Business Models And #Woke: Corporate Charity

     There are few things less rational than the prioritization of irrelevancies – social, political, or otherwise – in the operation of a business. A business that tolerates the inclusion of non-business priorities in its decision making is dancing barefoot at the edge of a blazing fire. Non-business priorities have a terrible tendency to eclipse business priorities, such that the whole point of creating and running a business – that’s to make money, for those who haven’t tried it – is lost. This has been demonstrated many times by the #Woke phenomenon.

     Mind you, few publicly traded companies in America haven’t done the very thing I’m railing against. Pick up the stock-market pages of your preferred publication, randomly select a company from the listings, and the odds will be 99 to 1 that the selected company has included one or more non-business priorities among its regular practices, and has trumpeted it in an attempt “to burnish the company’s image.”

     But what can a company buy with its “image?” I don’t know of any market where the goods are priced in that particular coinage. I would question the sanity of any executive who pursued “image” in preference over profit...yet huge numbers of them do that very thing.

     The most common form of this commercial sin is corporate charity. Virtually all the companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange practice it. So do most of those on the NASDAQ system. To me it looks like a crime against the stockholders: the folks who’ve invested in the company and have a legal expectation of dividends from its profits.

     Far too many CEOs prefer to give from the corporation’s coffers, their rationale being that it helps to “burnish the company’s image.” In these latter years of the Republic, that invites all manner of challenges from those who are unsatisfied with the company’s dividends, or who differ with the company’s charitable choices. These days a lot of the flak originates from activist groups rather than from the stockholders.

     The moral case against charity by a publicly traded company is absolute. The practical case against charity by a privately held company is equally strong...by which route we come to the news about Chick-fil-A:

     LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – U.S. fast-food chain Chick-fil-A said on Monday it had stopped funding two Christian organizations, including The Salvation Army, that have come under fire from LGBT+ campaigners.

     The fast-food chain’s charitable arm, Chick-fil-A Foundation, donated millions of dollars over a period of years to The Salvation Army and to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), which opposes same-sex marriage.

     Chick-fil-A said on Monday it no longer funded these organizations and would instead focus its giving on “education, homelessness and hunger”.

     “We made multi-year commitments to both organizations and we fulfilled those obligations in 2018,” a spokeswoman for Chick-fil-A told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

     The family-owned company said in statement that it would no longer make multi-year commitments and would focus on partnerships annually to “allow maximum impact”, which could include faith-based and non-faith-based charities.

     That LGBT activists have railed against Chick-fil-A for its charities – and for its founder’s convictions about same-sex marriage – is not news. They’ve been at it since the restaurant chain became generally known. It’s part of their sociopolitical and cultural strategy that no one who disagrees with their stances, however insane those stances may be, is permitted to go unscathed. Remember what happened to Sweet Cakes by Melissa, to Memories Pizza, and to Brendan Eich, formerly the CEO of Mozilla.

     The great irony here is that what a company’s management does with the company’s profits has absolutely no bearing on the quality or efficiency of the people who do 99% of the company’s work. It certainly has no bearing on what the line employees do with their bodies, property, or spare time. Yet activist groups’ favorite tactic, the heavily publicized boycott, does far more injury to the line employee, the guy who spends eight hours per day making sandwiches for customers, than to the CEO and his direct subordinates, who make the decisions about the company’s charitable giving.

     If I were a corporate CEO, and had charitable impulses to satisfy, I’d give out of my own pocket. If my company were publicly traded, the company’s stockholders would be unable to accuse me of spending their money on my notions of good works. But even if my company were my personal property, my charitable choices might still be attacked by activist groups. The earnings and well-being of my employees would probably take most of the damage...if I were vain enough to let my giving be made public.

     But if I were to follow the advice of a certain Jesus of Nazareth:

     Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. [Matthew 6:1-4]

     ...my charitable giving would be unknown to anyone, including the beneficiary organizations. No one would know that I had done it, nor to whom my gifts had gone. I would be immune from the attacks of activists, as would those who work for my company.

     This is not a reproach of Chick-fil-A or its owners. The company has earned its customers’ respect. Its owners’ hearts are definitely in the right place. But they would have been better advised to separate their charities from their commercial enterprise, and to keep their giving entirely private insofar as that’s possible. No one can target what he knows nothing about.

