this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025

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213

The case for boycotting the United States | Robert Reich (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 days ago by HailSeitan@lemmy.world to c/buycanadian@lemmy.ca

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[–] Englishgrinn@lemmy.ca 41 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I started boycotting everything America like 5 weeks ago Mr. Reich, and that was before the US started disappearing dissidents, and deporting innocent people to prisons in El Salvador. I'm glad smart people seem to agree with me. I'm glad my countrymen agree with me.

And yeah, I did it because Trump insulted and threatened my home. But I won't necessarily stop when he's gone. Depends how he goes. America rises up, arrests him and his cronies and cleans house - then maybe we regain some trust.

In the more likely event he dies of a stroke later this year and his regime tears itself apart with infighting- then it isn't really "Donald Trump's America", I have a problem with. The US is, to put it mildly, an unreliable and volatile nation and we won't be trusting or dealing with them again any time soon.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm American and I hate that you're right. Before we elected trump I would've argued with you. Now that we saw his destruction and chose it again, I cannot blame anyone for not trusting us. We proved we cannot be trusted any time soon

[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Our electoral college system, Supreme Court, and political under representation has completely fucked us. It’s become an unreliable system that is easily manipulated by oligarchs and will need to be structurally rebuilt to fix. I hope I survive to see it happen, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

It has happened here.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yeah. I mean I still hope there's a chance but deep down I've agreed with this since trump was elected

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 51 points 2 days ago (1 children)

As a USian, please please boycott the fuck out of my country, it has completely gone off the rails.

Do not trust the US to function at a basic level for the forseeable future.

[–] CowsLookLikeMaps@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

Thank you for your solidarity.

[–] OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 35 points 2 days ago

Already there.

Signed, A Canadian

[–] StinkySocialist@lemmy.ml 22 points 2 days ago

Please boycott the fuck out of us - an anti-fascist american

[–] CuriousRefugee@lemmy.ml 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Oh hey, it's Sam Reich's dad!

[–] MrJukes@lemmy.today 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

He's been here the whole time.

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

He has a mastodon account: rbreich@masto.ai

[–] Albbi@lemmy.ca 15 points 2 days ago

If things go on long enough, I'm curious about what will happen with the 2028 Olympics in LA. I wonder if it'll be a situation similar to the 1980 Moscow Olympics

[–] asg101@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 days ago

BDS for the USA! Go for the head of the hydra. tRump is a symptom, not the disease. The USA’s crony/criminal/hyper capitalism is the real problem, tRump has just dropped the mask. The USA has always been a genocidal, imperialist, patriarchal oligarchy, it is long past time the world wakes up to that reality.

And it will STILL be what it is when tRump is gone.

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Looking over my finances, I have three things I still directly pay for:

Steam (though I last bought a game months ago), Nebula, and various google services. Google is really hard to get around for a number of reasons in my current situation. I rely on voice for 2fa for my banks in the US (though I'm hoping they eventually support authy or something). Losing those US accounts is not possible right now (in the worst case, using a US payment method and address may make steam revoke my entire existing game collection for being outside the rights/distribution area I bought from).

Nebula feels bad. I really like supporting several of those creators and love their content. I may continue to support them.

I had one other thing I'm letting expire.

Other than that, my domains are already through a European registrar and I think everything else is Japanese.

[–] Sturgist@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

steam revoke my entire existing game collection for being outside the rights/distribution area I bought from

I moved from Canada to the UK, all I did was change my location, no games removed from my library.

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They don't always do it, but they can and that scares me.

[–] Sturgist@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Fair enough, glad they didn't nuke mine then

[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

This is somewhat unrelated but I thought it’s worth mentioning cause it’s something that I’ve recently heard from people whom I’ve met. I just need to get it out so that maybe I feel a bit better.

As much as I support this motion, the reality is that there are people who also don’t really care about humans rights or democracy, especially cause they come from countries that do not champion or even prize these concepts. And so they are either used to a world without one, or simply do not think they matter given that worldview. They too may wish for a peaceful life, but personal freedom is optional, and especially when that lack of freedom applies to everyone. They will gladly conform to whatever playing rules there is set out by the powerful so that they can live their own fulfilling lives, not (directly) helping those in power, but also not against them.

This isn’t to say that I support that notion. I think they shouldn’t think that way, as I believe personal freedom would be a better guarantee of not just their own peaceful lives, but also those of their families and especially their children, and for their future generations. It isn’t the only way to live, but it’s an easier path for humanity going forward, instead of having to rely on, in a sense, cunningness to stay alive, and that those without those smarts, or perhaps a little too much courage, to die in vain.

Here I am listening to these people talk about how life isn’t too bad back in their home country, where while they are threatened by their government should they ever say something out of line, they don’t ever plan to say or do things that are out of line and so they’ll mostly be fine. They even believe that they’ll have a pretty good chance at life migrating to Russia’s far east, where they’ll be somewhat outside of the ebbs and flows of Moscow, while having fresh new opportunities.

It’s somewhat sickening to me, so I needed to let it out. I don’t find fault with their way of thinking, but this sort of pessimistic and self-centric worldview makes me feel like the human world has no value existing or worth protecting; we’d literally be no different from animals.

I’m sure this comment will attract all sorts of unwanted attention. I may read replies, if there are any, but I’ll probably ignore them.

[+] ninthant@lemmy.ca -10 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Don’t do this because it “sends America a message.” You are one person, your decision to spend tourist dollars has a negligible effect. You do not make a difference to them.

