Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
So, Who Am I Boycotting This Week?
In the spirit of lively debate, and because what started out as a comment that went on way too long, this is a rebuttal to @cliffordbrown ‘s post, in which he calls for a boycott of Walmart over their announced policy of discontinuing sales of pistol ammunition. I personally require no convincing to not shop at Wally World. I dislike the stores for a wide variety of reasons too long to enumerate here, and I’m not about to start shopping there except in case of immediate need.
So far so good, but let’s be honest, Wally World ain’t losing any money on my account so far because they ain’t getting it in the first place. And I imagine I’m hardly alone in my lack of effect on Sam Walton’s legacy — unless you live in one of the more rural towns where Walmart is the only general-goods game around, you’re not going to be shopping there unless you either need to, unless you like Walmart. But here is where I significantly part ways with Clifford: In his words:
Any one who values the Constitution, let alone gun ownership and the right to effective self-defense, will immediately punish Walmart, shifting all purchases to: [list of alternatives]…The rule is simple: no shopping, and no allowing people who shop there to bring stuff to your dwelling, your office, your picnic, in Walmart bags or with Walmart house brands.
African-Americans won with this technique in the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycott. They won by ruthlessly self-policing. It is disempowering nonsense to assert that boycotts are ineffective. They simply take real grassroots will, with a bit of organizing direction…
Effectively, immediately, intensively socially shame anyone who slacks off and goes to Walmart.
So it’s just one more store on the checklist we all now are demanded to carry in our heads of “places my politics tells me to boycott.” Seems every other week now someone is asking for a boycott of something. Skip this place because they gave to Planned Parenthood, skip this other place because they donated to Hillary, skip this third place because they banned open carry (nevermind that I never open-carried), boycott movies from this other studio because their CEO spouted nonsense after the Oscars, best to avoid this brand of socks because they used whale oil to make their elastic, and don’t walk on floor tiles from this company because they fired my great uncle Charlie in 1936 for decking a foreman, don’t go here, and don’t go there…
After a while, the grievances weigh one down and they’re competing for much-coveted memory space with “places we should feel obligated to patronize because it makes leftist heads explode.” So while I’m avoiding getting coffee from Starbucks, I’m obligated to dine at Chick-Fil-A, even though I think their chicken is overrated and I’m never able to get my food in under 20 minutes due to the crowds of other chicken obligates.
I’m supposed to shop at this bakery because the owner is a Christian, even though my waistline is screaming “put down the cake and walk away slowly (because walking quickly is unlikely).” And I simply must buy something from this other place because I’d be “supporting a good cause” (really, do I need another useless tchotchke?), and I have to buy this razor over there since they sponsor a show I like, and then buy this car because my grandmother said they hired great uncle Charlie after that unfortunate incident with the foreman…
So I have to say I object on principle to yet another boycott. We make fun of the lefties for hating the Christian ethos of Chick-Fil-A and mock their hypocrisy when they buy the chicken anyway. Maybe we should focus on something else.
All that said, there are some specific issues with the nature of the proposed boycott that are problematic in their own right. I’m going to address the second quoted point first to clear the decks. I do not see the parallel with a city-owned and city-operated bus system that an urban population depended on for their livelihoods. The bus boycott worked because it was concentrated and impossible to miss, and because the black populace of Montgomery had to make real, tangible, and visible sacrifices in the boycott. A boycott of Wally World is diffuse because there are, for most people, many, many other places to shop, and diffuse because Walmart has such a broad customer base around the country. And it’s not like it would be a particularly pointed sacrifice for most people except in more rural locations.
Further, Montgomery discriminated virulently against blacks on the basis skin color. This discrimination was impossible to ignore. The blacks who depended on those buses to get to work or to do their shopping were treated terribly from the moment they got on the bus. Does a Walmart greeter even notice me when I enter or exit their store? Am I, as a gun owner, wearing some tag that tells Walmart to treat me badly? Will I face hostility, derision, or violence while shopping, just for being a gun owner? (I know I’ll face a slow checkout regardless, but that’s another matter.) There is no parallel here, and it does us no good at all to compare our comparatively petty grievance to the African Americans living in Montgomery in the 1950s — to do so is an insult to them.
