Holidays at U.S. Parks: Usurped by Partisan Ideology

In the United States, Christmas is the last official holiday of the calendar-year, and Thanksgiving is the penultimate holiday. New Year’s Day is the first holiday of the year. Any other holidays among or between these are private rather than public holidays, and thus the public is not obliged to recognize those holidays as if they were equivalent to public holidays. Although New Year’s Day has remained safe from ideological attack, neither Thanksgiving nor Christmas have. Nevertheless, their status as official U.S. holidays has remained, at least as of 2025, and thus it remains as of then at least proper and fitting for Americans to refer to those holidays by name rather than by the denialist, passive-aggressive expression, happy holidays, which conveniently disappears even from retail clerks just in time for New Year’s because that holiday is ideologically permissible. The problem writ large is the influx of ideology trying to invalidate certain official United States holidays. By the end of 2025, the initial influx had triggered a counter-influx that is just as ideological, and thus only encircling certain (but not all) official holidays with ideology. The underlying fault lies in using the creation of a holiday to promote an ideology.

Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth were made official U.S. holidays to promote an ideology. This rationale for declaring a public holiday is problematic because such holidays should be acceptable beyond a partisan minority or even a simple majority of the public. This translates into requiring that both major parties agree (even beyond simple majorities) in Congress before a new holiday is declared.

With regard to existing official holidays that have long been on the books, the onus should be on efforts to remove those holidays because ideologically-oriented motives for change, being partisan, warrant strict scrutiny, whereas the holidays’ default status does not. In short ideologically-motivated change should be subject to heightened scrutiny because ideologies are typically partisan rather than a matter of unanimity.

That Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth are arguably too duplicative or overlapping, thus contributing to there being too many public holidays at the expense of the Gross Domestic Product and thus prosperity (and employment), is an indication that both holidays came out of an ideological push rather than a national sense or identity. In other words, the excess alone is a sign that holiday-making had gotten out of hand. In 2025, U.S. President Trump argued that there had come to be “too many non-working holidays,” and that all the days off were costing the U.S. economy too much in lost productivity.[1] Doing ideology by creating holidays does not come cost-free in economic terms. If the selfish trend of making holidays in one’s own image continues, more and more holidays might be viewed as valid only by some, rather than by every American, as being an official U.S. holiday were not validating enough. This does not mean that every American must or should celebrate every holiday.

The trend can also be seen in the changes made to holidays on which fees are waived in national parks. Firstly, that the “Trump administration removed Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from [the 2026] schedule of free entrance days for national parks” indicates that those two holidays are ideological, and thus partisan, in nature, and thus not fit to be public holidays.[2] Secondly, that the federal president then added his own birthday to the list of free-entrance days shows just how egocentric and thus arbitrary (to other people) holiday-creation had become. Trump also removed the birthday of the Bureau of Land Management, which could be a reflection of the president’s ideological dislike of regulatory agencies. Why not remove the first day of National Park Week, Great American Outdoors Day and National Public Lands Day too, as being excessive losses of revenue, given that none of those constitute even minor holidays like MLK Day, Veterans Day, and Juneteenth. Removing non-fee days such as Great American Outdoors Day would make sense from a financial standpoint, especially given Trump’s addition of President Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday and the Fourth of July, which make more sense anyway, given all that Roosevelt did for the national parks and the major status of Independence Day in terms of anything governmental in the United States.

The president’s fiddling with the fee-free days at national parks goes to show that the questionable ideologically-based rationale of holiday-creation may seem to go seamlessly along with more legitimate, and credible from a national standpoint, rationales. So, the interlarding of the former can easily go unnoticed and only objected to after too many holidays have been added to the calendar. That conservatives were joining in the game of ideological holiday taking-and-giving has effectively relativized, or flagged, what the progressive had been doing in creating new national holidays and even in trying to outlaw Christmas, a national holiday, be castigating any mention of that major public holiday by name.

