Tim Cook, social justice warrior

This is a screen shot, the link to CEO Apple, tim_cook goes to his timeline.

Well look at you. This is good, Tim. Opposed to what though, treating everybody differently? According to race as our governments do? Or making news items and covering them according to racial script as our legacy media does?  Or adjudicate cases of sexual predation by sex of the accused as our courts and our colleges do? You're cute, Tim. I like this part best, "no matter who they love." That's so sweet, because it so breezily and summarily dismisses everything surrounding the issue and looks only at the puffy little cotton ball of love blowing around in the shoebox corner that occurs here and there in and out for romantic love between two people is tender and evanescent, and everyone loves love. 

The link goes to Washington Post, Tim Cook: Pro-discrimination 'religious freedom' laws are dangerous

Shit. I guess I have to read the whole thing now even though I flatly don't care what Tim Cook thinks.  

He opens ominously that something very dangerous is happening all across the country. Waves of legislation introduced in several states will allow people to discriminate based on their religious prejudices. They can actually cite their religious beliefs to refuse service.

The audacity. Like bakers chosen for being Christian being forced by the state of Colorado to bake a wedding cake for out-of-state activist customers mobilized specifically to challenge their basic beliefs that fill their spiritual lives, their business that is specifically Christian that funds their economic lives, and the state laws that govern their operations? And then, get this, the owners must endure some sort of attitude rehabilitation classes run by the state, and they must also keep records of how many minorities they serve and which type of minority. Nobody is interested in that except government. NOBODY! But, that's how our state government rolls. Those neighbors, Tim?  

But Tim would never have that problem, he'd sell his computers to anybody anywhere. It's a wide open global business model unlike a small local Christian bakery.

I don't know what that means.

Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Tim cites Texas considering legislation that would strip clerks who issue marriage licenses to gays of their salaries and their pensions no matter what the Supreme Court does with their ban on single sex marriages. He counts nearly 100 such bills.

The next paragraph is a cartoon suitcase bulging with presumption on its stand trembling under strain about to burst its faulty lock. Tim dismisses opposition with a breath.

...rationalize injustice by pretending to defend something many of us hold dear.

They're pretending.

They go against the very principles our nation was founded on,

Founded on the principles of gay sex. He means equality, of course. My conversations on this go off the rails when I dare mentioning that gay males always had and always used legal equality to marry any female they want. Looking at it from the interest of state, whatever legal benefit proffered by state or derived by couples from this marriage between male and female, whatever subsidies, tax breaks come to a marriage that is acknowledged by government with their license is a form of bribery by government to coerce two impossibly divergent sub-species to cohabit long enough to possibly pull off raising a few children and supply good solid citizens for the state in their fashion.

Weren't expecting that, were you?

Of course they mean especially-equal, not equally-equal.

Now that wee bit of economic coercion hasn't the effect it once did as government makes itself more and more useful in fulfilling functions that families once fulfilled, we gave government that power to pick up where extended families once functioned and make themselves indispensably useful as surrogate husbands in the realm of nuclear families, so marriage itself is redefined by the support that government gives and so is economic success redefined. Yet marriage laws and tax laws, and inheritance laws, reflect the original almost pioneer era coercion. Why else have them? That is one of the perceived threats to marriage, the loss of government lagniappes. And now as consequence to all this equalizing between especial equalities we're creating inequality between married and unmarried. Why the discrimination? How can this unequal treatment between marrieds and unmarrieds be tolerated?

Our cue ball sets up the next shot.

This all seems so last century yet here we are Tim is finally catching up to the bandwagon. Welcome aboard, Tim, what took so long?

Tim lectures us.

The picture on Washington Post shows Tim with his mouth open in a lecture-y stance. His body configuration reads: "this pile of mud here." If I were a comic I would put one arm akimbo and with the other presenting an invisible pie and say, "For you see...

America’s business community recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all its forms, is bad for business.

Touching. Then no need for Apple to interfere. That bit is self-correcting.

Apple won't discriminate against anybody who can both afford and decides to purchase their axiomatically overpriced products. No matter what. Tim says Apple strives to do business in a way that is just and fair and that is why he is standing up to oppose this new wave of legislation. He wants to start a movement and hopes we will join. He says the bills will hurt job growth and economic vibrancy [but doesn't say how] in these southern places where 21st century economy was once welcomed.

Tim says he has great reverence for religious freedom. He cites his own religious experiences. He recalls his life in the south in the 60's and 70's how difficult discrimination is to extinguish, how it moves to shadows and embeds in our laws.

The rest is a good load of tripe, horn tooting, platitude, bromide, homily and tardiness.

Our message, to people around the country and around the world, is this: Apple is open. Open to everyone, regardless of where they come from, what they look like, how they worship or who they love. Regardless of what the law might allow in Indiana or Arkansas, we will never tolerate discrimination.

You're full of shit, Tim. You do tolerate discrimination, you exercise discrimination against anyone unwilling to go along with your company's well known marked up prices. And now you are practicing discrimination against entire states attempting to wrest control of language concerning the institution of marriage. Frankly, it's none of your business's business but if you make it so it will be so and to your company's detriment and that is not good stewardship.

