Of Monkeys, Gourds, and Peanuts

I've been pleased to learn over the last few weeks that Donald Trump is losing the support of his base, as reported in such articles as "Three Polls That Show Donald Trump Is Losing His Base" (Newsweek, December 2025), "Trump's Support is Collapsing. But why?" (Vox, December 2025), and "How divides emerged at the heart of Trump’s Maga world" (BBC, December 2025). It is interesting to see that among the reasons for the collapse of Trump's support among white American males is the fact that MAGA Trump-ism has begun to seriously hurt the economic prospects of the people who comprise his base.  This is due to such factors as the costs of Trump tariffs to ordinary Americans, the harms to American industries and businesses from the international backlash against Trump-ism, and the negative economic impacts of Trump's mass deportations on America's farming sector.  But it must also be acknowledged that some of the negative economic impacts are due to the boycotts of businesses whose owners support Trump-ism.  Consider, for instance, how badly Elon Musk's businesses were hurt by boycotts in early 2025.  Consider also the decrease in revenue suffered by Amazon, Target, and Home Depot over their abandonment of workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in their bid to curry the favor of Donald Trump.

So today I'd like to write a bit more about the agenda of Donald Trump and his supporters, and the necessity of economic noncooperation from those who are the intended victims and targets of Trump and his supporters.  To be quite plain and blunt, Donald Trump is one of the de facto leaders of a revanchist movement among white supremacists.  He and his supporters want to bring back a world which is the undisputed empire and sole possession of a small group of fat, privileged, evil people who have Made Themselves Great Again at the expense of all the other peoples on earth.  This is the goal of his international policy, which is why he is engaged now in violently trying to conquer other people's countries.  It is also his domestic policy, a policy whose goal is to return the United States to being a paradise for one privileged group of people while turning the rest of us into the domestic servants of this privileged group.  

But he and his supporters depend on an economic machinery which in turn depends on the support and patronage of large numbers of the very people whom he wants to dispossess and subjugate.  In this he and his supporters are like the British were in relation to India and China in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  India was a supposed British "possession", yet the prosperity of the British economy depended on Indians buying British goods.  This fact was expertly used by Mohandas Gandhi to hurt the British economy during India's struggle for independence.  For Gandhi persuaded his fellow Indians to stop buying British goods and to begin to develop their own self-sufficiency.  This drastically raised the costs of empire for Britain and was one of the factors that led to India's independence from Britain.  As Marshall Ganz once said, systems of oppression always depend on the people whom they exploit.  One powerfully effective, yet nonviolent way for the oppressed to hurt the owners of these systems of oppression is to deny them the payoff they are hoping to gain from their oppression.  Don't feed the beast.

A more-than-likely fictional example may be helpful.  I'm going to repeat a story I heard long ago when I was a member of an abusive church, and which I've seen repeated since in the evangelical-o-sphere.  Supposedly there are countries in the developing world in which villagers go out day by day to hunt monkeys.  They are supposedly able to trap these monkeys by spreading hollowed-out gourds on the ground.  Each gourd has a small hole in its shell, and inside the gourd are a few peanuts.  When monkeys find the gourds, they reach inside and grab the peanuts as the hunters watch.  When the hunters come to seize the monkeys, the monkeys are so fixated on the peanuts that they won't let them go - even though by holding the peanuts they are unable to remove their hands from the gourds.  The gourds in turn are so big and heavy that the monkeys cannot run away from the hunters.  Thus the hunters are able to catch the monkeys and crack their skulls, and the monkeys are turned into monkey stew.  (One note: I personally don't know whether most monkeys anywhere in the world would fall for such a trick, as I've never owned a monkey as a pet.  I specialize in cats.  I also suspect that the originators of this story have never seen a monkey in their lives, except in pictures or on TV.)

Now consider a person who is a member of a historically marginalized group, or a group which is targeted for oppression by a rich, powerful piece of garbage like Trump or like one of his supporters.  If the person who has been targeted for oppression continues to buy things made and sold by the Trump-oids, isn't he financing the very people who want to bash his brains out and turn him into cooked monkey meat?  How many of us allowed ourselves to be made into monkeys during this past holiday season?  How many of us splurged in our spending during Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Years? How many people of color bought Teslas in 2025?  How many will want to buy a Tesla in 2026? How many of us will watch the Superbowl in 2026? How many of us will join the military in 2026 even though the U.S. military is likely to be deployed against our brothers and sisters in foreign lands?  How many of us are signed up for Amazon Prime and Hulu and Fox and Netflix and ESPN and HBO? Boycotts and other forms of economic noncooperation mean letting go of the peanuts. Don't let the present system of oppression make a monkey out of you.

Image courtesy of Craiyon (craiyon.com). Created 17 October 2025.

(Yes, yes, I know - this is a picture of an ape and not a monkey.

But you can't expect too much from the free version of an AI service!)