The addition of a counter-force could thus be efficacious if the objective is to sever holiday-construction from the tool-kit of partisan ideology. That politicalizing had already gone too far with neither realization from the public at large nor any self-restraint by the expansionist ideologues themselves is itself a problem worthy of notice and correction. Successfully adding or ending a national holiday should receive the consent of the vast (super) majority of Americans at the very least, including both of their major political parties rather than just one with a minority of the other. Opposing partisan ideologies can be fought over on the campaign trail and at the ballot box rather than by using holidays, which, incidentally, can serve as respites from all the political turmoil. Treating holidays as political means rather than as ends in themselves, including what they stand for, has gone virtually unnoticed by Americans and their elected representatives. This takes a gradual and subtle yet important toll on the very notion of a public, official holiday, such that even the major holidays are subject to attack for ideological purposes. It is important to realize that any ideology is partial rather than wholistic because some values are emphasized more than others.

The guts that it took to risk treason by declaring British colonies to be sovereign countries, and President Lincoln’s benevolent declaration of one day to give thanks came under attack in the early twenty-first century because American history is not salubrious with respect to American Blacks and Indians, and counter-holidays, partisan in nature, were created, whether public or private holidays (as if the two were the same).  As a result, nearly every national holiday could be viewed as being valid only for people of a certain ideology on one side or the other, rather than as what a public or national holiday should be. The vacuous, ideological expression in “wishing” someone, “Happy holidays” is just one symptom of the underlying societal illness. Such a “greeting” fits with Nietzsche’s point that modern morality has been wielded like a club under the subterfuge of good-will. In other words, “Happy holidays” contains a virulent “Thou shalt not!”  Unfortunately, the very notion of an official national holiday has become collateral damage for a people grown wary of too much ideological push. Is there any respite? At one time, holidays afforded such a rest. Put simply, spending weeks arguing directly or by verbal passive-aggression about a galvanized holiday is counter-productive from the standpoint of enjoying a day off work to relax and have fun. The tyranny of an ideological minority can be just as bad as that of the majority; holidays—July 4^th at the very least, should be tyranny-free.

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1. Pocharapon Neammanee, “Trump’s Birthday Added to National Park Free-Entry Days After Dropping MLK Day and Juneteenth,” The Huffington Post, December 6, 2025.
2. Ibid.

Enjoy Your Holiday: On the Weaponization of Kindness

 In Europe, the word holiday can refer to what in America is called a vacation, which of course can occur whether or not the vacation falls on a national holiday. Regarding the latter, the official designation of a holiday by a government renders the holiday valid anywhere in the country’s territory. This does not mean that very resident or even citizen is duty-bound to pay any attention to a given national holiday, but deciding not to celebrating a holiday does not thereby mean that it is not legitimate and thus valid. Deliberately acting out from the instinctual urge of passive aggression by refusing even to say the name of a national holiday in public discourse, as if a personal decision not to celebrate a national holiday eviscerates it on the national calendar can be viewed as a case of hyperextended projection from a personal dislike to the personal desire to cancel the national holiday, as if a personal dislike could nullify a national law or proclamation. Behind the passive aggression is none other than selfishness, which implies loving oneself over loving God. Theological (rather than psychological) self-love renders the world as a projection of the self, including its narrowly circumscribed (to private benefits only) interests. Hence, the unrestrained ego leaps from its own dislike to being entitled to unilaterally, as a private actor, nullify an officially designated national holiday as null and void. I contend that Nietzsche’s philosophy can shed some light on this modern phenomenon concerning Christmas, an official U.S. holiday. Kindness as actually passive aggression is tailor-made for Nietzsche’s eviscerating scalpel, which he wielded to expose the power-aggrandizement being exercised under the disguise of the moral injunction of Thou Shalt Not! 

The full essay is at "Enjoy Your Holiday."

October 12th: Happy Vikings Day!

I contend that the ideological war being waged in the United States by the 2010s over whether October 12^th should be “Indigenous People’s” Day or Columbus Day became real in 2021 when President Biden issued a proclamation commemorating “Indigenous People’s” Day not coincidentally to fall on the same day as Columbus Day. Similarly, though only unofficially, the United American Indians of New England have labeled Thanksgiving Day as “The National Day of Mourning” since 1970. The de facto hegemony of ideology in changing official U.S. holidays, including in the refusal of some people and even businesses to say “Christmas” even on Christmas Eve Day, has proceeded without the premise that ideology should play such a role being debated in public discourse. Instead, the onslaught has been enabled by the vehemence of the conquerors in insisting that their decisions be recognized and not contradicted. Once I went to a Unitarian “church” on a Thanksgiving expecting a spirit of gratefulness, as per President Lincoln’s proclamation establishing the date of the holiday after two years of brutal war between the CSA and USA. The sermon was instead on the need for sorrow instead. I walked out, shaking my head in utter disbelief. Perhaps some Americans might one day insist that a similar mood be preached in churches on Christmas Day. Both the need and insistence come with a tone of passive aggression, and are indeed power-grabs based in resentment, which Nietzsche argued is a major indication of weakness rather than strength, and thus self-confidence. Perhaps the manufactured dialectics, such as the one centered on October 12^th, can be transcended in a Hegelian rather than religious sense at a higher level.