Tim goes on about our fighting men and women and what they fought for:  Gay marriage. He means equality, of course.

We owe it to them to continue to fight. Tim blends military personnel, patriotic duty, race civil rights and sexual preferences again with reference to "whites only" signs on shop doors.

Speaking of that, I actually did see one those signs hand written on a board above an exterior door to a crumby looking place. But that was what, some three lifetimes ago. We were sitting in a restaurant in Bossier City very close to Barksdale AFB, across the street from the main gate actually, perfect Mayberry type restaurant or similar to AFB tarmac type cafes and I asked Mum, "What kind of laundry only does whites?" Seemed a strange business model. I don't know what Tim is on about mixing these two things like this with such glib ease.

A glance at the last paragraph, bink, limelight.

This isn’t a political issue. It isn’t a religious issue.

Yes it is, and yes it is. Moreover it's an economic issue too if you persist in blending your politics and your evolving secular faith with your company's prospects.

This is about how we treat each other as human beings. Opposing discrimination takes courage. With the lives and dignity of so many people at stake, it’s time for all of us to be courageous.

Yes, of course it's about how we treat each other, but it takes no courage to oppose discrimination, simply stop doing it. As you do discriminate, right here, Tim, against southern states.  Starting out by telling us under your leadership following your spiritual humanity how much better Apple is than all those southern states that are far less righteous than yourself and  that fail to follow the cues dropped by your Democratic Party.

Comments at Washington post to the article are useless. They're still piling up as I write this.

Back to Twitter.

Toot toot. 

Eh, Tim makes some good points, but Man, I'm tired of this crap. The thing that pisses me off is I honestly believe we're all social justice (warriors?) in our way and for the most part living as good people, that is what I see with very rare exceptions. Inhumanity happens, but rarely. I see people going out of their way helping others all the time as part of their everyday being and over decades I see slow evolution on all fronts. The fronts having to do with all these issues cited by upstart so-called social justice warriors. (Was there ever a term self-referential that says, "I'm a deluded dick" more than this, other than "progressive?" It's an idiot's way of patting them self on their own back by the use of a term for themselves. This is the epithet I'll have for myself. It sounds good and that's all.)  I can cite dozens of examples of steady and observable progress but we've all seen it right before our own eyes over decades and contrary to opinion social change is not all the result of the noisiest and most aggressive and obnoxious nor best funded activist who put themselves out in front of a movement already occurring if in too slow motion to suit them. Progress is made despite their interference not because of it, despite the immense waves of backlash that activist caused that disrupted change in attitudes occurring palpably and naturally, by their influx of cash, virtually unending wealth, by their anxious and premature legal wrangling leading to referenda in reaction to their urgency that would not have happened without their interference, then challenging those referenda, plus individual law suits, by their positions within government and by their illegal releasing tax information so they can harass their opponents illegally, along with the dirtiest of dirty politics to push it all forward faster that hardly puts a shine on the cause. I've had people travel, pick me up for dinner, become red-face livid and ruin the dinner over a cartoon version of their opposition on an issue that I know they didn't care about a month previously. It was all suddenly contrived. All of the psychologically disturbed urgency of wrenching the natural development of acceptance from steady line of progression  then claiming credit for victory for any and all progress. They are heroes of their own stories for obnoxiously and fiercely fighting for speeding ineluctable change. 

Separated out, gays are the most privileged people I know. They know that they are better than you are, intellectually, wit, talent, taste, worldliness, looks, careers, money, knowledge, fashion, spiritualness, you name it. The occasional pair that were interested in marriage did so. The sudden mass caterwauling about feeling like second class citizens is risible coming from the singular most privileged, and frankly elitist group that I know. At this point it became a game that anxious people play. A hobby. How do I know this so solidly? First, as set up, we see the couples on t.v. rushing to the courthouse for the papers that validate their love and our hearts are filled with warmth and goodwill and superiority because we support love. As if they hadn't been actualized until government gave its blessing. As if they hadn't been wed all along.  Kind of like a knighting. As if their legitimacy of their love, of their being, was not realized until this special moment. An affirmation of one's validity. So there's that. From my point of view government's affirmation of my marriage is the same as my dog's affirmation of my marriage. And I know that attitude is shared. So what is going on is something else. This is a war won already and passed entirely like the Civil War with only echoes fading off although activist will cite these laggard states with new proposed legislation most likely arising from their own activism although they will never admit that. After all the unnecessary and contrived recrimination that could have been avoided so easily with mere steady patience, I know solidly because couples living as married all along having won then never bothered. After all that, "You noisy-ass bastard, you had better get married." But they didn't get married. 1, 2, 3, 4 ... down the line I can go citing examples of activist couples, recriminating and fierce against opposition, not bothering with marriage. It was an idea for other people, you see. You know, equality for youngsters coming up not necessarily for themselves. 

They're building a more equal future. And then at last here's Tim long after the dust settles and with only cleanup activity remaining in a few lagging states here and there so late to the trundling bandwagon pitching his Apple products in the form of company position paper on social issues.

Finally, more tweets dogging Tim Cook.