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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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The Bud Light boycott continues. Anheuser-Busch is responding by sponsoring vet groups and commissioning ads that "will play heavily on themes such as football and country music". A glance at conservative comment sections reveals a few vocal consumers vowing that no amount of patriotic pandering will change their mind and that they will continue the boycott no matter what.

I am reminded of this apocryphical exchange between two Chinese officers late for battle:

What is the punishment for being late?

Death.

What is the punishment for rebellion?

Death.

Rebellion it is.

That is to say, a proper incentive structure should not only contain costs for injecting woke politics into business but also rewards for backpedalling.

On the other hand, the undisputed champions of pushing business and people around do not seem too keen on accepting apology. Or do they? The bottom line seems to be: If your public kowtow is more valuable for the propagation of the movement than the display of your head on a spike, you may get another chance (unless and untilyou even slightly step out of line again).

This seems ideal because the incentives for the victim thus contain an effectiveness criterion. Mouthing platitudes is not enough, you need to actually further the cause of your attackers. The uncertainty ups the ante for the victim.

On the other other hand, woke shaming campaigns might not be the ideal blue print for convervatives, given their lack of clout and high-brow media capture.

The woke move here would be to demand that Bud Light hire one of its people in some capacity.

If the conservative moment had any real power or leaders (which it doesn't) it could insist that Bud Light hire a conservative culture warrior into its PR team before ending the boycott.

Since that is impossible, the correct move for conservatives here is to just keep boycotting "pour encourager les autres".

Ok, so let's say AB hires Matt Walsh as their new CEO of marketing. Would/should that end the boycott?

Would no. Should yes. This is one way that woke ideologues have planted themselves in nearly every business and institution. PR crisis? Hire some "diversity consultants". Now they have veto power over everything you do unless you want to be called a vile racist. It's super effective!

Obviously this is fantasy land though. Bug Light is not going to hire a conservative culture warrior to run sensitivity trainings.