According to Britannica, Helge and Anne Ingstad discovered “the remains of a Viking encampment that they were able to date to the year 1000,” almost 500 years before Columbus’ landing on islands in the Bahamas (rather than on the mainland of North America).[1] The Graenlendinga Saga (Saga of the Greenlanders) has Bjarni Herjólfsson as the first European to see mainland North America in 985. At around the year 1000 CE, Leif Eriksonn, son of Erik the Red, “is reported to have led an expedition in search of the land sighted by Herjólfsson,” according to Eiríks Saga Rauda.[2] This is consistent with the empirical evidence found in Newfoundland.  Leif Eriksonn “found an icy barren land he called Helluland (“Land of Flat Rocks”) before eventually travelling south and finding Vinland (“Land of Wine”).[3] Later, Leif’s brothers travelled to Vinland, where their expedition stayed for three years. This is certainly sufficient to refer to the holiday on October 12^th as “Vikings’ Day,” or “Eriksonn Day,” which would cover the brothers too. Columbus Day has been antiquated by the discovery of Viking artifacts on the mainland of North America, in Newfoundland, which is a lot closer to where the Puritans settled than is the Caribbean islands, which of course are not on the mainland of North America.

To be sure, the peoples who came to be known as American Indians by the Europeans had come to North America thousands of years earlier, and thus were not indigenous either, could be said to have been the first people to discover America, from the vantage point of Asia rather than Europe. But those people emigrated gradually from east Asia over a land-bridge that extended back then westward from Alaska, rather than coming over after an expedition of discovery. In any case, the word “Indigenous” can be struck from “Indigenous Peoples” Day for greater accuracy.

In short, Vikings Day can safely, from the perspective of the hyperactive ideologies, be used for the holiday, as there is no evidence that the Vikings in the eleventh century mistreated any of the earlier arrivals from Asia. The dialectic of Columbus Day and American Indians Day can thus be done away with at a higher level of historical accuracy.

The role of ideology in making and remaking holidays in the U.S. can be seen as it has played out at universities located in different member states. At Harvard, which is located in Massachusetts, classes and offices were closed on “Indigenous Peoples Day” on October 12, 2024, without any mention of “Columbus Day” in the academic calendar. The ideological preference is clear not only in which name the university used for the holiday (rather than using both names), but also in the fact that the university did not cancel classes for Veterans Day. Universities in the militaristic member-state of Arizona had classes on Columbus Day but not on Veterans Day.  Whereas Harvard kept its libraries open on “Indigenous Peoples Day,” public universities in Arizona did not even do that for Veterans Day, in spite of the fact that students would obviously be studying on a one-day break from classes. Harvard is typically compared with Yale. Not even Yale cancelled classes on October 12^th (or on Veterans Day); instead, Yale, unlike Harvard, had a fall break of one week in October, which did not include Columbus Day.

In short, the respective university administrations, reflecting the political ideology that was most powerful locally, were making ideological statements in deciding whether and when to not hold classes on particular holidays. Harvard’s administration used the excuse that Cambridge, Mass recognized “Indigenous Peoples Day” as the reason why the university was recognizing that holiday and not Columbus Day, even though it too was a national (and state) holiday. I would not be surprised if Americans of Italian ancestry felt a slap. Part of the problem with ideology-fueled resentment is that such collateral damage is ignored or even, in a twisted way, believed to be justified.  Allowing an ideology to turn holidays into a battlefield is in dire need of being debated in the public square in the United States, rather than being tacitly allowed due to the efforts to intimidate. “Thanksgiving IS a day of sorrow! You better not disagree!” Such has been the tone intended to thwart even debate on the matter.

