Major media institutions for years played an active role -- hand in glove with state and local governments -- in cudgeling corporations to reflect Left-wing viewpoints publicly. They still do. Now they cry about Disney and Florida. No. Same rules for everyone.
You want the status quo ante? Disengage. Mutually assured destruction is the only path back to normalcy. The incentive structures are changing, and corporations should feel free to go back to serving stockholder interests rather than woke institutional ones.
The minute we can all agree that regulating corporations into reflecting your political priors -- and promoting such regulation via friends in the media astroturfing boycotts -- is wrong, we can go weapons down. Until then, unilateral disarmament means destruction.
Anyone who says the Left has not radicalized over the course of the last twenty years is insane. In 2008, Barack Obama defended traditional marriage. The 2008 DNC platform said, "taking police off of the street is neither tough nor smart; we reject this disastrous approach."
Twelve years ago, not a major Democrat in America would have contended that a boy can be a girl. Now the White House announces that states must be forced to allow puberty blockers and body mutilation for minors.
Meanwhile, you literally cannot name a political position on which the right has moved right. It does not exist. The right has actually moved Left overall on issues ranging from gay marriage to deficit spending. By "moving right," the media means reacting to Left-wing aggression.
Incredible to see those who have spent sixty years using government and its media lapdogs to cudgel businesses into reflecting Left-wing values now weeping over DeSantis and Disney. You made this bed. You lie in it.
In a vacuum, I agree that government must not target corporate speech. We are not in a vacuum and have not been for decades. From "anti-discrimination laws" targeting bakers to threats directed at social media, from Chick-Fil-A to the IRS scandal, we are not in a vacuum.
So either the incentive structures change and conservatives begin using mutually assured destruction, or the corporate ratchet continues to move Left.
The Taylor Lorenz article is so wildly dishonest. She mischaracterizes nearly everything deliberately. A few examples will suffice.
She says that LibsOfTikTok posted "video of a woman teaching sex education to children in Kentucky." She does not quote the video. Probably because that video featured a woman talking about "sexy summer camp" for children and toddlers masturbating.
She says that Chaya Raichik "minimized covid." Here is the actual tweet she links to, which doesn't minimize covid, it mocks the Left for selectively minimizing covid: