Dr. Dipwad
Experienced
Yes. I see this kind of thing over and over.
The problem is that any sufficiently-large company will have a few agitators as employees, a few as customers, and a bunch of uninvolved outsiders willing to pretend to be employees or customers in order to exert cultural intimidation.
The night is black
Without a moon
The air is thick and still
The vigilantes gather on
The lonely torchlit hill
The goal of the agitators, roughly, is to exert cultural power by cowing others into gestures of compliance: "You must put this symbol, indicating support for our agenda, on top of your corporate branding for a week; if you don't, we'll raise a stink and level all kinds of unfounded accusations against your good name. We'll stage walkouts and call you a hostile workplace. We'll work, by fair means and foul, to get your business partners and distributors to drop your products. It'll be a huge hassle, and very much not worth the time and money it'll take for you to resist us. If, on the other hand, you merely superimpose our brand on your own for a week, we'll leave you alone and you can get back to business-as-usual. Nice market segment you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to it."
Features distorted in the flickering light
The faces are twisted and grotesque
Silent and stern in the sweltering night
The mob moves like demons possessed
Quiet in conscience, calm in their right
Confident their ways are best
So of course the company makes the "smart" business decision -- how can you blame them? -- and plays along. Now the next company feels that much more isolated if it sticks its neck out.
The funny thing about this protection-racket is that it's not just using the fear and thin-skinnedness and neurotic guilt of corporate-decision makers as a weapon against them. It's also, perversely, leveraging the goodness of the corporate decision-makers as a weapon against them!
I feel peculiar saying this: Normally I think of corporate decision-makers as mere agents of bottom-line profit-maximization. But here's what I mean about their goodness: Those folks-in-suits are mostly a crowd of middle-class or upper-middle-class college grads with families who're just dealing with the mortgage, and the elderly mother-in-law with dementia, and their kids' badly-underfunded college savings accounts. They've spent their whole lives carefully staying out of trouble, making prudent life decisions. They give to charity and donate blood to the Red Cross.
Now, here comes some group claiming they're all wicked and evil if they don't signal support for...what? Basically, for a slogan. And it's a slogan that, frankly, nobody could oppose if they aren't a monster. The slogan isn't something threatening, but something axiomatic, like "No More Cyanide In City Water" or "No Microwaving Kittens."
Now, if you go to the website of the agitators' organization, that slogan everyone agrees with is only the first item on their agenda. The other items are a bit more...far-out. The second item might be "Abolish the Nuclear Family"; the third might be "Abolish Private Property"; and the fourth might be "Require Steve Vai To Keep A Brick Strapped To His Fingers So That The Rest Of Us Can Have Equality With Him."
If the corporate decision-maker is aware of this, then the other items on the agenda probably make him queasy. But, he reasons, his parents worked hard to get him into college; shouldn't he do at least as much for his kids? Dare he risk his job by pushing back against the agitators? Won't he be the only one to push back, everyone else having already given in? Won't he look like a fool, or worse, a moral monster, for resisting a slogan like "No Microwaving Kittens?" Has he, perhaps, been insufficiently sensitive in the past, to the needs of kittens? He has a good job and a nice house; shouldn't he feel guilty if he doesn't give back a little?
So, some of what motivates him to cave is fear and thin-skinnedness, and those aren't laudable. But some of it's a genuine inclination towards compassion, a genuine awareness of how good he's had it, and a sense of obligation towards his family. Those aren't bad things. That's what I mean about using his goodness, his virtues, as a weapon against him.
And so, one more decision-maker is cowed into a gesture of compliance. One more Christian who doesn't want his wife and kids to be covered in pitch and lit as torches at Nero's garden party decides instead to offer up an incense sacrifice to a statue of the Emperor. Go along to get along. One more corporate logo signals support for what, on the surface, nobody would deny...and simultaneously, infintessimally boosts a political agenda that goes far beyond the friendly slogan. The HR department creates "sensitivity training materials" to ensure every last employee signs off on it, or else. Naturally they all do. Who's going to push back? You'll just be made to look like a disagreeable a**hole, or worse.
The righteous rise
With burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies
To beat, and burn, and kill
That song, originally, was about a different form of religion-gone-mad. That particular form having been neutralized, another one has risen to take its place. It has its own dogmas, its own creeds, and its own Inquisition.
Funny how the wheel turns, eh?
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