Is it worth noting that the protesters also came prepared with cuff ties and were seen to be expressing the desire to murder Vice President Pence (whom they viewed as a traitor for, basically, following the Constitution)?
Also, there’s a small matter of several live pipe bombs found around the city, fortunately found and disabled before any went off.
I’m going to push the premise of this thread even further.
Reflecting on the coup attempt, and suspecting that worse may be ahead for 1/20, I find small comfort in knowing that a few dozen rioters may face prison time. What about the millions of Trump supporters who have told pollsters they support this coup, that the rioters who invaded the Capitol were doing the right thing, and that they still believe Trump is the rightful president moving forward. What price should they pay for continuing to support this idiocy?
I say they should pay with their jobs. I believe employers should, to whatever extent is legal, review social media feeds and fire anyone who visibly and unambiguously supports the events of Jan. 6.
These people are traitors. (Maybe they’ve been brainwashed by Fox News and QAnon, but no one made them watch that crap.) They have no respect for the Constitution or the rule of law. Therefore, they have no right to continue benefiting from the commerce made possible by this nation’s laws.
(And before anyone jumps in and says What about the BLM rioters? – this isn’t about them. It’s about Trump supporters.)
(And please don’t raise First Amendment rights. If you still need to be educated that the 1A doesn’t apply to private employers, you’re on the wrong site.)
(And for og’s sake, I’m not talking about all Trump voters – just the ones stupid enough to publish their approval of his treasonous behavior in public forums for everyone to see.)
We’re never going to be a functioning democracy until people learn that they can’t just smash everything until they get their way. And they’re never going to learn unless they suffer for not learning.
I know this is a nasty viewpoint and I hope it gets some reasonable counterarguments. I don’t like being this angry.
Well, people have the right to their beliefs, and to spewing some of them in some settings. This differs from people actually committing seditions or traitorous acts. Many moral philosophies and religions draw a distinction between thoughts and deeds.
But that’s my point. Posting “I blame antifa for Jan. 6. Trump won the election and Biden is a criminal who should be shot for stealing our democracy” is a seditious, traitorous act. You’re not spewing your belief – you’re encouraging others to violently attack their own government.
Given the number of Americans who support Trump, a company that choose to fire all his supporters might find it difficult to continue doing business. If I’m managing a transportation company, what am I to do if 50% of my drivers have expressed pro-Trump sentiment in the last three weeks? We’d be hemorrhaging money as customer orders sat unfulfilled due to lack of staff on my part.
I also think there’s arguably a difference between hiring decisions and firing decisions. If you’ve got an existing employee with a proven track record of competent and professional behavior, who doesn’t drag politics into the workplace, then I don’t see the point of scouring their personal social media feeds for political sympathies unless you already have a specific concern about their engaging in behavior that’s actually criminal or otherwise harmful to your company.
When it comes to evaluating the comparatively unknown quantities of job applicants, on the other hand, it’s reasonable to have your eyes open for serious red flags that might affect their as-yet-untested ability to exhibit competent and professional behavior. (And again, I’d set the bar for “serious red flags” raised by Trump supporters somewhat higher than others in this thread might be doing.)
That’s a good point. I don’t own a business myself*. If I did, it would sicken me to know I was paying people who were cheering while rioters overran the nation’s capitol. But sicken me enough to cripple my own business? Probably not.
*Yes, I know this alone should disqualify me from saying what I think employers should do.
Or you believe (erroneously) that Obama was “just as bad” (and as noted, at least he supports Israel!).
Luckily my relatives who fall in that camp were finally jolted out of this viewpoint by Trump’s coup attempt last week.
I’d be curious to hear what they say about it. Did they finally acknowledge that it’s been bullshit all along, or was it more like Well, I guess he’s gone just a little too far this time?
I don’t think it’s ethical to screen out anyone to help you prosper and grow because of their
own political persuasions.
I work in a pretty diverse org, in order to get along there appears to be an understanding to avoid talking about politics, sex or religion as much as possible and instead focus doing what your being paid to do instead, and return the results. Win, win.
With that, if you need a person to do these very specific tasks in order to prosper - you should hire that person based on that alone, and nothing else.
Probing into their minds regarding their political beliefs ?
That’s none of your business, … do you want the new Bently or not ?
