Striking Back At Cancel Culture In The C-Suites & Boardrooms
[Buck Throckmorton]

Corporate America is getting more brazen and aggressive in its role as enforcer/executioner of left-wing cancel culture. Within just the past few weeks: Disney fired actress Gina Carano for daring to express her conservative political views. Without a search warrant, Bank of America handed private credit card data to the FBI, simply based on the consumer having used it for charges in Washington DC around the time of the Capitol incident. Kohls, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Wayfair all dropped My Pillow as a vendor because its owner advocated on behalf of President Trump.

Enough. What if in response, cancel culture were to be inflicted on the executives and Directors of these corporations? Would they consider backing off?

Although most corporate Directors are little more than credentialed social climbers who have networked their way to the Boardroom, they do have the actual power to make their companies stop being a part of cancel culture. They can be incentivized to do so.

We just saw millions of angry Americans (let’s call them “Gamestoppers”) swarm together to short-squeeze hedge funds out of billions of dollars - just for fun and vengeance. What if a similar army of Gamestoppers chose to cancel the executives and Directors of corporations that are at the forefront of cancel culture?

If every political contribution, DUI, tax lien, brush with the law, college yearbook, regrettable photo, messy breakup, social media post, off-color joke, etc were to be shared with millions of people, might those executives and Directors re-think the cost/benefit of participating in cancel culture? Mutual assured destruction can be very persuasive in getting an aggressor to stop attacking.

But if “my principles” are that cancel culture is wrong, how can I then advocate canceling executives and Directors of corporations? Real easy…it’s not a moral conflict. Their companies are engaging in cancel culture, and they can make it stop. If they won’t, they are bringing counter-cancellation upon themselves.

It’s akin to another one of my principles…that it is inappropriate to recreationally drop nuclear bombs on foreign cities. They are really horrific weapons. Just plain awful. But after Japan attacked the Unites States in 1941, and continued to wage war against us well into 1945, dropping nuclear bombs to stop further loss of American life became an action that comported with the principles of people like me. Further, Emperor Hirohito understood that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were actually the polite requests. Tokyo was next. And if he didn’t stop the war, then the bed he slept in was ultimately going to be ground zero for a nuclear bomb. He got the message and stopped the war. And we stopped nuking Japanese cities.

Not unlike the persuasion used on Hirohito, if the entire executive team and Board of Directors of a few companies at the forefront of cancel culture were to suddenly become targets of counter-cancellation, the rest of corporate America might re-think their role in cancel culture.

Generally, the job of a Director is simple - show up at a meeting one day a year, listen to the presentation, vote to award the executives their 8-figure bonuses, and then collect a big 6-figure check for half a day’s work. But if the prestigious job of being a Director morphs into one of public humiliation at the hands of millions of Gamestoppers playing a game of counter-cancellation, Directors can and will make their companies stop it.

(buck.throckmorton @ protonmail.com)

posted by Open Blogger at 04:34 PM

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