This is in reference to the January 6th hearings, and Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers saying he would vote for a certain person again in 2024… even though that person's supporters gave his family death threats and harassed him as he dealt with a terminally ill child:
Rusty Bowers sees himself as doing whatever it takes to keep his job, and his future career prospects. And that says something about how rotten American workplace culture has become.
Selling yourself out to keep your job actually goes much deeper than political parties. The American workplace has been exactly like that for years– the unspoken rule has always been, if you want to keep your job and advance in the company, you'd better shut up and do as the boss says.
In especially bad times, the demand has been not just to do what you're told, but to do it with big, sincere smiles on your faces. Be a cheerleader for Team Boss. And with increasing employer control over your personal life, to see how well you continue to boost your company's image. Only the biggest, most enthusiastic suckups ever make it to leadership in a company. This was working life in the decade before the Great Recession, and most people just put up with it. And in many cases we rearranged our entire value system to be what would make us the most desirable to such bosses!
I actually worried for a while that because I didn't play team sports in high school, I had put myself at a disadvantage in the working world for life. Why? Because several business publications spoke glowingly of team sports experience being an invaluable builder of character and social skills. Because Jim Cramer once outright said he wouldn't hire you unless you played team sports when you were young. Because people get jobs from shared hobbies and out-of-work connections all the time. Because the boss was watching my private life to make sure I was continually working to be a great fit for their culture.
Corporate America had made clear what kind of person would succeed, and it was getting narrower and narrower ever year. And it wasn't me… unless I could go back in time. relive my life, and ignore my lack of interest in team sports so that I could give myself the kind of social and team experience a boss was looking for. Maybe I should have ignored my lack of interest in marriage and family life, too, and get those things; so that I could get evidence I have social skills to show my boss.
That is the backdrop behind all this attitude of “I can't have morals or disagree with my leader if I want to keep my job.” The fact is, this attitude in the workplace takes away our freedom. Even in our so-called “freest” years politically, Americans weren't really free, because of creeping employer control over our lives– remember the bit about re-engineering our whole lives to make ourselves more desirable to potential employers.
That's what Rusty Bowers has done. That's what millions like him have done. Told themselves they have to meekly submit to their employer, and in some cases cheer for their own subjugation. Told themselves that their futures demand they make their bosses like them, at any cost.
Surrender your morals, your conscience, and put up with all manner of evil as part of their jobs. The great economy of sucking up and getting a bully's patronage.
It's frankly amazing the American economy has functioned as well as it has been. Because free and open hiring processes, live-and-let-live workplace cultures, are not just the morally right thing to do, they're the economically sound thing to do. Because economies need stability, and workers, the foundation of economies, are more stable when they're no longer living in fear of losing their jobs on a whim. And they're more psychologically healthy when they no longer fear that disagreement will throw them out of the boss' favor.
There's a reason why democracies are more economically successful than autocracies.