     To the real-life CEOs out there: You will be targeted by charitable organizations, which will importune you for contributions. If you permit them access to you as the CEO of your company, you will regret it. Chick-fil-A is already regretting it. Even if you permit them to approach you as an individual, there are dangers – and not just to you, but to your employees. The only way to avoid the assaults of the #Woke crows is to do your own research into worthy charities, choose one or more of them, and donate to them anonymously. Don’t imagine you have a need to dress up your “image,” or that of your company. It’s a phantasm and always has been.

     Concentrate on putting out an excellent product and making money.

Quickies: The Less You Look, The Less You’ll See

     (With apologies to the late Robert M. Pirsig.)

     The LGBTQ “community,” which seldom seems to be anything of the sort, is suffering declining acceptance among “young Americans:”

     An alarming new statistic from the annual Accelerating Acceptance report finds that young Americans — generally regarded as the most socially tolerant generation — are less comfortable with LGBTQ people than in previous years.

     The survey, produced by the Harris Poll in partnership with Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), found that Americans aged 18 to 34 who say they are comfortable interacting with queer people fell from 53% in 2017 to 45% in 2018 — even among those whom the report considers “allies” to the LGBTQ community....

     GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis says it may have to do with the fact that younger people are interacting with more LGBTQ people than older generations — and things that they don’t fully understand could be bewildering for some of them.

     A typical case of self-deception. Recent years have seen LGBTQ activism turn “in your face” and frequently ugly. Homosexuals in particular frequently harass persons and institutions that espouse traditional views, especially Christians. Reports about “Queer Story Hours,” children being forced into “drag,” “transitions,” and related phenomena have been multiplying. The most tolerant people on Earth will turn hostile to a “community” that behaves in such a fashion, especially if what they most prize is peace, quiet, and privacy. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, folks. There are no “gender”-related nor genital-employment exceptions.

     Have a perspective from someone who would know:

     “We’re accepted now as long as we don’t act up. So why act up? Why pull shit that’s gonna rebound on us? Aren’t the drag fags with their deliberately outrageous parades and the flaming queens that hassle the churches bad enough? Stuff like that’ll only get the straights riled at us again.”

     That was a word-for-word quote from the real person my character Howie Desjardins is based on.

     The progression from pleading for tolerance, to demanding acceptance and accommodation in all venues whether public or private, to attacking anyone who fails to pledge his enthusiastic support to the activists’ agenda has been well documented. It always has the same effects on those it targets. It always will. Younger Americans will not prove an exception.

     You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong....Treat men as pawns and nine-pins and you shall suffer as well as they. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Moo-oo! Don't you LOVE the sound of skewered feminist-sacred-cows in the morning!

As one of many supporters of "The Red Pill" (including the humble founder of Liberty’s Torch, whose name I spotted in the credits, but not mine, because I guess I was too much of a cheapskate to qualify for that perk), and now a recent pre-release viewer, I presumed (like I imagine director Cassie Jaye did) going on this documentary-adventure would hold no big surprises for me.

LOL

My arrogance came, I suppose, because I was "Red-Pilled" a while back. I thought I knew enough not to be surprised - or impressed. But turns out her film did both! I became aware of the Men’s Rights Movement (via avoiceformen.com) in late 2011 - participating actively there for several years: commenting often and writing a few pieces that Paul Elam published on the site. (The photo-collage within the collage, above, is of me with just a few of the amazing people I met at AVfM's 1st International Conference on Men's Issues, held outside Detroit, in 2014.)

A most remarkable thing about documentary creator, Cassie Jaye, is that she is a young woman who boldly went where most of her Feminist sisters will never go...to their ideological opposition. Even more radical, was HOW she went: NOT screaming, NOT blockading, and NOT making threats of violence, but rather, with a willingness to listen. To learn. And to reconsider, even jettison, intellectual inconsistencies, without regard for the personal paradigm-shifts such honesty can bring...

Based upon my experience, both in the world of the Men's Rights' Movement and in watching this film about it, I can guarantee 100% that you will learn something unique and valuable. And because I believe this so strongly, I’m very confident that if you watch it with an open mind (and heart) - intuitively grasping the significance - you will become a better person for having done so. I hope you will take the transformative Red-Pill journey made possible by this amazing young filmmaker, and then pass it on to others.