But what of the social shaming advocated for those who will not boycott? Given how increasingly militant we are divided as Americans, where our politicians and pundits demand that we boycott this or that, or support that other thing because “it makes leftists’ heads explode,” is the added antagonism worth it — especially over an issue this small? I’m an employer – should I really tell my employees not to bring Sam’s Choice cola to a company picnic, or tell the lady who brings in donuts some mornings to get them someplace else? Should I make my politics their issue too, where they have to consider their own political loyalties a factor in whether they feel welcome and valued as human beings at work?
I have enough political arguments too with our extended family, to the point where I will hush people at family gatherings if they cannot talk politics civilly. I even had a relative storm out of a Christmas party because I told them to can it in front of the kids. In the years since, however, the family has come to respect my rule and abide by it. It’s not that we cannot talk politics, but when talk starts to turn to swapping barbs and trying to “win” by shame or browbeating, it ends or I ask people to leave. To do as suggested would be to tell those relatives to forget everything I have tried to enforce about respect and to make my politics central. They know my politics already. They know what I stand for and why. But I will not make agreement with me a condition for whether they can come into my home. My home is welcome to all, and that I will not compromise.
But there is one more matter:
The only boycott exception, where legal, is to get in the CEO’s face with open carry. Carry politely, legally, openly. Then, expecting confrontation by employees, have a partner obviously employing a cell phone or GoPro camera to capture everything as you tell them they will either respect the American Constitution and your God-given right to self-defense or you will never spend another dime in Walmart and only show up to mock them for “just following orders” when the store closes.
How have these sorts of things gone for us before? Not well. Remember when Starbucks allowed open carry? How did that work out? So long as people did not make it an issue, it was not an issue. The hoplophobes, of course, found out and started to protest and demand Starbucks explicitly ban open carrying. What happened next was that more gun owners started open-carrying at Starbucks. If they had stuck just to discretely holstered pistols I imagine the issue would have gone away eventually. Instead (and you can image-search this easily) people showing up toting long-guns into suburban coffee shops. That was entirely unnecessary, and was little better than LARPing for the spectacle of it all — there was then, and is now no credible case for toting around an AR-15 slung on your back when you go to get a latté. Pretending otherwise for the sake of “muh rights!” is risible.
Open-carrying into Walmarts now, with a friend in tow and a gotcha camera at the ready, is also spectacle, and it will only serve to further shred credibility and perception. Walmart has every legal right as a business to conduct itself in this manner, and I have every right to not shop there. To say otherwise is to likewise say that a cake shop has to bake a gay wedding cake. We all rightly recognize that the lawsuits against Masterpiece Cakes have been borne of malice and spectacle, is that a game we should stoop too as well?
Published in Guns
I wouldn’t call it laziness. It’s necessity. Wealthy people are free to take your money where you like. For most of us that isn’t an option.
I’ve seen the ones at 2 AM, nuff said.
Hey… I shop at 2am.
I don’t think this is an either/or proposition.
Walmart is still far and away the largest retailer in the US (and dwarfs Amazon) – their customer base is big enough to include both people who can’t afford to shop elsewhere AND people who could afford to go elsewhere but are too lazy AND people who could afford to go elsewhere and aren’t lazy but have determined that Walmart is the best choice for what they need to buy at the moment. Not to mention people who could afford to go elsewhere but have no other local options, RV travellers, and motorists who blow a tire on I-80 in Nevada and WalMart is the only auto shop open on New Year’s Day (guess who that happened to).
And with such a varied customer base, I doubt they’ll take too much of a hit from any potential boycott over their new ammunition/open carry policies.
Walmart built its business on razor-thin margins. All it takes to make them notice is a razor-thin drop in sales due to a boycott. But even that will not happen easily.