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1. Jeff Wallenfeldt, “Did the Vikings Discover America?” Britannica.com (accessed October 14, 2024).
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Thanksgiving as a Day of Mourning: On the Instinctual Urge of Resentment

According to CNN’s website, the “sobering truth about the harvest feast that inspired Thanksgiving” is is the fact that colonists killed Indians. According to an analyst at CNN, the American Indian Day of Mourning, established in 1970 for the fourth Thursday of November, turned Thanksgiving “into something more honest” than the Thanksgiving mythos of a peaceful feast in 1621 suggests.[1] The drenching of self-serving ideology in CNN’s “analysis,” like heavy, overflowing gravy obscuring the sight and taste of the underlying mashed potatoes, is something less than honest.

Historically, the feast in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1621, exactly four hundred years before Thanksgiving in 2021, when I am writing this essay, was attended not only by the Pilgrims, but also the Wampanoag Indians. The two peoples were then in an alliance. CNN’s Tensley attempts to derail the value of cross-cultural feast by pointing out that initially, “the pious newcomers didn’t even invite the Wampanoags to the revelry.”[2] The value in the fact that the Indians reveled with the Pilgrims in feasting is not nullified by the fact that the Pilgrims had changed their minds on sending out an invitation. Also, that the invitation served strategic interests in strengthening the alliance is no vice, for the alliance was based on ensuring survival in a changing world.

Moreover, the Day of Mourning is itself partisan in that it tells only a partial truth—namely, that Pilgrims killed Indians in the colonial era of North America. Left unsaid is the equally valid point that Indians killed Pilgrims. That the small pox disease also led to the death of Indians was no fault of the Pilgrims, contrary to Tensley’s ideological resentment. Furthermore, that killing took place between Indian tribes and English colonies generally does not nullify the good that is in a shared feast even among allies. Mourning the loss of American Indians generally as a replacement for Thanksgiving obscures that good and in fact implies that the killings in a broader war nullifies the good that is even in an eventual invitation. It surely must not have been easy for either the Indians or the Pilgrims to sit down together for a feast given the more general prejudice then existing between the Indian tribes and English colonies.

Of course, the point of the national Thanksgiving holiday established by President Lincoln in the nineteenth century—namely to give thanks to God—is of value in itself rather than being nullifiable by the hitherto conflict between the English colonies and Indian tribes in North America. 

The 2021 Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City. (Source: CNN) Surely such happiness does not deserve to be sullied by sordid resentment as a will to power.

In short, the imposition of a day of mourning over Thanksgiving really misses the point. In actuality, the imposition is, in Nietzschean terms, an instinctual urge fueled by resentement. Nietzsche claims that more pleasure from power can be had by mastering such an intractable urge rather than letting it run wild. Such overcoming internally is the signature of strength—more so even than conquering enemies on a battlefield. Unfortunately, the weak are so oriented to their external enemies that even truth can suffer and giving thanks to God can be overlooked entirely. The weak are children of a lesser god. A god of projected resentement, which discredits the very notion of a benevolent deity. Like light from a distant star, Nietzsche writes, the news of the discrediting murder of the conception of a vengeful god of perfect goodness has not yet reached the murderers, whose hands are drenched with blood. To claim, out, out damned spot! yet not know the source of the blood must surely be a worrisome interim condition drenched with anxiety, which in turn can fuel an instinctual urge based in resentement of the strong—people willing and able to control even their most intractable instincts.   

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[1] Brandon Tensley, “National Day of Mourning Turns Thanksgiving into Something More Honest,” CNN.com, November 25, 2021 (accessed same day). CNN labels Tensley’s role as that of an analyst rather than an opinion-writer—the false attribution of fact belies the salience of the writer’s opinion-informed ideology.
[2] Ibid. Tensley’s own hostile ideological resentment is evident in his labeling of the Pilgrims as pious—here connoting a presumption of superiority. The Indians no doubt also felt superior, as it is only natural for any people, including the Pilgrims and Indians, to favor one’s own culture over others if one’s ideology (i.e., values and beliefs) is in sync with one’s culture.

