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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
Moderator Note:
Unnecessary ad hominem.Please, Tom!
Fox News is cable. It is not the Mainstream,
If all you got is to go after my use of the word, “all” then you are already giving me the win, because you are wanting to change the argument to one of semantics.
[redacted]
The left control what can and cannot be said. That is everything.
We have not won at all.
Name me one leftist project that has been rolled back. No, you might find the truth “tiresome” but the right has not rolled back one part of the leftist project in 80 years. New Deal? Great Society? Medicare? Medicaid? Social Security? Rule by the Administrative State? Minimum Wage? Government Unions? Take over of the Universities?
Heller, Citizens United, etc are all just one Supreme COurt packing away form being destroyed. ANd that packing is coming.
I call bull.
You pretty much say whatever you want all the time. I’ve seen it!
I say whatever I want as well, so there’s that.
So, “Winning” looks like repealing a raft of the most popular social programs among some of our own voters or we’re losers?
Go ahead Bryan: Tell me what winning really looks like so we can stop beating around the bush, because you’re not being serious now.
Also: Why are you so sick of all of the winning? Pretty soon you’ll be over there with Max Boot lamenting what a loser the President is… perhaps for different reasons, but all the same.
Fine.
Get online and post a bunch of racial slurs and see how that effects your job.
More seriously, we live in a world, right now, where people comb through online posts to destroy lives. Just because it has not happened to you yet, does not mean there is not power to silence others. The left controls that narrative.
I suppose you might mock anyone afraid to speak out, and speak up. That is your right. The fear is real, because we see what happens. Just ask the young Covingtion men.
I think you just proved my point for me. I say the right is losing because too many voters will vote for the left, even Republicans.
The Right is losing.
The news can never be good enough for some people, so they go full Lenin: The worse the better.
I wouldn’t do that because using racial slurs is sort of repugnant.
Are you saying that the burr under your saddle is that people like your employers might not want you to start slinging some n-words with impunity? I would completely agree with you if the situation you’re talking about is Brendan Eich, but yours seems like a terrible example.
I’ve written and said a lot of things here, Bryan. Do I think any one of them might get me fired? No. Why? Because they’re defensible because I try to say things that I believe to be both true and within the spirit of free debate and open inquiry.
I have been compared to Stalin before, so I guess being compared to Lenin should not come as a surprise.
You said you could say anything you wanted. I took that to a logical example. I guess maybe you agree that there are things people cannot say, but maybe not. Clearly you know of what happened to Brendan Eich, which supports my point. Since you know about it, not much point in my bringing it up.
But, the opening comparing me to Lenin was enough for you to show your contempt for me as a person, so I suppose there is not much point in going on in the discussion. I really had the idea you thought more of me than that.
I would like to add that one of the Right’s biggest victories has been the very subject of this thread: 2nd Amendment Rights. There has been no general waning of support among Americans for owning guns despite the hysterical shrieking on the Left, even from the rest of the World.
I was going to be done with this but I cannot allow that to stand: I do not think you’re a Leninist, Bryan and my interactions with you personally have been nothing short of cordial. Please do me the kindness of remembering that and I will do the same for you.
I merely brought that up because you seem to have the lamentable desire to wallow in the slough of despond in which the worse things get (from your perspective) the more you want to rend your garments and gnash your teeth.
Is there anything good in the world? Does anything disconfirm your hypothesis, or is everything getting sucked into the black hole of cultural annihilation?
Somehow, I’ve recovered from Trump’s win. Can you?
Pace, Bryan.
Considering that you have called me a rat, behind my back, in a private group here, this is…. fascinating.
You are right about things like The New Deal, Medicaid, administrative State and such. And there is the transgenderism nonsense and threats to freedom of speech. But I think you have missed the biggest rollbacks of leftism ever seen. The demise of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was a World-shaking event that freed hundreds of millions of people from abject poverty, oppression, and death. Sure there are resurgences here and there, even in America, but this tectonic shift has realigned the entire World for the better.
The most important gain I see in America is the decline in crime to levels we haven’t seen since the 1950’s. Lowering crime is one of Conservatism’s main issues, if not the premier issue next to protecting our country from military invasion. We are also in the middle of rolling back welfare payments including Food Stamps. We did it before in the 1990’s but then slipped back into more of a Welfare State under Obama. Unfettered abortion is being dealt blows by a couple dozen States right now. Another lefty program in decline is the belief in Global Warming.
Cheer up!
Hey. I’m not a chick, bro.
You don’t win WW2 by fighting in Mexico, either.
Until I changed my church, yes.
And for many, their school boards, yes.
HOA? I have no idea. Haven’t been to a meeting in 10 years.
But just want to point out, Maj… your lack of interest in the faith issues that are posted on Ricochet has made you a bit ignorant on what is going on in the American Church.