My point is if we don’t like that our friends support political causes that we feel hurt us, to the point we’ll shame our friends who shop at Walmart, we might as well tell the actual liberals who actively work against our views to pound sand as well.
Don’t we already do that? Tell ’em to pound sand, I mean?
I just can’t see letting these political disagreements invade daily life to the extent proposed. There would be no end to it and life would be miserable.
I’ll take a back seat to no one in my love of the Constitution. I support the 2nd amendment. Nothing Walmart is doing here threatens any of that. I’m going to keep shopping there.
A “meme” I saw had a photo of a small gun shop with the caption thanking WalMart, Dick’s, etc. for supporting local gun shops. (I thought I saw it in Ricochet’s Funny Political Memes group, but it’s not there.)
I don’t. I actually like many of my liberal friends and family better than my conservative friends and family.
Just keep in mind, for me to have seen the ones at 2 AM, I had to be there at 2 AM too. There’s a reason I avoid mirrors.
Yeah, but I assume they aren’t the ones who “actively work against our views”?
Yeah, they are. They work towards the progressive agenda. They are progressive, they vote progressive, the give money to progressive causes. I think they are wrong, 100%, but I still love them and enjoy spending time with them. If we can’t have a civil conversation about politics (and we can, because we have), then we don’t talk politics.
Let me just say (because there have been some aspersions–direct or indirect –cast upon Walmart shoppers):
I love Walmart shoppers. I love walking thru Walmart on my way to the sporting goods cashier to get my ammo. Walmart shoppers make me proud that I spent a career defending this country.
Yes, even the obese chick on the shopper/scooter wearing the three wolves tee shirt.
I’m boycotting …. everything … unless I really really need something … starting sometime …. later.
That sounds more like “girlcotting.”
I’m somewhere in between: I agree with @cliffordbrown that we need to promote more boycotting among the Right, its the only way to to combat ‘wokeness’ in the corporate sector, and the pressure toward the same from the Progressive Left. On the other hand, I agree with @SkipSul that actively shaming regular conservatives for not participating in a boycott is misguided; other considerations aside, the number of offending businesses is simply overwhelming to the point that it is a.) impossible to do without dropping out of society altogether, and b.) will completely destroy morale to even try. I think it is better to simply celebrate and applaud those conservatives who choose to participate in any particular boycott, while providing resources to facilitate such actions (list of corporate offenses, known substitute goods and services, etc.).
The only in-group shaming I approve of is that of allegedly conservative public figures who apply stricter standards toward significant elements on the Right than they do to equivalent actions by mainstream elements on the Left.
What is the alternative action?
They keep attacking us, and they keep getting away with it. There are different rule for them and us.
When do we get to fight back?
I guess never, since it is uncivilized, don’t you know.
So we should engage in cancel culture? We should try to run shops out of business because they don’t agree with us?
Don’t have to do that.
Why don’t we beat them to a pulp on school choice and go after universities’ federal funding for their infringing 1st Amendment rights on campus? I’m not seeing much of anything in these categories.
You speak for me.
We should try to get the shops that do bad things to see the error of their ways and reform themselves. That may mean putting them at risk of going out of business, but that’s not the goal.
We should do this to universities as well. They may not get as much federal funding and may need to reduce employment in their administrative functions, but that’s a good thing. School choice should not harm teacher employment that much since we are not changing the number of students to be taught and some who are now home taught may actually go back to a school of their choice.
Tax their endowments. The Ivy Leagues are sitting on a crapload of money. Enough that they could offer free tuition for all students for several years and never feel the pinch.
I have no interest in keeping my position on the members side, with no chance of touching the national political debate. I appreciate your position, and people should be subscribing to see quality original content.
I’ve extensively revised and extended my OP, accounting for some of the comments.
They could do it indefinitely. The interest alone will be over a billion per year. Even if they’re up to $100k/year, I don’t think they have more than ten thousand students.
Do you know any of those ladies’ names? :) – Sorry cop humor.
Discussion, argument . . . dueling pistols at 20 paces . . . it’s all the same here!
Maybe just audit them until we find crime?