Cancel war

For a while, the cancel culture was getting negative vibes.

Extreme woke-ism began antagonizing regular folks, and demands for boycotts were falling on deaf ears. Polarization on certain issues were and are driving people apart, despite their many other commonalities, and resistance started building up. Ordinary folks have become inured to suffering and war.  Who wants to hear yet another distress signal by entitled kids?

Not everyone wants to stop going to their favorite coffee joint just because their beans aren’t sourced from an ethical farm. Not everyone cares to boycott Starbucks because it actively dislikes the formation of unions.   Not everyone can be bothered to cancel their Washington Post subscription just because the owner has been cozying up to Trump.  And not everyone can afford to skip classes just because their university is playing it safe.

Perhaps, that speed bump is because it’s difficult to make every other human being’s issue our own personal issue.  There are some that will move us, there are some that frankly, won’t move any needle in our emotional barometer.

Trump and Elon Musk, however, seem to be pushing a lot of buttons that are successfully waking people up. The trade war that Trump unleashed, for example, has reenergized cancel culture.  Canada has been busy canceling American goods, and make no mistake, Trump’s ‘now we tax, now we don’t’ dance isn’t making Canadians any happier.

Perhaps this is what cancel culture is when applied to nation spats:  trade wars.  Just the first day after announcing tariffs, supermarkets were already pulling American-made goods from its shelves.  Never mind that the goods were already inside Canada, and theoretically, exempt from paying import taxes - supermarket owners had decided not to even give Canadian consumers the ability to choose whether they wanted to buy more expensive American products or cheaper Canadian products.  It was just going to be Canadian for today’s choices, thank you very much.

The retaliation was so swift that electricity providers from Canada selling cross border to America immediately announced they would no longer sell their cheaper power to those consumers. Ouch to Americans now forced to pay for more expensive electricity.

Not to be outdone, car owners are making their cancelation powers felt in their choice of new automobiles.  Fed up with Elon Musk?   Then hit him where it should hurt him: his businesses.

Irate prospective car buyers have turned away from buying Tesla cars, Elon’s erstwhile cash cow.  Worse, those vehicles have been dubbed the “swasticar,” alluding to the Nazi salute that Elon Musk gave in one of his freakish appearances.

Tesla sales have plummeted by as much as 70% in Germany, Australia and Spain, crashed by 60% in France, and in China, where the electric vehicle market is expanding and other manufacturers are enjoying increased profits, Tesla’s sales halved.  Meanwhile, bystanders have been throwing rubbish at passing Teslas or mocking the drivers, or worse, slashing graffiti or throwing fireballs at the cars, making Tesla owners very uncomfortable indeed.  So uncomfortable, they’re ditching them altogether.

Now that is cancel culture working.  And one that is able to energize normally apathetic consumers. Will we see a sustained boycott though?  Or will it peter out? That probably depends on what Elon is going to do next.  His shareholders are already voicing their frustrations as the stock price is taking a hammering.

Are they going to be able to make him stop monkeying around world politics?  Will he cease and desist from using Twitter to trumpet his racist, rightist beliefs?  Will he manage to stir himself away from the glamorous honeypot of power that is just oozing from the White House?

Will he become so poor, that Trump will suddenly find him distasteful, and kick him out from the inner circle?  Will ordinary Americans wake up from the miasma created by the Republican apologists and power-hungry bootlickers, and somehow kick Trump out from office?

Okay, I’m getting carried away by wishful thinking.  But one can dream, right?  Meanwhile, let’s cancel that trip to New York.  One wouldn’t want to pump his economy, right?