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I don't know what that means, but I think it's this: I can say I wish my vending machine at work sold healthier food, but if the bananas rot while the Flamin' Hot Cheetos sell out by noon, they're going to get the message. That is, my real message.

So, all of you supporting a candidate who's against free trade agreements and for bringing back American manufacturing jobs, do you go out of your way to buy American-made products the rest of the year? If you retweet your candidate every time they say China is eating us alive, are you doing it on your Chinese-made iPhone? If you're enraged by illegal immigrants, do you avoid buying the cheap produce picked with their labor? If you're terrified of international socialism, do you buy Citgo gas? Or even know what I'm referring to?

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If you let the Venezuelans save you from freezing to death come wintertime,

you clearly hate freedom.

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Do you progressives avoid doing business with corporations with poor environmental or workplace safety records? Do you take public transportation even when a car is available, to minimize your carbon footprint? Do you make sure to only buy products made with union labor, from retail outlets that pay their employees a living wage? When you hear about billionaires or corporations donating to anti-gay causes, do you go out of your way to avoid doing business with their brands, or even find out what those brands are?

I know the answer -- the sales figures speak for themselves. Statistically, our buying habits have nothing to do with the philosophical and ethical positions we say define us. Some of you will insist otherwise in the comments, and that's fine -- the numbers speak louder. The situation we're in only exists because we don't vote with our dollar. The vast majority of us buy the stuff we want and can afford, with no other considerations. We'll spend two hours reading customer reviews for a product but won't spend five minutes finding out who we're making rich in the process of buying it.

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Blatant homophobia is easy to forgive when packaged at two for a dollar.

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"I only shop at Walmart because I can't afford to shop anywhere else! No one can beat their prices!" Yes, what brave revolutionaries we are. "But what hope do us common folk have against huge corporations?" You know Blockbuster Video used to be a huge corporation, right? Then the common folk starved them out almost overnight? But of course we didn't do that to stand up for a cause -- we did it purely because we found an alternative we liked better. That's how we roll.

850 Magazine

America: It'll Do For Now.

You are more powerful than you think, but that power lies in day-to-day decisions and sacrifices that, statistically, virtually none of us are willing to make. When our hippie friend starts asking if the coffee at Starbucks is fair trade, we roll our eyes because worrying about that stuff is exhausting.

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So yes, your frustration over the presidential election is valid. And yes, the situation is like this precisely because most of us care about politics on the same schedule we care about Olympic swimming. If you want more power, all you have to do is start treating every day like Election Day. Or, you can stay on this cycle of blowing off steam every four years by screaming at the opposing party for a few months and then hoping that the people affecting real change the other 90 percent of the time know what the hell they're doing.

Or, as my grandmother used to say, "If it bleeds, we can kill it."

David Wong is a New York Times best-selling novelist. Buy his award-winning yet ludicrous novel Futuristic Violence And Fancy Suits, and if you want to know when his next book arrives, join the mailing list. He won't sell your address to spammers.

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