******SOME IMPORTANT NEWS, AS WELL AS UPDATES, AT THE END OF THE POST******

As far as I am concerned, and judging by what I hear and read from others – the short answer is “slowly”.

However: scroll down for latest news.

It is not like boycotting Russian good and services (I am not aware of availing myself of any Russian goods and services, though I have to admit I am not certain exactly what Germany, where I have chosen to live, currently depends on from Russia).

And as far as Israeli goods and services go, I have always avoided buying foods (such as oranges and lemons) from there, as well as watching Israeli film and TV, so that is a no-brainer too.

The case of USA is different. The easiest part was avoiding buying things like avocadoes and wine from California which a lot of us started already the first time around – “Trump light – boycott light”. Back then, I also vowed not to set foot in that country again – incidentally, round about the time I also decided not to fly again. I slipped up not so long ago and signed up for a photography retreat in Santa Fé – a place that was on my bucket list pre-Trump – but I woke up, thought – what on earth are you doing you unprincipled sloth – and cancelled that. Since then, I am happy to read that the majority of Europeans are no longer travelling to USA if they can avoid it. Many are now choosing Canada as a holiday destination.

Speaking of that photography retreat – it was organised by my favourite photography course provider – US-based. Because hypocrisy rules, I am currently attending one of their courses (using zoom – another US business ….) since I had already paid for it before the European boycott started to pick up speed. But this will be the last one, and I shall miss those courses greatly.

I am currently busy deleting accounts with gurushots, kelbyone, etc. The next hurdle will be the streaming services. As part of weaning myself off Netflix and Amazon, I no longer watch any US produced films or TV series, and am one click away from deleting my Netflix accoung. I don’t like to think about living without Facebook and all the information I will be missing out on, but sooner or later it will have to go. Instagram will be easier since I never liked that media anyway. And I am not even mentioning that third one.

I hope with time there will be non-US alternatives to all the really difficult, to the point of impossible, ones such as google, microsoft, adobe, zoom and I am sure there are many more that I am just taking for granted – viable alternatives so that we never have to revert to the old US ways again.

This time around, loathing and mistrust is irreversible.

By the way, I am a little bit astonished to learn that the concept of boycotting seems unknown in USA. Many Americans I know simply do not seem to understand it, and are taking it all very personally.

Boycotting goods and services from a country is a completely normal thing to do, and one of the few resources ordinary citizens have. And it is not personal.

USA let somebody run for office who should not even be eligible to be a garbage collector, let a long President, and that person is now doing what he had always said he would be doing and they still voted for him. Now he is planning on handing Europe to Putin on a silver platter, starting with Ukraine (and he is too stupid to realise how Putin is playing him). Also, since he has no understanding of economics at all, having spent his life so far bankrupting one business after another, he is now bankrupting USA and the world.

And like a good would-be dictator, he dodged the draft by lying about an injury, and is now planning a military parade for his next birthday.

Give me a break: NOT boycotting that banana republic would be completely counter-intuitive to me as well as to most other Europeans.

EDIT on 09 April: And now this: https://youtu.be/c143MbcoITw?si=sxEWkTvnA03N5BaF. And I believe those cheering audience sounds are real. Every time we think it can not get more cringe- and puke-worthy. Going completely off-line just so we do not have to be assaulted by the daily dose of vomit coming out of that country seems more and more doable until such time that we have non-US alternatives. Even listening to someone – anyone – speaking with an American accent is becoming unpleasant, much the same as hearing Russian spoken.

The idea of not being perpetually angry is appealing, but will it be better to feel perpetually ignorant?

BREAKING NEWS 15 MAY:

It has finally dawned on me that Capture One is a European company! Well, that settles it then. I can ditch Adobe Creative Cloud! The fact that Capture One cannot replace Photoshop altogether – I shall just have to live with. I usually only use Lightroom anyway, and many say that for Fujifilm, Capture One is actually better than Lightroom, especially when it comes to colour rendition. The satisfaction of boycotting US-based Adobe will be my reward for the foreseeable future, and perhaps a European-owned replacement for Photoshop will appear sooner or later.

So, yes, slowly-slowly very slowly becoming independent of US goods and services.

Update 20 May: Putin continues to play Trump, and the last couple of days more blatantly than ever, and Trump is still too dumb to realise. One might hope that Putin is currently laughing so hard that he gives himself a stroke or a heart attack. I don’t really believe he is capable of even smiling, but he would certainly have good recent to be laughing his head off right now.

“Art of the deal” my a…. If it were not so tragic, it would actually be pretty funny.