Thursday, August 31, 2023

Avoiding Each Other

The site Vox has a leftward bias, in spite of which they run some interesting material. Staff writer Emily Stewart looks at the success the political right has had lately with boycotts aimed at products or firms viewed as "woke." She mentions the real impacts on Bud Light and Target but tends to denigrate the impact on Disney. 

Stewart seems to believe Disney only runs theme parks, when the major losses the "house of mouse" experienced recently have been in films, TV and streaming services. Their recent films have been losing money by featuring "woke" themes and inappropriately diverse casting.

 I find the following passage particularly evocative.

On a broader level, this is indicative of the growing polarization and even tribalization of America. Conservative and progressive consumers don’t want to shop in the same places, or talk to each other or negotiate with each other or even acknowledge the other exists.

“The reality is increasingly there is a red market and a blue market,” said Geoffrey Kabaservice, a vice president at the Niskanen Center, a center-right think tank. “Ultimately here the subtext is America is a pretty divided country.”

"Conservative and progressive consumers don’t want to shop in the same places, or talk to each other or negotiate with each other or even acknowledge the other exists." Doesn't that sound like the precursor to a peaceful "color revolution" of the sort that split Czechoslovakia? Sadly, we aren't as neatly sorted geographically as the Czechs and the Slovaks were.