If you can bear the entirety of my 1900-word review/analysis, please visit my blog: housewife3-0.com.

Quickies: “Change”

     To all those crusading for “change,” marching for “change,” collecting bottle caps for “change...”

     What do you mean? What do you want to change, in what direction and by what magnitude? If it’s something you can do personally, then do it and leave the rest of us in peace. If it’s a political quest, such that you think the government “must” take more power over our lives, stay well away from me: I shoot first and deal with the paperwork later.

     Nothing is quite as ignorant as a demand for unspecified “change.” Those who make such demands deserve to be dismissed with prejudice. They get an unfortunate amount of attention and media adulation, as if they were actually capable of doing something that would benefit others. In nearly every case they’re consuming our time and attention to no constructive purpose, and creating an opening for demagogues eager to snatch away still more of our hard-earned money and our rapidly dwindling freedom.

     Insult them. Be crude. Mock them. Be cruel! Make them feel like the morons they resemble (and probably are). Take vengeance for their consumption of your precious time. Nothing else – nothing within the penal law, at least – has the slightest chance of deterring them.

     Yes, I’m in a foul mood. I got up, looked in the mirror, and realized afresh that I’m old – that the hours of my life are trickling away. And the very first thing I confronted thereafter was a moron calling for completely unspecified “change.”

     Attila the Hun brought “change.”
     Genghis Khan brought “change.”
     Timur-i-leng brought “change.”
     Tomas de Torquemada brought “change.”
     John Calvin brought “change.”
     Hitler brought “change.”
     Stalin brought “change.”
     Fidel Castro brought “change.”
     Mao Tse-tung brought “change.”
     Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko, and Haile Mengistu Mariam brought “change.”
     Ruhollah Khomeini brought “change.”
     Osama bin Laden brought “change.”

     None for me, thanks.

That Vicious Reluctance

     “What reluctance is that?” I hear you ask. Patience, Gentle Reader. We’ll get there. First, have a few links:

1. When Protests Obstruct Free Speech
2. Hating hate speech
3. “The Only True ‘Safe Space’ is Liberty and Freedom”
4. Arizona Shuts Down College Campus Free Speech Zones in the Name of Free Speech
5. Bill Kristol Announces That ‘There Will Be An Independent Candidate’ To Sabotage Donald Trump

     Now before you start humming “One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong,” allow me to assure you that I know what I’m doing. All five of the above stories are about freedom of expression and attempts to shut it down. It only takes a moment’s reflection on story #5 – specifically, on the reasons for Donald Trump’s meteoric political rise and why Kristol and his establishment cronies want him stopped – to see the connection.

     There is legal freedom of expression in these United States. What there isn’t is practical freedom of expression. They who have decided that some things must not be said have selected means other than overt government censorship to deter them from being said, or to prevent them from being heard. Unfortunately, the nominal guardians of our rights have elected to allow them to use those means.

     They who employ those extra-legal, “informal” means of censorship are no better than Hitler’s Brownshirts. Here I shall make the assumption that we’re agreed on what Hitler’s Brownshirts deserved but didn’t get. So I will ask:

• Why didn’t the Brownshirts get what they deserved?
• Why don’t their progeny among us get what they deserve?

     Let’s pass over the cases in which the supposed enforcers of the law actually side with our contemporary Brownshirts (e.g., this outrage). In other, nonviolent instances, isn’t it quite clear that only a smashing rebuke, delivered at maximum volume, would suffice?

     So why is such a rebuke so seldom delivered?

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     Despite appearances – and the efforts of the Legacy Media to make these thugs appear larger and more menacing than they actually are – the good people are still a substantial majority. We understand true tolerance. We appreciate the importance of permitting “freedom for the thought we hate” (Oliver Wendell Holmes). And we’re very nearly unanimous that the Gestapo tactics of those who endeavor to suppress viewpoints with which they disagree are vile, unacceptable. Yet by our inaction we accept them. Why?

     One segment of popular opinion is that we’re “wimps,” afraid to take a chance on becoming targets ourselves. Then why aren’t the Left’s thugs afraid of being made targets?

