By Michael Schaus
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Oh, how exciting… Now you can be a good little liberal,
even when shopping for fresh produce and certain off-brand whiskies. According
to a politically obsessed hack over at the Washington Post, some other
politically obsessed hack has developed an app so you can wander through your
daily life without ever losing sight of partisan political squabbles. The new
smartphone app allows users to scan the barcode of consumable products in the
grocery store, and it divulges the corporation’s political leanings. (I just
found out that Fiji Water has switched from heavily Republican, to entirely
Democrat… Ugh.)
It’s so nice to see that we’re now able to make dinner
ingredients a conversation starter about Ted Cruz and Nancy Pelosi… I suppose,
soon, we’ll be calling certain bakery products “racist” because of their
political inclinations, right? Good. I was beginning to worry that there might
be a couple of moments throughout the day that were not focused on divisive
political partisanship. (A sarcasm font! My kingdom for a sarcasm font!)
According to the Washington Post:
The app, based on data from Center for Responsive Politics, the Sunlight Foundation, and the Institute for State Money in Politics, is the first rollout from Colbert’s new company, “Spend consciously.” It’s [sic] tagline: “Wouldn’t it be great if you could spend how you believed?” The goal of the company, he said, is make “every day Election Day” through “spending choices.” It’s called Buypartisan.
Whoa… Punny.
And, really, who wouldn’t enjoy the partisan experience
of Election Day every day? (Does this mean that dead Democrats in Chicago will
suddenly be shopping at the local Hy-Vee?) I just can’t wait until some
well-intentioned Occupy types start petitioning my local Whole Foods (a
libertarian organization, by the way) because they don’t carry a “progressive”
brand of eggplants.
The entire notion of “Buypartisan” is a little over the
top for me anyway. Oh, sure: There’s a place for spending discretion in our
daily lives. Going to football games, for example, is no longer on my list of
possible Sunday afternoon activities – but that’s not really because of the
NFL’s anti-gun stance or general liberal tendencies. It has a lot more to do
with the fact that the metal detectors and pat-downs prohibit me from entering
the premises in the first place. (By now you should know: Asking why I don’t
just keep my guns at home is an illogical and ridiculous question.)
Boycotts, however, are generally distasteful, useless,
and absurdly counter-intuitive to the free market experience that conservatives
tend to cherish. I mean, do you like the product? Then buy it. After all, even
liberals should be rewarded for creating, selling, and marketing a good
product. That’s kinda the advantage of capitalism: It rewards results, not
intentions.
Look… I buy most of my wine from Argentina. Most of my
vodka comes from Poland. And, just to prove that my household is not one giant
nightmare for recovering alcoholics, I buy my cigars from Cuba the Dominican
Republic. Heck, some of my guns even came from the former Soviet Union. I don’t
really like the politics of any of these places. (Strangely, current and former
communist states are very proficient at creating effective and high-quality
alcohol, tobacco, and firearm products. Go figure.) But that’s not really the
issue…
Are they good products? Are they the best value for the
best price? Is there a capitalist, free-market-advocating, or Republican
alternative? (In my case, the answers are: "Yes." "Yes."
And "no.")
And such is the way with most fiscal conservatives. This,
by the way, this is not an insult to conservatives. Truthfully, we on the right
just wish to be left alone. It’s the left that feels the need to pressure
everyone into their pre-conceived notion of “social justice” or political
correctness.
There is a whole list of reasons that people buy the products
that they do. Generally speaking, politics isn’t at the top of that list. Thank
heaven we now have a hip new app that helps people further segregate themselves
into politically defined bubbles, while doing something as mundane as shopping
for groceries.
Then again… I guess I did just discovered a new way to
irritate my liberal neighbors at our local Whole Foods. This should be fun.
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