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| Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) | |
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In late Friday (EST) announcement, Twitter says it has now identified a total of 50,258 Russian-linked automated accounts -- and notified 677,775 people exposed to Russian propaganda. blog.twitter.com/official/en_us…
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| Kenneth Frazier, CEO, Merck; Brian Krzanich, CEO, Intel; Kevin Plank, CEO, Under Armour resigned from Pres. Trump's Manufacturing Council in protest. |
Recent news reports about Silicon Valley mega-corporations such as Pay Pal, Google, Facebook and Twitter banning conservatives from their services should give pause to GOP "thought leaders" who have argued that privatization is a panacea.
In fact, in the Trump Era, the time has come for a change of course by those fighting Political Correctness, to recognize that "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people" cannot be permitted to fall under the control of one political party indefinitely--and that GOP policies which enabled Democratic hegemony over the "permanent government" may have contributed to the current crisis of legitimacy.
If 50% of the population is not represented in the government workforce, then it cannot be said to be a representative government. Indeed, it is by definition unrepresentative--no matter that the elected officials sitting on top of the pyramid may differ. When Democratic Party civil servants openly announce their intention to "resist," then a constitutional crisis is inevitable.
Quite simply, no country can afford to have a political party which has been defeated at the ballot box in a position to determine the allocation of government goods and services to its opponents. It is not only undemocratic, it is a recipe for political corruption, chaos and abuses of the highest order.
However, in order to effectively combat this dangerous situation, the GOP must abandon its fetishistic commitment to "privatization" as the sole tool in their toolkit to deal with government issues.
It is quite clear that the Democratic party has corrupted a willing private sector to the point where American businesses now are more than happy to sacrifice markets, customers, and profits for Political Correctness--whether Merck, Intel, UnderArmour, Target, Apple, Google, Facebook, or Camping World, or dozens of others.
This represents a fundamental and problematic change in prior business norms.
In the recent past--I taught in a business school for some 15 years--it was axiomatic that businesses should steer clear of politics to the maximum extent possible.
While individual business people were free to be political in their private lives, companies should try avoid political controversy--on the understanding that large numbers of customers disagreed about politics, so why risk losing sales?
However, this prior consensus obviously no longer applies.
Today, companies seemingly go out of their way to adopt controversial positions which alienate and even insult considerable segments of their customer base, with ostentatious "grandstanding" such as Merck's resignation from the President's Manufacturing Council, or Apple's $1 million donation to the SPLC.
One should note that Steve Jobs did not believe in making any charitable donations, so Tim Cook's action is in direct contradiction to the business legacy of the company's founder, which I discussed in Corporate Social Responsibility and Its Discontents: Contradictions in ISO 26000: 2010 (August 15, 2014).
1. Steve Jobs & Apple—an anti-‐CSR CEO of an anti-‐CSR company.
Walter Isaacson’s magisterial biography of Steve Jobs (2011) does not contain a single entry in the index under “Charity,” “CSR,” “Corporate Social Responsibility,” “Social,” or “Responsibility.” This is not surprising. Jobs did not believe in spending company money on charity. He was so Scrooge-like that he did not pay dividends to stockholders. Job’s control-freak style of management at Apple, and what Isaacson characterizes as his “nasty” and “mean” personality, enabled him take the company from one-twentieth the value of Microsoft in 2000, to parity in 2010, to being worth 70% more than Microsoft in 2011—a year in which Mac’s market share grew by 28% as Microsoft’s shrank 1%. Yet no one can deny that Apple products have in fact added value to society.
Their user-friendly, easy-to-use, and simple design made computing accessible to a wide range of people alienated by Microsoft’s difficult interface…and helped move computing from the corporate office to the individual home and pocket. This, in turn revived an endangered American electronics industry through the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and MacBook computers. Indeed, Isaacson called Jobs “the greatest business executive of our era, the one most certain to be remembered a century from now."
One reason for Jobs’ success at Apple, is that rather than diverting attention and resources to CSR initiatives, Apple remained focused on its core business, and in Jobs’ own words, put “humanity into innovation.” Isaacson concluded Jobs’ focus was “to a create a company to last, not just to make money.”
In putting his company first—above employees, customers, or society—Jobs exemplified [Milton] Friedman’s theory of the responsibility of the business executive. Did it lead to a successful business? Yes.
In other words, as Steve Jobs knew but Tim Cook does not, the proper business of business...is business.
That said, it would be remarkable if one could rely upon business to counter a determined political movement, especially as many of America's CEOs currently seem to follow the Chinese model, with the Democratic Party as the Communist Party, as explained in Bruce Dickson's Wealth into Power: The Communist Party's Embrace of China's Private Sector.
This would indicate that the traditional model that the GOP represents the private sector while the Democratic Party the public sector is in need of revision.
Indeed, with the government sector (federal, state & local) accounting for more than half of all jobs in the USA--more if one includes contracts and grants--the time has come for the Trump Administration to force pushback in the public sector.
