iPhones and Google Maps are out – and you can keep your existing friends from across the pond, but don’t go making any new ones
I really wish I had a Tesla. Ideally it would be a Cybertruck but any Tesla would do. Then I could plaster it with those “I bought this before Elon went mad” stickers, shamefacedly sell it at a loss and write a performative social media post about no longer being able to stomach the guilt of driving it around town. But as I don’t actually own a car, let alone a Tesla, I’ve felt unable to add my voice to the anti-Musk and anti-Trump protests gaining momentum around the world. Until now.
Of course, I will not be travelling to the US at any time soon. As former US secretary of labor Robert Reich writes, why reward Trump’s America with my tourist dollars? But as I wasn’t planning to visit America, this doesn’t feel like a sacrifice, let alone a meaningful one. So the appearance of the #BoycottUSA movement has arrived at just the right time. Here is a campaign I can sign up to wholeheartedly. But I plan to go further than the one in three French people who are merely “avoiding” American products. Instead, I am proposing a total purge, ridding my house and my life of any taint of Americana. Not a Marlboro will be smoked, no Manhattan drunk, no foot stomped to the exuberant refrain of Cotton Eye Joe.
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