The left took over seminaries years ago. Now they are getting after the churches. Nearly every single denomination has horror stories surrounding it. For one, my church went full hog during the election. Racism isn’t simply a sin anymore. It’s a heresy that needs to be rooted out of the church (meaning, sinners of a certain brand are no longer welcome in the pews). But ACTUAL heresies (lies about God and what scripture says) are to be tolerated for the unity of the church.
No kidding, my priest actually said that to me.
Churches that proclaim what people already agree with and want to hear will rarely lack for adherents (see Joel Osteen, for example). The churches that do so are following the culture.
And it’s not all seminaries. Some have gone full woke, others haven’t, and still other new ones are founded to stay true. Always in flux and has been for 502 years now.
It’s the culture that you need to influence, if you want to keep the faith. Maybe that does mean changing churches, for others it means throwing the heretics out (and there are success stories here). But remember that people want religion to be easy, not hard.
Flannery O’Connor.
“What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe.”
Pretty sure, if I made any public comment about RA it would be redacted, and yet, you get away with it, and take me out of context. And you are a moderator, clearly looking to inflame me. To use a word….fascinating.
If you would like to go hammer and tongs with me, I stand ready. Come over to ratburger, sign up, and we can have it out in public.
We have no victory at home. None of what you posit here at home is doing anything more than slowing the left.
We beat Russia, or the USSR. Communism is resurgent around the world.
You are happy to call me names, but object when others do likewise to you.
I call reality as I see it. That is not a desire to wallow. Nor do I want things to get worse. However, I do not see a pathway to victory over the left. They’ve won. We are in the end times of the Republic.
I’ll take your word that you don’t think I am a Leninist.
I am pretty sure Shawn and I just worked things out.
Not fully.
In the 19th century the Native Americans won a number of important battles, but lost the war to the conquering Euro-Americans. A good part of their problem was that they kept losing their land to the conquerors, so soon had no economic basis on which to resist them. In the analogous current struggle, the Republicans in Congress acquiesce with every budget to a loss of their economic base. They win their piddling court victories and hang on to some of their institutions, but the budget process overwhelms all of that.
It was for some of the old lawn ordure conservatives of unlovely memory.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating:
While I’m not sure there’s a better term than “culture wars”, the term poisons the well by suggesting to people’s minds some massive categorical errors:
1. If this is an actual literal war, then it’s a forever war. You will never win (and neither will they). You will never claim final victory, you will never get to do that victory lap. Even if you went to the furthest extreme, and literally round up and execute all of the “enemy”, and burn all their books and wipe all memory of their ever existing, you will never win because you will have only served to make yourself a new tyrant, and the human mind will again turn to the same thoughts and ideas you quashed long ago – thinking them new, fresh, daring, and worth a try. So long as there is freedom of thought, and freedom of will, there is also freedom to be wrong, and freedom to dissent. So people will dissent. Sometimes they will be ascendant, sometimes not, but there is no end.
2. What is the victory condition? There isn’t one, because there are no perfect solutions to anything. Even if we got all of “our” people in charge of everything, “drained the swamp” (however you define “the swamp”), and restored what you think is order to the force, you’ve not “won” anything but a temporary victory. Your society will have flaws. Your society will have injustices. You society will have to respond to external and internal challenges you cannot possibly predict. And (hardest of all), you’ll have to persuade each and every generation that your society is the best. Many like to hearken back to, say, the 1950s, but the idealized 1950s society was just that: idealized. It was deeply flawed and horrendously injust to millions of Americans, not just on race but on religion and sex too. And it was not wholly successful in passing on its values to its children, nor to its grandchildren – after all, if Christianity is under decline or even threat in the US, then that’s in no small part a failure of the faithful.
3. And since “war” is ultimately the wrong metaphor anyway, you’ll get no traction for trying to turn either your allies or your enemies into military officers, and you’re a fantasist for thinking you’re in any way, shape, or form, in an army – thinking too strongly that we are in an army is what leads to branding others of like mind, but insufficiently so, as traitors, sell-outs, and worse. There is no central command either on our “side” or theirs.
I like this muchly.
I might add that ‘culture’ is, if not a category error, is made up of smaller cultures each of which is ever-shifting.
One of the more unfortunate things about conservatism is that we can’t ‘go back’ to halcyon days because they weren’t that bloody halcyon to begin with and even if the past were Edenic, we are barred from it because you can’t step in the same river twice (this doesn’t mean certain ways and assumptions should not be returned to). We can stand athwart history and yell “stop!” until our throats bleed, but the best we can do is slow it down.
I doubt the above will do well in a focus group. Certainly not as well as ‘hope and change’ since change is with us always and unless you’re driving that change you have to at least hope you don’t get run over.
Actually, “war” includes “small wars,” in which “victory conditions” do not belong, and observable patterns in history of “wins” that last for generations. So, all the rest of this is a straw man.
On the other hand, it is true that there are no final victories, except in God’s will for this world.