Quite simply, the principle of representation and diversity must be expanded to promote inclusion of Republicans and Independents on the public payroll in proportion to the American population. What would that mean?
It would mean that the government workforce profile should be adjusted through goals, timetables and affirmative action programs to match Gallup survey results on political affiliation of the American public, the latest presented below:
In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat or an independent?
| Republicans | Independents | Democrats | |
|---|---|---|---|
| % | % | % | |
| 2017 Aug 2-6 | 28 | 41 | 28 |
Aug. 10, 2017 UPDATE: James Damore was indeed fired by the Google Inquisition, subsequent to publication of this post on August 7th:
I could recount what I have seen and heard in other Countries, where this kind of inquisition tyrannizes; when I have sat among their lernedmen, for that honor I had, and bin counted happy to be born in such a place of Philosophic freedom, as they suppos'd England was, while themselvs did nothing but bemoan the servil condition into which lerning amongst them was brought; that this was it which had dampt the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had bin there writt'n now these many years but flattery and fustian. There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo grown old, a prisnerto the Inquisition, for thinking in Astronomy otherwise then the Franciscan and Dominican licencers thought. And though I knew that England then was groaning loudest under the Prelaticall yoak, neverthelesse I took it as a pledge of future happines, that other Nations were so perswaded of her liberty.
--Milton, Areopagitica (1644)
Recently, I saw a production of James Reston, Jr.'s play Galileo's Torch at late Maestro Lorin Maazel's Castleton Theatre, directed by Maazel's widow, Dietelinde. 
"Yes, I was a card-carrying Communist. I was a member of the party until Peggy and I got married, and she convinced me that it was stupid to belong any longer."
"...and in 1958 he was hauled before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, where he denied being a Communist after 1955. (He refused to discuss his activities before that time.)"
-- Kenneth Turan, FREE FOR ALL: JOE PAPP, THE PUBLIC, AND THE GREATEST THEATER STORY EVER TOLD
Prior to the 19th century, though, heckling was as much part of the theatregoing experience as it is in standup comedy today. Audiences in Shakespeare's day would have been vocal in their pleasure (and displeasure), while Drury Lane audiences in the 18th century were perfectly capable of hissing actors they didn't like off the stage. Despite the regular complaints of disruptive mobile phones and audiences who text or talk their through shows, no 21st-century British theatre audience would boo for 10 minutes, as people did after the premiere of Noël Coward's Sirocco in 1927.
Shakespeare's audience was far more boisterous than are patrons of the theatre today. They were loud and hot-tempered and as interested in the happenings off stage as on. One of Shakespeare's contemporaries noted that "you will see such heaving and shoving, such itching and shouldering to sit by the women, such care for their garments that they be not trod on . . . such toying, such smiling, such winking, such manning them home ... that it is a right comedy to mark their behaviour" (Stephen Gosson, The School of Abuse, 1579). The nasty hecklers and gangs of riffraff would come from seedy parts in and around London like Tower-hill and Limehouse and Shakespeare made sure to point them out:
These are the youths that thunder at a playhouse,However, instead of incorporating Loomer's heckling into the performance and making it part of the discourse, perhaps responding with theatrical ad-libs, Eustis brought the "discussion" to an end in a decidedly Stalinist manner, by having Loomer arrested and taken to the Central Park Jail.
and fight for bitten apples; that no audience, but
the Tribulation of Tower-hill, or the Limbs of
Limehouse, their dear brothers, are able to endure.
(Henry VIII, 5.4)
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing...
(Hamlet, 3.2)Yet, like Stalin himself assuring Westerners that all was well in the former Soviet Union, Eustis claimed to welcome discussion rhetorically, while simultaneously suppressing it by his actions:
Our production of JULIUS CAESAR in no way advocates violence towards anyone. Shakespeare's play, and our production, make the opposite point: those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic means pay a terrible price and destroy the very thing they are fighting to save. For over 400 years, Shakespeare’s play has told this story and we are proud to be telling it again in Central Park.
The Public Theater stands completely behind our production of JULIUS CAESAR. We understand and respect the right of our sponsors and supporters to allocate their funding in line with their own values. We recognize that our interpretation of the play has provoked heated discussion; audiences, sponsors and supporters have expressed varying viewpoints and opinions.His transparently agitprop production exposed for the incitment it was, director Oskar Eustis brazenly quoted Hamlet about "holding a mirror up to nature" (while signaling his Leftist politics by apologizing for "use of the male pronoun") in a YouTube video also on the website:
Such discussion is exactly the goal of our civically-engaged theater; this discourse is the basis of a healthy democracy.
#WeAreOnePublic
Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end. (Richard III, 4.4)Shakespearean struggles have taken a toll on cultural institutions before, in New York City, in Manhattan, on Astor Place, once upon a time site of the fabled Astor Place Opera House--now gone forever as a result of the Astor Place Riot of May 10, 1849.
What's past is prologue. (The Tempest, 2.1)