Black Friday: An American Holiday

For a long time, I didn't understand why the Friday after Thanksgiving in the U.S. would be called Black Friday. Why associate darkness with such a nice holiday whose humble purpose is to feel gratitude, even and especially if a person has little externally for which to feel grateful. Black Friday is so named because the shopping day is so bit it can bring retail businesses out of the red and into the black, as if profitability were dark rather than something worth rejoicing--in business, I might add--rather than for a whole society. For American society to so easily have come to call the day following Thanksgiving black just because that is how managements perceive it demonstrates just how commercialized, or business oriented, American society has become. What this means for that society, and even perhaps the majority of the people themselves, is very troublesome, even disturbing.

It seems that every Black Friday reports come in concerning customers fighting for products of artifically (and doubtlessly intended) limited supply--meant to lure a lot of "guests" to the stores whether they get the real good deals or not. After many years avoiding going to retail stores on that day of the year, I finally went to a Walmart and Best Buy to investigate my thesis and even maybe buy something--a laptop in particular.

At the Walmart store, I arrived about an hour before the beginning of the store opening only to see customers with huge television screens--in some cases, even five in one cart! As for laptops, people could not get them until the opening bell, so a long line was already forming. Comparing the in-store sales I had looked at online (not just online sales) with what the store actually had, I was disturbed by the discrepancy. So, while I was standing at the end of the line, I asked a saleswoman whether any laptops, rather than notebooks, were among the "laptops" available at the front of the line. "Laptops and notebooks are the same thing," she replied in a tone that indicted that she didn't think she could possibly be wrong. Matter of factly, I corrected her, and asked her to go the department's main desk to as other employees my question. Although she she said she would check and come back, she seemed more concerned with me standing in the middle of the aisle rather than to a side (to speak with her). She did not return, which gave me that bad taste that she had been more focused on telling me to do something myoptic rather than make good on what she was supposed to do. I went to the desk myself, and as for the products actually there, let's just say I immediately left the store. Can bad management itself, especially concerning rude employees, be unethical?

At the Best Buy store, a salesman told me that the store has a supply of the laptop I had seen on my phone just a hour earlier. It was a "late day sale" not available Friday morning. The salesman went back stage with his supervisor, who also had told me that he was sure that supplies are behind in the back area. Yet when they came back out, the salesman had a laptop that was from another manufacturer and for $70 more. "The last of the laptops you want is being sold right now," he said. He didn't offer to call another store and have a laptop held; ignoring the fact that I would naturally be disappointed, he said with excitement that he had a totally different laptop for just $70 more! He wanted the sale; I could sense the intensity of his greed. I was so disappointed (and disgusted) that I walked away shaking my head in disgust. Later, I called another store and explained. "Unfortunately we can't..." was an answer, I suppose. I then called the original store and asked to speak to a manager about an issue I  had in your store. With conceit, she dismissed me by remarking that all of the managers were busy with customers. No offer to take my number, for the managers would not make the time to call. I was done with Best Buy, I resolved.

Between fighting customers, which I did not witness (but I did see a lot of police stationed in throughout the Walmart store, as if anticipating), and the rude and incompetent customer service (i.e., management, including HR training), and with so many people in the stores, I had a dark thought that I had just seen a glimpse of the underside, or the real nature of, American society so formed by business interests, which of course helps the bottom line. A dog-eat-dog aggressiveness among strangers, and sheer rudeness (i.e., passive aggression) by employees evading accountability and drunk with the momentary power of being in demand for once, for one day. In a commercialized culture, it is particularly easy for retail managers and especially their subordinates to go over-board. It is the aggressive demeanor of the retail employees that struck me most on that Black Friday in which I said to Thanksgiving, so sorry your theme of gratitude is not only run over by eaters bent on pigging out, but also allowed to be immediately followed by such a squalid human nature on display. Do managers revel in their power to dominate or serve customers? It seems that perhaps at many or even most retail businesses, at least in America, the nature of service has never penetrated training. Where contact with customers actually happens, greed and perhaps even a desire to dominate eclipse service. Even in settling on a price, the managers typically make sure the store's position dominates even if this means losing the sale altogether. But the passive aggression (i.e., the hyperthropic urge of the weak, according to Nietzsche, to dominate) is most apparent (and yet it's not!) in disputes with customers. "So sorry, but it is going to be my way; take it or leave it." Are managers so afraid to allow their subordinates no actual discretion, or do the employees themselves relish the power-trip? Moreover, had I seen the logical extreme of unbridled capitialism, or just a capitalist society in full operation?


