Boycott? Think About the Boomerang of Destruction

Life is a wonderful thing. Once for a whole half hour I could not stop thinking about the best joke of recent times. It’s called “Our friends and (sort of) brothers looking for a trail of Russian products on their shelves.” No, really: a girl describes in detail of how, using barcodes, she was searching for Russian goods on the shelves of Ukrainian shops to make sure she doesn’t accidentally buy something Russian, because she is for a boycott of everything Russian. Of course, you cannot crunch an aggressor’s chocolate bar, suck on an imperialist’s lollipop, or lick a bloody ice cream.

This is a pure soap opera. It can be well described in the re-cap genre: in the process, she found that many, too many products she’d gotten used to in her pre-revolutionary life, were made ​​by Russian manufacturers or companies owned by Russians. This, of course, trampled upon and even offended her raging pride. But she retaliated against the empire and stroke back by buying cottage cheese with a real Ukr-name and made according to a real Ukr-recipe. Here’s for you, Moscow, choke on it! However, that the cottage cheese turned out to be an infiltrator, a Russian product treacherously disguised under a native Ukrainian name. And most certainly poisoned.

What bad luck.

I think many fans of boycotts should understand how the modern world operates, and not necessarily the unique vast cultural world that stretches from Hatsapetovka to Makeevka.

Because it gets even funnier – at least because we understand better, what and how is arranged in Russia. Although, as we can see, not all of us.

I’m talking about the wave of joy that spread through cozy little blogs after it was reported that McDonald’s closes down its “restaurants” in the Crimea. “It’s about time!” “Finally!” everybody cried with joy. And the logical continuation was a campaign of boycotting everything American in Russia.

And what do we have that is American? Of course, not counting computers, which, in fact, are used to most efficiently generate anti-American initiatives. Okay, just don’t even go there, arguing that they are Chinese or Taiwanese, anyway. These arguments are for those who have a low IQ. And what do we have that is outright American, that we could boycott, staging a rally, smashing a couple of windows? The first thing the alternatively gifted would think about is the same McDonald’s, and Pepsi with Coke. And then it gets interesting.

Okay, let’s punish Americans and shut down all the McDonald’s all over the country, particularly in Moscow. What do you get? I’m not even speaking about the fact that everybody makes their own choice where and how to get a quick bite, and not even about the fact that the local vendors of cat meat will finally rise from their knees. Okay, it gets funnier.

Now all the McDonald’s in Moscow are closed. Guess who will knock on your window in the morning with the barrel of a gun? No, you didn’t guess right! It won’t be American special forces, who just arrived in their extremely black and invisible Stealth fighters to put Russia in a difficult situation again, and at the same time try to install a “democracy the State Department way”. Those will be people in tracksuits with a Caucasian accent. Only a hopeless regard doesn’t know who owns the entire McDonald’s franchise on this territory. And quite officially, too, without any of those 1990s tricks. Although, it all started in the 1990s, in partnership with the Moscow mayor’s office.

Okay, you hate America, the evil empire, and along with it some small nations, who for some reason would always find enough money to buy a pair of restaurant chains, and for the sake of restoring the historical justice you close a couple of this damned McDonald’s, and along with them some Kentucky Fried Chickens and Burger Kings. Right away you find out that your mom’s cousin had just been sacked because the company that had operated in one of the towns near Moscow and supplied them with semi-processed goods, had gone bankrupt, and the farms that had raised Russian cows for these intermediates, don’t really feel too good, either. Next it turns out that there was nothing American in all this, except for the idea and not too onerous payments to use that idea (franchising). There was also employment for young people and the first clean and affordable places for fast food. And now you can’t even take a leak anywhere, except in some alleyway. But it will be very patriotic. And anti-imperial.

And those disgusting American Pepsi Colas, they really break a Russian boycotter’s heart. And damage his liver, as well.

Once Pepsi-Cola is out, everything will be fine. So let’s boycott Pepsi-Cola. You will get a huge thank you from some tough guys from Lebedyan, a Russian town where the PepsiCo plants are pretty much the only employer. And nobody will feel any difference, except for them – people who have just started to live a normal life, making a decent living. So expect their great appreciation in the form of a crowbar hitting your stupid head.

And then it turns out that in this world there is nothing purely American, Chinese or Russian anymore. Some people come up with concepts, others implement them, yet others put them on a commercial basis, and build all this with their hands. And those are different people, and the saddest thing is that those people live in totally different countries. And this goes for everything else.

The boomerang of destruction comes back unexpectedly. Especially for those who have never read anything in their entire life, except some patriotic online forums. And it doesn’t matter in what mova (Ukrainian for “language”) they continue this endless, ignorant and stupid conversation.