Now that McConnell has quashed the impeachment hearing for the time being, they may use his maneuver to “prove” that the attempted coup really wasn’t that bad, otherwise the Republicans would have gone forward.
If that person is just assembling widgets, maybe. But say the person is customer facing, and you find out they have gone to a Nazi or KKK rally. I wouldn’t trust them to represent the company well when dealing with people they clearly hate, even if they keep a lid on their beliefs as far as you can tell. Bias is often subtle.
Basically that they never were Trump fans but are single issue voters who thought Trump would be good for Israel (to be fair, because they are Israeli immigrants, not evangelist) but now he really crossed a line that there’s no coming back from.
When I pointed out he may still pardon the insurrectionists they were genuinely horrified by the idea as it hadn’t occurred to them until then.
Eta: “you were right all along about Trump” would have been nice but I wasn’t expecting that and didn’t get it.
Even if they are assembling widgets. I mean, I don’t care if your political beliefs are “we should have a more direct democracy and get rid of the electoral college” or “corporate personhood is a fine concept” or “ID should be required (or not required) to vote” or “borders should be more (or less) controlled” But if your political beliefs are “women are inferior to men and it isn’t a problem when we pay them less for the same work because they really should be home anyway” or “black people should not be entitled to the same treatment as white people and its completely ok that they have fewer polling places per capita than white people” we don’t have a problem with “political beliefs” we have a problem with values and human decency and how are you going to be when you are assembling widgets between a black person and a woman - how long until one of them shows up in HR?
I hadn’t thought of that aspect of it, but I agree.
I have been a woman in the workplace. And I’ve worked with people who have come right out and said that I should be home with kids. I had one guy WHO WORKED FOR ME! when I was pregnant ask me if he could have my job when I left. And when I said I’d be back after my six weeks of maternity leave, gave me a lecture on how it wasn’t really appropriate for me to work and be a mom. He worked for me! (And he wondered why he was let go when his current placement ended). I had another guy who when I got the promotion he thought he should have, regaled a whole meeting (that I wasn’t at) with a misogynist rant against me, with heavy use of b**** and c***. As I said, my discretion on these matters is a little more finely tuned than many, and I’m guessing its much more finely tuned than the vast majority of white men.
If I’m doing business in an environment where in order to run the business, I need to hire misogynists, homophobes or racists, I’m packing up and either moving my business or shutting it down. By the way, I currently pay 18 mostly white (a few Middle Eastern, Asian or East Indian) men. In five years, I’ve refused to renew or recontract with two people - and refused to work with one more that came our way. (Its a consulting company - they are all contractors, so I don’t “employ” any of them. My partner handles recruiting and sales and I handle the operations. We only work through word of mouth, so we aren’t getting stacks of resumes. And since its two women running the company, people who are misogynistic tend to choose another firm to work through)
I agree. I wouldn’t hire a person who has knowingly gone to a KKK/Nazi rally. Just like I wouldn’t hire someone who joins an ANTIFA “protest”.
I’d wager that the majority of Trump supporters/voters aren’t racist Nazis. Just like the majority of Biden supporters aren’t ANTIFA hooligans.
Nonsense.
You have a job, right? So you’re half of the employer/employee relationship. You have exactly as much right to have opinons about that relationship as your employer.
Employers certainly don’t think they’re disqualified from saying what employees should do. Even on their own time, apparently.
This is just part of a wider problem and I don’t know what the solution is. I see a lot of memes on Facebook comparing the Republicans to an abusive spouse in a relationship. But you can leave an abusive spouse. You really can’t leave 70,000,000+ people. At the end of the day they’re still going to be part of our society and we have to find some want to reconcile that. I wish I could answer how that might happen but I don’t know.
Not just customer facing people either. We had a supervisor who was in some sort of disagreement with the person their daughter was dating. This disagreement stemmed at least partially from the back that their daughter’s beau was black. Said beau ended up recording one of their phone conversations where our employee used the N-word and posted it on Facebook tagging our company and asking us if this was the type of person we wanted to employ. (This was back when Obama was president.)
This employee supervised black employees and once this got out I don’t believe any of them had confidence that this supervisor would treat them fairly. We didn’t fire this employee, but they’re no longer a supervisor and any chance of climbing up to management was squashed.
