The Painful Truth

     (Not to be confused with the delightful Gerard Butler / Katherine Heigl rom-com The Ugly Truth.)

     I was ambling around the Web, basically avoiding all the things I knew I should be doing, and arrived at this entry at Ace of Spades HQ, where Ace cites This pathetic development:

     The Cleveland Indians will soon be no more.

     Following the path of the Washington Football Team, Cleveland has decided to remove its name, which many consider racist and insensitive, the New York Times reported Sunday.

     An official announcement could come as soon as this week, according to the outlet.

     That’s bad enough. However, it’s Ace’s reaction that got my gears turning:

     I keep waiting for the Woke Fever to break.

     I'm starting to think it never will break. Because people continue bowing to this madness. The normal people never make them pay a price for bowing to the lunatics.

     I thought about that for about five milliseconds before cracking through to the underlying reality. The “Woke Fever” isn’t about conviction; it’s about consequences. When Left-affiliated group L approaches private enterprise X and demands some accommodation, with an implied threat of economic damage via bad publicity, propaganda, lawfare, and boycotts, X must now reckon up its possible moves. X faces a “payoff matrix” that looks a bit like this:

X's payoffs:	L does nothing	L hits X hard
X tells L "bite me"	Probably 0	$$$ BIG COSTS $$$
X gives in	Small Costs	N/A

     There’s little to no likelihood of X gaining in any way from resisting L’s legalized extortion. There’s a strong likelihood that resisting L would lead to severe economic losses and, quite possibly, crippling lawsuits that would impede its operations for months or years. Giving in would avert the worst possible outcome, though it would entail some bearable administrative expenses...at least, in the short term. And these days business executives concern themselves with the short term almost exclusively.

     Does X have no moves that would punish L? At this time, I can’t think of any. What could the Cleveland Indians do to confront their SJW harassers with the prospect of losses of their own?

     So we get capitulation as the minimax move: i.e., the move that minimizes the Indians’ maximum possible loss. Were the Indians’ owners and managers to contemplate the long term, and to foresee a credible gain of revenue from standing strong – or a credible major loss from capitulating, though that’s less plausible – that might change the equations...but forecasting further forward than next week is chancy in today’s climate. Remember what Yogi Berra said about prediction.

     The “Woke Fever” is probably better thought of as the “Fear of the Woke:” corporate managers’ fear of what the SJWs could do to their targets through the tactics they’ve already tested and come to trust. The courts – including “the court of public opinion” – being what they are today, it takes a degree of courage uncommon in American boardrooms to defy the SJWs and stand one’s ground.