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Wednesday, August 07, 2019

Don't Just Stand There, Do Nothing

Seth Abramson has the right idea. This is what I mean when I talk about doing nothing. It means understanding that all the vile minions inching the ball forward for a racist thug have gone all-in on what they're doing, and there is no point in arguing with them, attempts at dialogue, blah blah blah. There is no halfway to be had with them, bearing in mind that that's been their approach since the early '90s.

Stop watching their shows. Stop patronizing their businesses and watching their shitty football teams. The El Paso survivors in the hospital have the right idea as well -- they refused to meet with Trump, as is their goddamned right. Good for them. Fuck him.

One of the dwindling few freedoms you still have is the right to say no, the right to decide where to spend your money, or where not to spend your money, the right to refuse to be a campaign prop for a toxic bigot with blood on his hands. He doesn't give a fuck about any of those people, even if they voted for him. All he cares about is people who will suck him off and tell him how awesome he is.

The guy's a piece of shit, and people are being murdered for it, and he thinks it's all a big game. You don't have to support that, nor do you have to support the people and businesses who do support that. Some folks will try to tell you that it is virtually impossible to disentangle the web of corporate integration in order to establish a clear-conscience supply chain for yourself. And that's true, as far as it goes; short of going full Unabomber and building yourself a shack (with hand-hewn lumber) out in the wilderness, you're putting blood money in someone's pockets along the line somewhere.

But you can make conscious choices to at least lower your toxic imprint on this groaning, ruined planet of ours. Don't worry about being Simon-pure with every little choice. Tackle the worst, most egregious offenders, the easy-to-dump choices, just ten percent. I promise you right now, if the Miami Dolphins and Equinox and Soulcycle lose ten percent of their business, Stephen Ross (who owns all three, and much, much more) will have to really think about whether that fucking $250k-per-plate fundraiser is worth it.

Same with the already dwindling number of sponsors for Fixed Noise's roster of white-power spokestools. Write them off, let them know. If enough people do it, they will feel the pain. That's not politics, that's math. Already most of those shows are down to extended My Pillow ads, in-house promos, and a couple of catheter commercials. It's working.

But it starts, as Abramson notes in his thread and as I have been trying to lay out in recent weeks, with refusing to engage with bad-faith actors anymore. I'm not talking about your annoying relatives and coworkers; if you haven't already learned to tune their nonsense out and change the subject or just leave, I don't know what to tell you. But they don't really affect anything.

The problem is the propaganda minions who spoon-feed the rubbish regurgitated by the people you know. The goals of the propagandists are to waste time and sap energy. There is no convincing them of anything, nor any point to daily rebuttals to the streams of lies on their shows. The time has come to put in the ear plugs, and set about the necessary work of driving them into the fucking sea. The only way this happens is to starve them of money.

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