To whatever extent an aggregate message is felt by Americans, it will be spun by their King as justification for the preexisting messaging about how the world is against them. This messaging will almost certainly be successful — it’s always easier to blame others than look inward. Americans are not exceptional, and will respond to these messages the same way people did in the days of 1930s fascism and in modern China and Russia.

So no; don’t boycott America to send them a message.

Instead, boycott American tourism and products and companies for yourself. It will feel good for your soul. It feels good to stand up for yourself, to stand with your neighbours, with your countrymen, and with our allies around the world. In a world where we can feel like powerless pawns in a game played by evil behemoths — we can at least do what’s right and feel good about that.

[–] HonoredMule@lemmy.ca 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It can be for both reasons, and it won't matter how the administration spins it for their base. Starving the beast weakens it regardless of any backlash.

[–] ninthant@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Our aggregate response may weaken them, and that is a great thing to see start to happen and I hope we see more of it.

But the point I’m trying to make is that you don’t matter to them. I don’t matter to them. If all Canadians and Europeans and Chinese stood together they’d feel it — but you and I cannot control what all of these people do.

But we can control what we do. And it feels good to do what’s right. Even if I was the only one boycotting to American travel and products, it would still feel good. Because it’s easy to forget the humanity— you’re a person not just a consumer. As a person it feels good to act, to be active, to not just go gentle into the night.

[–] HonoredMule@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's a message I can get behind, but I've been making conscientious purchasing/spending choices for years, sometimes decades, in order to satisfy my own principles. In realms like privacy and intellectual freedom, it meant constantly fighting upstream while general consumer habits gave a mandate to everything I don't want and left no room for anything I do want. It means being the only person in a group not on Facebook, and also sometimes not really in the group any more either. In realms like buying local, it means being the only annoying person clogging the aisles scouring labels for origin information or paying way more for products that lack the demand which brings scaling efficiencies.

I wouldn't make different choices today. All the costs of self-hosting and maintaining personal tech infrastructure, trying to work with niche tooling and integrate narrowly-focused independent systems, and missing out on some mainstream stuff still do not outweigh the benefits - at least for me personally.

But let me tell you: it is profoundly more satisfying having a large-scale movement behind you, collaboratively sharing the burden and also having a real, economy-shaping impact benefitting the values that matter to you.

[–] ninthant@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I believe you. Perhaps I’m underestimating the effects of the positive energy coming from how many have joined us across the country and the world.

But my life experience is the opposite of what you describe. I let the devils of nihilism and cynicism cloud me, to rationalize and justify taking the easy route of inaction.

So my message here is not to you and folks like you who were ahead of me in this. You’re better than me. I looked down on people like you because your actions didn’t make a difference. Why should I, a rationalist, take irrational actions that don’t make a difference.

So my message here is to people like me, who have talked themselves out of doing something. To them I say: it feels good to act. And no one can take that away from me.

[–] HonoredMule@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ok, now I'm hearing you loud and clear. This is also true and based, with abundant parallels. Like, teenagers think being aloof, distant, or mysterious is cool. More mature adults tend to end up deciding that being open, earnest, and genuine is sexy, even if they don't care about the things you do. Passion is what's cool, and apathy is just either insecurity or emptiness.

To me, there is an inherent satisfaction that comes from defying soulless entities trying to dictate my habits, values, and most notably dependence for their gain. There is inherent value in having greater freedom of choice and lower cost to changing my mind than accepting vendor lock-in would permit. And there is greater financial and lifestyle security from reducing the role of cash flow (and big tech) in sustaining that lifestyle. It's actually pretty comfortable relying more on other forms of self-help, including services that no one can manipulate against my will, or outright rug-pull on me.

I never really though of such things as irrational, but rather assigning different weights to the inputs we're tweaking and outputs for which we're optimizing. My values and "weights" are somewhat described by the personalized examples of benefit I presented - albeit scoped down to one particular context. The principles or values that resonate with any particular person do so for a reason. I think if we analyze those reasons deeply enough, we'll find both the internal motivation and external incentives to either change them or commit to them.

Conversely, I don't imagine nihilistic choices ever feel particularly good or right.

I think the notes of "America doesn't care about your principles or actions" are what rubbed people the wrong way in your original comment. And that's probably because it speaks to that sense of nihilism that likely isn't well represented on an open-source, Canadian-hosted, left-leaning, mainstream-alternative platform. But such people I would argue, based on global outcomes, are much more representative of the general public even in Canada. I'm upvoting your original comment now, on the basis that this underlying point is a message many need to hear, and probably articulated in the way that those people would hear.

[–] ninthant@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

Conversely, I don't imagine nihilistic choices ever feel particularly good or right.

Exactly correct. I was spiraling in depression about the hopelessness of it all until I decided to actually do something myself.

And then I realized that feeling of trying was at least part of what I was missing all along.

So I boycott, I protest, I volunteer, and dare to be vulnerable and admit I care — not in an ironic or smug way but actually care. And it feels great, especially these days when it feels like many others are beginning to as well.

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

American companies care, the tourist industry sounded the alarm that even a 10% drop in Canadian tourists would lead to a multi-billion dollar hit to their industry.

Elon Musk cares, so much that he'd want to make it illegal to speak ill of Tesla. His stock is still dropping and hundreds of billions of wealth that Elon had access to is circling the toilet.

Do it for yourself. Do it for your country. Do it to flip the bird towards Trump, Musk, American and multinational corps that suck up to them, and MAGA.

[–] SaturdayMorning@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

I do it because usa threatens to annex Canada. I do it for Canada's sovereignty.

[–] HailSeitan@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

Why not both?