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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Except it is. It's a cult that's caused corporate America to engage in performative rituals. Performative rituals are not conducive to productivity. Companies exist to make money, period.
HR is enough of a cash suck/cost center already. Larding it with DEI strictures is throwing sand in gears. At one point in my life, and very annoying one, I had to work with an HR head managing 1100 people. This kind of stuff drove everyone nuts. "This is sexist, that's discriminatory, we should have a workshop." Pissed away a small fortune getting opinions from outside counsel on employment matters. Godawful, tedious.
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If the social change you attribute to DEI is that corporations now perform expensive performative rituals, I would say (1) speaking as a manager in corporate America, you are overestimating the expense, and, more importantly, (2) the kind of social change that DEI advocates have been looking for is to foster a culture of social equality, and even expensive performative corporate rituals weren't the point.
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If the Trump kids had such a laptop, it'd have been on the front page of every newspaper in the country. Don Jr's dick picks would still be a meme today.
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The great thing about this kind of argument by hypothetical is that it is completely speculative, and so completely irrefutable.
I personally don't want to see dick pics from anyone, including both Hunter Biden and Don Jr. I am 100% OK with editorial judgment by the media that permits me not to see them.
It's telling that it's not that you want to see Hunter Biden dick pics, it's that you see a double standard. We started with the idea that you were defending the freedom of expression from authoritarians, but now you are complaining that about a double standard involving the publication of hypothetical dick pics. Life comes at you fast.
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And it's defended, laughably, as efforts to stanch misinformation.
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Actually, no. I just told you that Twitter's policy was not to publish stuff that had been hacked. The misinformation is in your version of the facts, and there is no stanching it. God Bless America! You continue to be free to receive and disseminate all sorts of nutty things.
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But the Biden laptop is just one of the most recent examples of it. Recall how the media got in line and parroted Bush's bullshit to get us into Iraq? How about the stamping out of lab leak theories as disinformation, and worse yet, racism? How about the endless bullshit about the efficacy of masks? Even Fauci has admitted lying about that. But it's okay, and we shouldn't talk about his lies, because they were noble lies - those who know what's best for everyone else needed to get people in line.
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Is your point that when the government says something, lots of people believe it? Yes, that is too bad.
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Your refusal to see authoritarian creep all around you is kind of surprising. You're not a blindered sort. But I think you're so tied to the idea that it can only come from the right that to show you how it insidiously comes from the left incenses you. It's like pissing on some article of faith.
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I don't see authoritarian creep on the left because I think the fringe lefties you're talking about are not in any danger of taking any real power anywhere in this country, and when I and the rest of the world talk about authoritarianism, we are talking about government control over things, not a couple of guys on Twitter. YMMV. MAGA types currently occupy all sorts of government offices all over the country, and there is a real danger that Trump will win the next presidential election. (You never actually name the leftist bogeymen who get you all hot and bothered.)
If you say the left and the right are equivalent, and I say, no they're not, it doesn't mean that I think the left is perfect. I'm saying that differences between right and left are real and important, and should be acknowledged and discussed.
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.... I don't see any right way to poke fun at these things. And things like DEI, or ESG, are not like finance at all. People hold these things to be so virtuous as to be beyond reproach. I can make fun of finance all day long, anywhere. Nobody takes offense or thinks one "dim" for doing so. Finance doesn't care; it's making money. Poke fun at a DEI consultant or exec and see how that flies. Better yet, try it with a Dean or Professor. These things are sanctified. And what's sanctified is... religion.
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It just depends on how you do it. The issue here is that when you talk about poking fun at DEI, what you really mean is trying to make a so-called "joke" that tells everyone you think DEI is a waste of time and money. In the sort of large company that we are talking about, there is an understanding that once business decisions get made, there is a time to shelve your personal views and pitch in to make the plan work. If you're at the table when someone is deciding whether to invest in DEI, you can absolutely say it's not a good use of money. Once the decision is made, it's time to support that decision. People who can't do that are disruptive, and they get weeded out.