     Another segment holds that as long as the laws permit such behavior, whether de jure or de facto, we’re powerless to do anything about it. A hefty majority lacks effective power over law and prevailing customs of public conduct? Hm. That’s a first for these United States.

     The third segment, to which I belong, holds that we’ve allowed the Left to define what constitutes politeness, and we’re reluctant to be “impolite.” Of course, the Left’s concept of politeness is that they can do whatever they please, and we must shut up and take it. Convenient, eh?

     Our reluctance is on the verge of costing us our nation.

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     I’ve mentioned the “Public Choice” effect in previous writings: the disproportionate command of influence possible to a small, highly motivated group with a short, coherent agenda. The reason it works that way is the dilution of responsibility felt by persons who oppose such a group. Knowing themselves to be many, no individual among them feels it’s “his job” to take up cudgels with the special interest that seeks to cow, mulct, or chain him.

     But it is every man’s responsibility to defend his own rights – and when another man is deprived of that right, the responsibility to come to his defense should be equally strongly felt. For as Ayn Rand wrote, “When you violate the rights of one man, you violate the rights of all men, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction.”

     Our rights, whether explicitly cited by the Constitution or merely implied by our common human nature, must be defended wherever they’re attacked – and there’s absolutely no hope that “our government” will do the job for us. The task is forever ours, individually and severally.

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     Just now, identity-activist movements are in the ascendant. Black activists. Feminist activists. Homosexual activists. Transgender activists. Great God in heaven, illegal alien activists. All of them are straining to suppress or deter the expression of opinions opposed to their own. Some explicitly threaten their opponents with violence. Others rely on campaigns of defamation and hate mail.

     All must be opposed, and it is the duty of every man with a shred of self-regard and even an iota of personal capacity to take part in opposing them.

     Speak out against them.
     When they “protest,” organize counter-protests.
     Rush to the defense of those they threaten and harass.
     Should violence be on their agenda, prepare defensive forces to meet them.
     And under no circumstances let their voices be unopposed, or let their slanders and demands go unanswered.

     This is especially imperative for those who “share the identity:”

     If you’re black and oppose the racialists, extortionists, and thugs, become active in disciplining them.
     If you’re a woman and oppose gender-war feminism, defend men and marriage.
     If you’re homosexual and want only peace, speak against homosexual activism.
     If you’re “transgender,” endeavor to “pass” quietly and inconspicuously.
     If you’re an illegal alien, go back to where you came from.

     But all of those could do as I’ve said and it wouldn’t reduce the responsibilities that weigh upon the rest of us to do our part. That vicious reluctance to speak or act must be shoved aside before we lose our country.

     Have a nice day.

Normality Versus Hegemony

     Quite a long time ago, I read a semi-humorous article written by a man who was left-handed. The thrust of the article was that “it’s a right-handed world:” i.e., that commonplace devices and the conventions of the world cater to right-handed persons, and that left-handers must cope as best they can. Being rather young at that time, I was somewhat intrigued by this revelation. It set me on a kind of quest: I went looking for ways in which ordinary things embedded the assumption that their users would be righties rather than lefties. As you can imagine, I found a multitude of them.

     However, the discovery did not cause me to infer that the world is prejudiced against lefties, nor that lefties are treated unfairly. It did accentuate the importance of normality – conformance to the most common patterns – in easing one’s journey through life.

     Left-handedness is not normal. That’s not to say that it’s “unnatural,” or “perverse,” or bad in any other sense. It’s merely uncommon. Lefties constitute about 15% of the population of the United States, according to recent surveys. Thus, one who is pursuing a “mass market” for his new device will more likely orient it toward righties, if handedness matters to its use.

     This is not wrong or evil; it’s merely good sense. It does mean that lefties will have to cope with burdens righties don’t. But that’s also the case with persons distant from the norms for height, weight, and general intelligence. More, there are specific occupations in which left-handedness is a valued asset; pitching and orthopedic surgery are two examples.

     This highlights the difference between normality and hegemony.

