4 ms·

That's an easy stance to have just as long as nobody is trying to politicize your gender, sexuality, skin color, ethnicity or other things that you literally ca

by m12k 6y ago

That's an easy stance to have just as long as nobody is trying to politicize your gender, sexuality, skin color, ethnicity or other things that you literally can't do anything about or go anywhere without. Your skin color is either white or "political". Your gender is either male or "political". Your sexuality is either straight or "political". If you are not in the group that is protected under the status quo, then being asked to not "politicize everything" is the same as being asked to accept being stepped on. They didn't pick this fight, the people that decided to politicize their very person did.

derefr 6y ago
I think you and at least the person you’re responding to are using different meanings of “political” here. When the people in this thread are arguing for being apolitical, they’re arguing for companies not being involved in seeking to lobby for change in formal, legislated power structures. They’re not arguing for companies to not take a stance in cultural power imbalances, because to them, power imbalances enforced by a government and power imbalances enforced only by social norms are not the same thing, and only the former is actually covered by the term “politics”, i.e. the thing that politicians do for their job. The latter, in most countries, is usually just called social — and there’s nobody arguing that companies should avoid taking social stances. Forming a company to do something is inherently a social stance — a stance in any culture-wars that might be shifted by the product or service the company provides. But forming a company to do something isn’t inherently a political stance. For a company to take a political stance, someone from the company would need to actually talk to a politician at some point, in their capacity as a representative of a company — i.e. to do the thing we call “lobbying.” Tangent: associating “politics” with attention paid to cultural, non-legislated power imbalances, is really mostly a US thing. I think this might be because most other developed, democratic countries have a lot fewer such cultural, non-legislated power imbalances; for painful historically-segregationist reasons, their entire populations are mostly formed out of what in the US would be considered a single mostly-uniform voting bloc. And so politicians in most countries, can’t really base their platforms on the cultural stances of any particular bloc — there’s not enough variation in such stances that highlighting one would win you any points. The US is unique in that it ended up as one country composed of many extremely-divergent blocs, but with there being basically no formally-recognized, legislated divisions between most such groups†. Compare to all-of-Europe or all-of-Asia (which are the most sensible comparisons, given the land areas involved): the people within those continents have long ago assorted into relatively-like-thinking groups, splitting off into their own smaller countries, historically not granting citizenship to those who are “not like them”, and so becoming each much more internally-uniform in both makeup and viewpoints. (And then, if one of those countries went on to conquer the other, the introduced power-imbalance would be a formal, political one, with real legislation — the sort of thing you do “politics” about — determining the relative power of the two sub-nations within the new merged nation.) † The US does have one formally-recognized, legislated division, where both sides explicitly sit at a negotiating table within government: that division being the one between native/indigenous Americans and N-generations-naturalized-immigrant Americans. And guess which group in the US isn’t heavily invested in the culture war? That’s right, the native population. Because they form a politically distinct group — effectively an annexed nation, as above — whose problems are raised to the level of actual politics, rather than social debate.
- iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
  Yes, you’re right, we’re using somewhat different definitions interchangeably. No, I think that many are arguing for companies not to take a stance in cultural as well as legislative power balances. (I would argue that legislative power structures and cultural power structure are not so easily separated, as they inform each other). Both concepts are covered by the term “politics”. The colloquial “office politics” is just such an example of that. To sum up, I appreciate the direction you took to uncover the crux of disagreements that ate going on but I feel that your analysis is flawed because you assert that the issue is cut down a particular line (which I believe it is not) and then invalidate the opposing half through a projected misuse of the term “political” (when it is in-fact mot a misuse of the term “politial”). To your aside: I would hesitate to say that this is a uniquely US thing. Womens rights would appear, to my relatively lay self, to still be a prevalent source of cultural and legislative power imbalance in many countries and blocs across the world.
commandlinefan 6y ago
The only people who are actually in career (and sometimes physical) danger based on their political views in America right now are right-wing Trump supporters.

by m12k 6y ago

derefr 6y ago

I think you and at least the person you’re responding to are using different meanings of “political” here. When the people in this thread are arguing for being apolitical, they’re arguing for companies not being involved in seeking to lobby for change in formal, legislated power structures. They’re not arguing for companies to not take a stance in cultural power imbalances, because to them, power imbalances enforced by a government and power imbalances enforced only by social norms are not the same thing, and only the former is actually covered by the term “politics”, i.e. the thing that politicians do for their job. The latter, in most countries, is usually just called social — and there’s nobody arguing that companies should avoid taking social stances. Forming a company to do something is inherently a social stance — a stance in any culture-wars that might be shifted by the product or service the company provides. But forming a company to do something isn’t inherently a political stance. For a company to take a political stance, someone from the company would need to actually talk to a politician at some point, in their capacity as a representative of a company — i.e. to do the thing we call “lobbying.” Tangent: associating “politics” with attention paid to cultural, non-legislated power imbalances, is really mostly a US thing. I think this might be because most other developed, democratic countries have a lot fewer such cultural, non-legislated power imbalances; for painful historically-segregationist reasons, their entire populations are mostly formed out of what in the US would be considered a single mostly-uniform voting bloc. And so politicians in most countries, can’t really base their platforms on the cultural stances of any particular bloc — there’s not enough variation in such stances that highlighting one would win you any points. The US is unique in that it ended up as one country composed of many extremely-divergent blocs, but with there being basically no formally-recognized, legislated divisions between most such groups†. Compare to all-of-Europe or all-of-Asia (which are the most sensible comparisons, given the land areas involved): the people within those continents have long ago assorted into relatively-like-thinking groups, splitting off into their own smaller countries, historically not granting citizenship to those who are “not like them”, and so becoming each much more internally-uniform in both makeup and viewpoints. (And then, if one of those countries went on to conquer the other, the introduced power-imbalance would be a formal, political one, with real legislation — the sort of thing you do “politics” about — determining the relative power of the two sub-nations within the new merged nation.) † The US does have one formally-recognized, legislated division, where both sides explicitly sit at a negotiating table within government: that division being the one between native/indigenous Americans and N-generations-naturalized-immigrant Americans. And guess which group in the US isn’t heavily invested in the culture war? That’s right, the native population. Because they form a politically distinct group — effectively an annexed nation, as above — whose problems are raised to the level of actual politics, rather than social debate.

iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
Yes, you’re right, we’re using somewhat different definitions interchangeably. No, I think that many are arguing for companies not to take a stance in cultural as well as legislative power balances. (I would argue that legislative power structures and cultural power structure are not so easily separated, as they inform each other). Both concepts are covered by the term “politics”. The colloquial “office politics” is just such an example of that. To sum up, I appreciate the direction you took to uncover the crux of disagreements that ate going on but I feel that your analysis is flawed because you assert that the issue is cut down a particular line (which I believe it is not) and then invalidate the opposing half through a projected misuse of the term “political” (when it is in-fact mot a misuse of the term “politial”). To your aside: I would hesitate to say that this is a uniquely US thing. Womens rights would appear, to my relatively lay self, to still be a prevalent source of cultural and legislative power imbalance in many countries and blocs across the world.

commandlinefan 6y ago

The only people who are actually in career (and sometimes physical) danger based on their political views in America right now are right-wing Trump supporters.