalized Catholicism and brought back French civil law.

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Never shopped Target. Never Walmart. Never Cosco. Never Chic-Fil-A. No Drive thru food. Probably the worst offender I have shopped is Home Depot or Lowes. I bough something off Amazon once, just recently, but with more looking I may have found it elsewhere. Careful shopping takes time-you need to plan for more time to shop around. Been buying my meat from small producers, asking them whether they vaccinate, very hard to find unvaccinated meat, as farmers are hesitant to say that in writing and almost all (98%) use some vaxxes, even if 'organic' or 'grass fed'. But we need to ask them if we expect them to change.

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"...that to impoverish us, is the surest way to enslave us."

But don't worry about all that inflation, taxation, the ongoing assault(s) on alternative currencies, you'll probably be fine.

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The Inflation Reduction Act passed, so that's all taken care of. Rock solid!

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Obviously reflected in my having gotten $100 worth of groceries for $255. What a bargain!

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Not disputing your points here, but the quotes from the 1700s have an air about them that is likely to be perceived as collectivist by us today. There’s what looks like a threat to those that don’t hold the line, so to speak. And it seems to me that’s one of the worst things about the last 20-ish years in this country. An escalating “with us or against us” gang mentality. The founders of this country immediately let go of the collective upon victory over the British and formed a federation. I don’t think any groups today can act with that much restraint and are more likely to resort to tribalistic infighting.

When it comes to political action and economic behavior, I think something more like a cooperative is what I’d like to see. Members of the cooperative are acting in loose coordination to achieve individual benefits in the face of a behemoth that none of the individuals can counteract alone, while simultaneously affirming the rights of the other members to do the same *as individuals*. And membership in the cooperative is fluid. Perhaps I’m naive, ignorant, or both. But it’s where I’m at.

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A couple of thoughts on this.

First, companies respond to market “incentives” and the woke agenda has been positioned as something they will benefit from economically by promoting it. They have been deluded by a small but very loud minority. The response that Bud Light, Target and others are experiencing is proving to them that these people are a very small minority when it comes to dollars which is the only thing businesses respond to despite all the other bullshit they might spew. The best part has been watching these companies make a bad situation worse by their responses. No one is capable of saying “we’re sorry, we made a mistake and we won’t do it again”.

Dan Bongino has been advocating for a “parallel economy” for sometime now. Give your business to those who respect you and share your values. The recent exposure of Chic fil a falling for the woke agenda has been disappointing. But, through the power of the marketplace they can be shown the error of their ways and hopefully return to their core values that so many consumers cherished. If not they can hire Dylan as their new spokesthing and go on their merry way.

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Isn’t it better when that Pentagon drone over your head is deployed by an LGBTQ POC?

https://diversity.defense.gov/

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