The Professional Has Always Been Political
On professional ‘neutrality’ being Power’s best middle manager and strategic disruption being Labor’s best middle (or, pointer) finger.
Every paycheck is a ballot. Every project, a policy position. Every client, a coalition. Yet we've allowed ‘professionalism' to become our collective alibi for moral inertia — a well-practiced performance of not seeing what we're paid to ignore.
Here's the reality: The masquerade of professional neutrality isn't just a facade; it's a load-bearing wall in the architecture of power. Whether you're crafting campaigns for fossil fuel companies or declining projects that compromise your values, you're voting — with your talent, your time, and your tacit endorsement. That marketing strategy you're developing? It's not just moving metrics; it's either reinforcing or resisting existing power structures. That client you're choosing to serve? You're not just accepting their money; you're sanctioning their message.
Political acts wearing business casual and hiding behind meeting minutes.
– On Performative Professionalism
The “keep politics out of business" crowd maintains their willful ignorance that their performative professionalism that keeps the boat from rocking keeps the boat from moving at all. Every corporate tax break, every lobbying effort, every carefully crafted PR statement about “staying neutral" on human rights — these aren't just business decisions. They're political acts wearing business casual and hiding behind meeting minutes.
When we pretend professional choices exist in some mythical moral neutral zone, we're not being professional. We're being professionally complicit in maintaining systems we claim we can't see from our ergonomic office chairs. Because claiming to be apolitical isn't just endorsing the status quo with better branding — it's actively participating in the theatre of powerlessness that keeps power precisely where it is.
(And yes, this post is political. Just like your decision to keep reading it — or not — was political. Just like my years of “professional neutrality" were political. See how that works?)
FOOTNOTES
On the pronunciation, from a Feb 12, 2025 article in The Independent :
“Grimes and Musk seem to have different ideas of how to pronounce the name. ‘It’s just X, like the letter X. Then AI. Like how you said the letter A then I,’ Grimes said.Musk, meanwhile, told podcast host Joe Rogan: ‘I mean, it’s just X, the letter X. And then, the Æ is, like, pronounced ‘Ash’... and then, A-12, A-12 is my contribution,’ he said.”
If this post made you consider whether you’re putting on a show with your own professionalism, consider contributing to our coffee fund. (And yes, asking for coffee money after critiquing capitalism is precisely the point.)
X Æ A-Xii¹ takes a bold position in the Oval Office during a Feb 11, 2025 press conference with his dad — the richest man in the world — and the President of the United States of America.
/ visual: the Error Dome from a screengrab of the debacle
