Rhino Ramblings

A Rhino Maraca

Welcome back and so sorry for missing a month – but it was a month to miss.

I canceled my Washington Post subscription and knew at the time I had fodder for a blog.  Fortunately, I am not a farmer, because the cattle would have starved in the month since I thought of foddering (I just discovered this is an actual word).  But now I have time to fill the fodder bin (I thought I made that phrase up, but fodder bin is a term at least used in a game – Rune Factory 4). Aaaww did you miss me and my random ramblings 😊

I have been a faithful Washington Post (WashPo to those in the know) for almost 5 decades. It was a steady part of my morning routine, first in paper and then in digital.  It has my favorite game on Sundays – Samurai Sudoku.  And yet I first came close to canceling last fall when Mr. Amazon (this reference will have importance in a paragraph or two) did not allow his paper to make a presidential endorsement.  Many did cancel at that point, and I would almost certainly have done so if he had required the paper to endorse the wrong candidate (I will leave it to you to figure out which that would be).  I stuck it out.  And then early this year, he made the statement: “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets”  Boom.  A step too far for me and so the cancelation was sent in.   I have since struggled with finding the best replacement.  I am currently using three sources:  WTOP for local news; USA Today for basic daily newspaper, and New York Times for in depth information.  It turns out most major papers are either crappy or have become right leaning or more so a combination of both.

Anyway, I am not here to write about the Post as such. What is of interest to me is the cancelation concept. Sticking with the Post for a moment, it has been said that since Mr. Bezos owns the Post he has every right to make that policy.  And I have to agree he has the right to do so.  That does not mean I have to agree, support and literally subscribe to that decision.  So I consider my response to be appropriate.  But as noted he is also Mr. Amazon.  Do I cancel out of Amazon?  His actions as a newspaper owner could be severed (I do have Severance on the mind – best TV show in a while) from his actions as owner of Amazon.  So the two activities could be separated.  Of course, there is the problem of the Amazon worker issues that have caused some to not use Amazon.

To give another personal example of the quandary of cancelation:  I refuse to go to Chick-fil-a unless I am part of a group in which I do not have a deciding vote.  There are many issues with that company and its owner.  And I would not care as much if the owner was the jerk he is, if it did not affect the people for whom the discriminatory policies (implicit and explicit) are affected.  But hen again, I do still go to Starbucks.  I mean, what would Argo do without her occasional pup cup?  Along similar lines, there was a time when the owner of Lowes and Home Depot seemed to be vying for worst corporate policies and statements of the year award,  I guess I could do without them and got to Amazon instead-oops, what to do now?

OK – so some of you are paragons of virtue and have removed all negative businesses from your day to day life.  Great for you- but how do you function?  What happens when a Starbucks that was once the ideal worker’s company becomes an anti-union, anti-worker one?  Do you have a daily site you can go to decide which action you can take today?  Okay, maybe I am being a little (or a lot) flippant, but hopefully my point is coming through. And my point is – Arghhhhh!!!!   I really want to only support those actions, activities, industries, people, etc. that match my belief and ethical structure.  But I do not have the energy or will power or time to evaluate each step I take.  So, I am sorry that I am not going to boycott everything (including Amazon and Starbucks) although what I do or do not boycott will change as time and policies change.  (A great example is Cracker Barrel. Back in the past century (how is that for making us all old), Cracker Barrel’s policies made Chick-Fil-A seem like a liberal paradise by comparison.  Let’s just say racism and homophobia were front and center.  They were boycotted and perhaps in part because of that boycott, Cracker Barrel now states emphatically “EVERYONE is welcome” and as I understand it has a corporate policy to match the sentiment.  So sometimes the good guys (and gals) win).

Determining for oneself the point at which a boycott or cancelation or even an active protest is the right position vs needing to function in a world full of so many personally contradictory states is ultimately a personal and singular decision point.  Perhaps you could argue I am just saying this to justify my own contradictions.  And at some point such contradictions can switch to hypocrisy.  If you could not guess by now, I struggle with the balance.  To not twist my life into a tortuous mess and mass, I will adhere to my base principle:  when I am faced with a choice that I know to my core is a statement to myself that this I cannot abide, then I will act ( or, I guess not act). 

Sorry, I have no easy answer or plan of action for myself and certainly not for others.  I am, however, guessing that I am not alone in these types of trade-off thoughts and I hope, if so, sharing my own reconciliation struggles, first I might better understand myself (I mean I do in the end write for myself) and I might provide some understanding to others (I mean I do in the end write for others).