Why Do Business With Companies That Hate You?
If a business takes your money and uses it to pursue an agenda at odds with your core values, why support that endeavor with your hard-earned money?
This needn’t be said, but we’ll say it anyway: When you buy goods and services from woke companies, you’re not just tossing your money into a roaring fire or flushing it down the toilet. You’re giving it to your political opponents to use against you.
Think about it: When you give your money to Big Corporate — and by this we mean large corporations that have made a decision, whether via free will or coercion or cowardice, to adopt a leftist political agenda — you’re the equivalent of Chip Diller, the Kevin Bacon character in “Animal House.” You’re stripped down to your skivvies like a hapless fraternity pledge, and you’re bent over and taking that sadistic paddling from Niedermeyer.
And you’re not only taking it; you’re also saying: “Thank you, sir. May I have another?”
The question is: Why?
When we posed this question a month ago, we noted that those on the Left are way ahead of us when it comes to consumer behavior. They know how to use their purchasing power to effect change.
Rather than supporting companies that don’t agree with them politically, they organize. They coerce, they vilify, and they dox. On occasion, they’ll even oust CEOs that they don’t like. One way or another, they threaten companies that don’t bow down to their political agenda. Jesse Jackson and his ilk, for example, have gotten rich by shaking down companies in this manner.
“Some of these businesses,” as columnist Justin Haskins writes, “have recently gone much further than merely promoting social justice causes; they have chosen to target conservative customers and employees, coercing or forcing Americans to abandon their deeply held beliefs in order to receive important goods or services or to stay employed.”
This is reprehensible behavior, and we’re not advocating it. All we’re suggesting is that we look to do business with companies that either embrace our values or that have made a conscious decision to stay neutral when it comes to politics.
Nashville-based 2ndVote can help. The company’s name refers to your vote not at the ballot box but with your wallet at the cash register. Another company that can help is PublicSq. (pronounced “public square”), which has both a website and an app that displays all the non-woke businesses in your community or in any area you happen to be visiting.
A nonprofit organization called 1792 Exchange can also help. Its homepage reads as follows:
1792 Exchange is a resource and alliance of likeminded organizations and leaders that guarantees all viewpoints have a seat at the cultural table. We bring together natural allies of First Amendment freedoms into a united movement. Working together, our convening power exposes coercion and executes a response to ensure private actors cannot force seismic cultural changes while silencing free expression.
As Haskins writes, “The 1792 Exchange recently launched its Spotlight Report, which assesses more than 1,000 companies’ ‘policies, practices, and other relevant criteria to determine the likelihood a company will cancel a contract or client, or boycott, divest, or deny services based on views or beliefs.’”
Haskins has even called out 51 companies across four categories — banks, transportation, retail giants, and food and beverage — that he deems to be the worst of the worst. And while some of those companies are obvious — Bank of America, Citigroup, United Airlines, Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Ben & Jerry’s, PepsiCo, and Starbucks, for example — others aren’t nearly so. (Southwest Airlines, Walmart, Home Depot, Kellogg’s, Smucker’s: looking at you.)
Why not dig deeper and see which companies are taking your money and using it to undermine your values?
Going forward, let’s not be Chip Diller. Let’s be better. Let’s be smarter.
