Gimme

Some questions we know the answer to immediately.   Others we have to think about.  There's a class of question that due to the circumstances in which you encounter it demands an instant response but that always gives me pause.  This is a question I encounter more and more at the payment card pad at the retail establishment checkout.  

The first time I remember seeing it was at a PetSmart.   I had swiped my debit card and before I was asked for my PIN I got an unexpected insertion: How much did I want to contribute to homeless pets?  There were an assortment of choices, ranging from nothing to $5, with possibly an option for Other for those finding themselves in a superlatively generous mood.  My reflexive response was "Why does PetSmart want to know?"  It grated at my sense of injustice that some faceless big box store, a black hole of wealth and finance masquerading as a pet shop having opened up my wallet for the purchase of essentials had found some way to coax me to voluntarily open it further ostensibly for the benefit of unseen, merely evoked immiserated animals-- but who knew what actually for?  At best I could imagine PetSmart was shaking me down for their own glory-- cajoling me into funding what some suit fancied to be a PR coup for the company.  At worst, they were performatively seeing how much extra cash they could trick their customer base into coughing up for nothing at the register. I reflexively refused the first several times I encountered the option.

I don't remember when or why I gave in, but I now pretty regularly give the dollar every time.  My working theory is that what happened was COVID-- somehow the knowledge of an increase in homelessness among pets due to the COVID deaths of their owners or other misfortunes related to the upheaval of the disease may have done some work on me and inspired me to use the occasion of the cash register question as an opportunity to satisfy myself that I was in a some small way contributing to the solution of a crisis.  Once I had experienced the ease of giving a buck on top of the hundreds of dollars I was spending each month on my pets, it soon became habit.  Occasionally it occurred to me to question whether my acquiescence to the pleading was serving anybody but the corporation, but it was always after the fact, when I was walking out the door with my purchases and never when I could actually do anything to get to the bottom of the problem.  In fact, it wasn't until just now when I googled "Who benefits from PetSmart's cash register charity?" that I learned that the recipient of PetSmart's customer's spontaneous cash register largesse is "PetSmart Charities LLP."

According to its homepage, 90 cents on every dollar collected at the cash register goes toward the care of homeless pets. But why take PetSmart Charities' word for it?  It takes some digging, but of course there's dirt if you look for it.  Knowing what I now know, I'm sympathetic to my gut resentment at a corporation for expecting me to just hand over money to let them do as they see fit with it with no accountability, no accounting of how it's spent, no input from me in what is done with it.  I don't doubt PetSmart owes a debt to the society we share that lets them grow unfettered-- but I'm uncomfortable with leaving the repayment strictly up to the corporation.  Will it cause me to break the habit of donating?  Probably not.

PetSmart is of course not the only establishment wheedling money out of its customers as long as they have their credit cards engaged.  Drugstores, restaurants and supermarkets among others as I'm sure you're aware also engage in periodic campaigns of fundraising.  My usual supermarket has recently initiated a drive to raise money to combat hunger for vets.  I have seen the prompt the last 2 times I've checked out, and confess that much like my initial response to the homeless pet question at PetSmart, I have found myself reflexively refusing.  

I admit I bristle at the easy sleasy "patriotism" of corporations falling over themselves to lead the mandatory chorus of "Thank you for your service" to soldiers and veterans. What service?  Interfering in democratic elections abroad in order to impose crackdowns on popular socialist movements?  Installing dictators of the corporate class's liking where the US might otherwise have difficulty imposing its hegemony?  Killing innocent foreign citizens with bombs?  Killing American citizens with drones? Thwarting peace, threatening war, crushing autonomy, making the world safe for neoliberalism, finance and corporate exploitation and unsafe for freedom for regular people especially if they're dark skinned and poor?  Shaming Americans into thanking the military for its service is a smokescreen for the owner class's responsibility for how unsafe for true freedom worldwide-- including in America-- the US Military's mission has been in my lifetime.  I can't think of a single military operation that hasn't benefited the haves at the expense of the have nots.  Its ever expanding budget taken largely out of American taxpayer's hides* squeezes out spending that would actually make people's lives easier. Our military is deployed on the wrong side of every conflict and never on my behalf.  And its outsized demands for energy and resources is largely responsible for the planetary climate crisis that is fueling conflicts worldwide.

On the other hand, I realize that the pathways to becoming a soldier or a vet are more complicated than my feelings about the military, and it is an injustice that the country that expects young men and women to volunteer† for the overseas adventures of its small but dominant overclass takes such poor care of those who have served that many of them starve or go homeless.  Take better care of your proxies yourselves, you ungrateful bastards!  

In the meantime, now that I've talked it out, I've decided: I will do what I can to help out fellow exploitees of the system at the cash register.  Fuck it!  Solidarity!

~~~~~

* And less and less out of the overstuffed pockets of the tax shirking owner class whose sloppiness and greed and hostility to the rest of the world cause the emergencies that members of the military are then tasked to risk life and limb and mental health to deal with.

† It was considered a victory when the draft ended in the fallout from the American public's disenchantment with Vietnam.  But truthfully, in a more democratic society (one much more democratic that the US), military service that serves the people should be a duty that is shouldered by all citizens.  Perhaps if everybody had an equal chance to be selected for military service, a more democratic congress would be more selective about the engagements that call for military deployment.