Not One Not One Damn Dime Day
I've pledged to keep this space relatively politics-free, largely to prevent myself from receiving any more rabid near-death-threats from the followers of Michael Savage, but I received a forward of an email from Stephen King, of all people, last night, and it made me want to holla.
Mr. King is a proponent of "Not One Damn Dime" day, a nationwide "protest" of the Bush Inauguration on January 20. I put the word protest in quotes, because the goal of Not One Damn Dime Day is for people not to spend any money, at all, on Inauguration Day. As Stephen King says, "the one thing of which the bozos driving this bus seem to have some dim grasp is COMMERCE."
I realize that Mr. King is, like so many of us, tired of banging his head against the wall at the dominionist takeover of this country formerly known as America. His telltale heart is in the right place. But novelists are no less susceptible to ham-handed politics than anyone else. Believe me, I know. Beware, o creator of Cujo, any protest started by anonymous Internet activists. Let me count the ways.
First, if anyone has been following the decline of the dollar against the euro and our rising trade deficit, they'll know Bush and his people neither understand nor care about commerce. Second, how will boycotting the purchase, as King says, of "a loaf of bread, a gallon of beer, a pack of Pampers, or the daily newspaper," send any kind of message at all to people who are spending the day attending $40 million worth of inaugural balls? Does he think that Treasury Secretary John Snow is going to wake up on the 21st and say, "gee, the drawers at the Target in Skokie, Illinois, were a little short yesterday. I must alert the President!"? Third, what if some person whose family depends on him or her driving to work every day needs a tank of gas? Are they going to skip out and get fired because some anti-globalization freaks tell them that a tight wallet is the only way to let the President know that the anti-Iraq-war forces mean business?
If the protest really happens, which it won't, not in any significant way, small businesses would find themselves in a day's hole from which they cannot extricate themselves, particularly since anyone who's likely to participate probably frequents independent businesses anyway. If you live in Brooklyn and don't eat at that Ethiopian restaurant like you were planning, in what way does that hurt George W. Bush? It doesn't. It just hurts a neighborhood restaurant.
Also, the protest is pointless to begin with, because even if you don't spend any money at a store that day, you'll probably use the phone, and some electricity, and some water, and probably the Internet, and probably cable TV, too. You'll get charged for all that stuff, so you'll technically be spending money, even if you don't put a stamp on the bill until the following week.
The only way a boycott works is if it targets a specific comapny, or country, over a long period of time. Otherwise, it's too diffuse, and only leads to self-satisfaction on the part of the boycotters. Not buying Pampers, eh? If, on January 20, my son has "a poopie", as he likes to say, and we're out of Huggies, that boycott is done. Unless Stephen King wants to come over and do our laundry. Trust me, Master Of Horror. My son eats a lot of carrots. You don't want to face that demon.
Capitalism is not the problem here, people. Our government has been taken over by a cabal of religious fanatics. They're not going to be deterred in their plans for Iraq because we don't buy orange juice for 24 hours. And now, back to my nascent short-story-writing career.