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     In our time, attempts to conflate normality and hegemony are rife. It’s normal:

• To be right-handed (~85%);
• To be heterosexual (~97%);
• To have two arms and two legs (~99%);
• To have the “normal” five senses (~99%);
• To prefer the company of those who share one’s race, religion, or ethnic heritage (~100%).

     None of these conformances to various norms confer privileges beyond a degree of convenience. Yet they matter. The lefty, the homosexual, the amputee, the blind and the deaf, and the member of a minority race, creed, or heritage must all find ways to cope with their minority standing. It’s no one’s “fault;” it’s merely the way things are. Yet there are activists determined to impose those minorities’ preferences upon the rest of us by political means, as if not Nature but the State had decreed their disadvantages.

     And far too many of us let them get away with it, most commonly in the name of “compassion.”

     It’s not that long ago that the overwhelming majority of Americans would have known how wrong that is without needing time for reflection. But the conflation of normality with hegemony has penetrated so deeply into the public consciousness that many of us react in precisely the opposite fashion – by reflex conditioned in by the relentless propagandization of those aforementioned activists.

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     This is on my mind this fine July morning due to a phrase I first encountered quite recently: “sundown segregation.” It refers to the natural human tendency to prefer the company of others like oneself when there are no overriding considerations (e.g., one’s occupation). That tendency is why America has “Chinatowns,” “Germantowns,” “Little Italys,” and the like. It’s also the main reason why American Negroes tend to concentrate geographically, despite racialists’ claims that they’ve been “herded into ghettoes.”

     Political initiatives to combat that wholly natural tendency are, in a word, unnatural. It takes no more than ordinary intelligence to realize and deplore this, just as it would take no more than that to condemn a State decree that 50% of all marketed devices be oriented toward the convenience of the left-handed. Yet such initiatives have multiplied. They receive a truly unnatural degree of acquiescence.

     What too many good-hearted persons fail to realize is that the overt rationale for such initiatives is nothing more than a cover for the all-important covert motive: the desire of the power-hungry to assert absolute hegemony over every aspect of human life.

     In some cases, it starts innocently. Just as it’s normal to have two arms, two legs, and five senses, it’s normal for a person so equipped to feel sympathy for the plight of the amputee, the blind, and the deaf. Just as it’s normal for an American to be self-supporting (or a member of a family with an adequately functioning “breadwinner”), it’s normal to feel sympathy for those who aren’t, whether by reason of incapacity or tender age. Power-mongers have learned how to latch onto such sentiments and politicize them. Thus “programs” are born to redress such “iniquities,” so the “afflicted” can feel “included.” Note that such programs tend to be eternal, by reason of the natural existence of such persons...and that they swell in a fashion detached from the prevalence of the “afflictions” they purport to relieve.

     In other cases, there’s nothing innocent about it. I hardly need to tell any Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch about the inroads black racialist mouthpieces, homosexual activists, and flacksters for “undocumented immigrants” have made into America’s politics. The salient thing here is that those inroads were paved with propaganda: ceaseless beratings of the majority about supposed “injustices” done to those minorities. Power-mongers and members in good standing of the political class have exploited them to the hilt.

     Were we to stipulate that some true injustices have been inflicted on members of minority demographics, wouldn’t it still be a far greater injustice for the State to penalize the overwhelming (and wholly innocent) majority of us to redress them? Wouldn’t that constitute a perversion of the very idea of justice: the punishment of the guilty without penalty to the innocent?

     You know the answer full well.

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     The above might seem too obvious to emphasize...which is why I repeat so frequently that obvious means overlooked. The gulf between the claims of “rights” and “injustices” and the cupidity and malice of the grievance-mongers that make them should be highlighted, yet it’s far more often ignored. Given the Main Stream Media’s swiftness to seize on exploitable occurrences to feed the grievance-mongers’ furnaces, coupled to politicians’ readiness to leap onto podia and trumpet “causes” in which we should all be compulsorily enrolled, the importance of reversing the tide has never been greater.

     A final thought: normal does not imply good or better. Majorities have no rights nor privileges as such, all pseudo-democratic notions notwithstanding. Assertions of hegemony through demography ought always to be resisted and refuted, no matter what demographic might claim it. It’s merely the irony of our place and time that minorities – groups outside the norm and distinct from it – should be waging a largely successful campaign to wield hegemony over the rest of us.