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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   31535 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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Newsom basically calling for a boycot of Target.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/did-governor-newsom-spark-target-boycott-among-liberals

So he’s not too happy that red tribe has learned how to cancel something. I think we are approaching a day where you have to declare your allegiance. Red or blue.

I usually don’t like Balaji and think he’s a smarter hack who knows how to grift, but I think he’s right in this thread

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1659094966671425536?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

And Scott had a thread about how pride is just like every other cities holiday posted recently. I can’t find it.

America seems to be in a religious war between two cultures now. A couple years ago red tribe didn’t know how to wield power. Desantis has done that highlighted by his war on Disney and grassroots red tribe found their first success with Budweiser. Twitter going Musks was an obvious red tribe move. Jan 6 and Trump overall was a movement that hadn’t found their real leaders who could use power.

I don’t think religion is that strong anymore on the right. I say this because there is a lot of tolerance for Trump being not a Christian. He bangs hookers. So red tribe has an internal sub-war between their traditional alpha male and their good Christian Desantis.

I do like Scott’s metaphor of this being a time like when Christianity took over the Roman Empire. No one believed in the old pagan gods anymore. And I think blue tribe would have won this but they made two crucial mistakes:

  1. The movement doesn’t have a great place for males. Who have always dominated every society.

  2. The trans movement has a lot of vibes of backward religions. Getting kids to cut themselves up and change their bodies has a lot of vibes of practices we long since banished.

Its pretty lulzy to see Target, the wokest retailer in the game, to be targeted by the left for mildly walking back a "trans the 5 year olds" campaign. If you can't shop at Target as a progressive, you are basically left with HelloFresh and Gucci.

As a progressive myself: lol no. Nobody gives a shit about target, except as a target for punishment for defection.

Target is as late capitalistic as any other retailor in the country, and their human rights record is as bad as anybodies.

Target is as late capitalistic as any other retailor in the country, and their human rights record is as bad as anybodies.

So you shop where exactly?

Wherever I want. I personally boycott nestle products on account of the slaves and the death squads; but that is vanity.

Ethical consumption is impossible under capitalism.

So you intend to drop your consumption drastically?

Assuming you live in a first world location, this should be easily doable- the world average is to live on $11,000/yr, a fairly low income in first world countries.

I already do, and it is also vanity.

I do it because I want to because it is morally correct, but it isn't activism and it isn't actually doing a god damn thing to solve the problem.

Only liberals believe that individualistic vote with your wallet bullshit; the right and the left both know the actual score.

Ethical consumption is impossible under capitalism.

The moral implication of this statement is "consume as little as possible" not "do whatever I want". And it is possible to consume very little.

Ah, yes. The phrase that gets trotted out whenever people want justify breaking with their alleged principles because they want to buy X.

Instead of dismissing it out of hand, please consider for 45 seconds: my +/- couple hundred dollars a year means jack shit. I've been 'boycotting' Walmart and activision and bunch of other late capitalistic hellmouths for a decade, and yet they still somehow persist. Hence: Vanity. It is the donating to salvation army of political activism.

Pretending buying or not buying something is some sort of activism is just self delusion. The only solution to the problem is political, hence and so forth.

They aren't dismissing it out of hand - it isn't really a reflection on you anyway if you still boycott things despite the futility. It's just really common for people to 'realise' their boycott is useless when it gets in the way, because they aren't thinking about their principles (which are why people boycott even though it's futile).

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