See related: Bad Management as Unethical: The Case of Walmart, and The Arrogance of False Entitlement, both available at Amazon. 

Thanksgiving Elipsed by Christmas: Will the Offending Businesses Go Extinct?

Even as the business-sourced encroachment of Christmas had all but eclipsed the American holiday of Thanksgiving in 2013 on account of the day falling so late in November (as if four weeks were somehow not a long enough time for gift-buying), the on-going trend (or stampede) of stores opening earlier and earlier on Thanksgiving puts the holiday itself in the cross-hairs of the retail rifles. Thanksgiving may one day be essentially extinct, and, ironically, so too might be the usual suspects--the enterprises themselves.
The New York Times reported in mid-November 2011, “Major chains like Target, Macy’s, Best Buy and Kohl’s say they will open for the first time at midnight on Thanksgiving, and Wal-Mart will go even further, with a 10 p.m. Thanksgiving start for deals on some merchandise. . . . To be at or near the front of the line, shoppers say they will now have to leave home hours earlier — in the middle of the turkey dinner for some.”[1] Of course, Wal-Mart stores would be open all day, as usual; the significance of midnight lies only in terms of the sales; the stores would still need to be staffed all day. In 2012, 10 p.m. became the new normal. Two years later, 8 p.m. (20:00h) earned the distinction. Four hours into Thanksgiving was apparently enough for Kmart to “go all the way,” opening at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving. Old Navy extended back to 9 a.m. It is amazing how fast a trickle from a few cracks can turn into a deluge, especially when profit is the force beckoning the water down-stream. 
Resisting the smooth flow in 2011,  an apparent anti-entropic energy-attractor was on track to blaze a new path. Bill Gentner, senior vice president for marketing for J.C. Penney, refused to go along with herd down the easiest path of energy transduction, which can paradoxically render the person, species, or human organization less fit to adapt via natural selection. “We wanted to give our associates Thanksgiving Day to spend with their families,” Gentner said just before Thanksgiving in 2011.[2]  In standing on this principle, the management group at J.C. Penney voluntarily resisted the “quick buck” (i.e., pulling in money as soon as possible) and perhaps even held business calculation at bay in the face of a normative societal “constraint.” 
Lest I am “gilding the lily” (i.e., painting a halo around Bill Gentner’s head), J.C. Penny’s management may also have been seeking to amass reputational capital with the intent to “spend” it to increase sales revenue  beyond 2011. The company could then be fitter in adapting to a nonlinear (i.e., chaotic) business environment, and thus more likely to survive through the cumulative cascades of natural selection. Linking evolutionary theory to thermodynamics and applying the fused thrust to business, I contend that capturing and concentrating energy in the battery, or storage cell, of reputational capital enables a company to survive under the pressures of natural selection by functioning as a transductor of energy along a high energy gradient. 
Unlike floating down-stream with the other fish, adding to the swirling force of an eddy enables an enterprise act as a conduit on a much steeper energy-gradient. Concentrating acquired energy rather than merely passing it through as though a digestive track is requisite to taking the road less travelled down steeper energy-gradients than those in the status quo. Similar to the time value of money, the delayed gratification enabling an enterprise to ski on a steeper slope renders the organization more fit or adapted to its environment and thus profitable beyond tomorrow. In other words, functioning as an energy-conduit along a steeper gradient profits a business in terms of natural selection, and thus a more secure continued viability.[3]
Alternatively, taking the alternative route, the more convenient one, ultimately leads to extinction. Typically, convenience knows itself as a lie. For example, Holly Thomas, one of Macy’s spokespersons, wrote in an email in 2011 regarding employees working on Thanksgiving, “There are many associates who would prefer to work this time as they appreciate the flexibility it affords their schedules for the holiday weekend.”[4] As if referring to a summer baseball team rather than employees, Molly Snyder, a spokesperson at Target, said that her company does its “best to work around the schedules of [its] team members.” Nevertheless, a Target employee told me that the store managers do not in any sense do their best to accommodate exogenous schedules of the underlings. In going with a bland subterfuge rather than adapting to societal norms, Target's management put the company at odds with the principle of natural selection. 
The lure of instant gratification in lieu of reputational capital and fitness to survive the accretions of natural selection over time can easily short-circuit efforts to charge the battery at the expense of increased sales revenue in the short term. Sadly, the management at J.C. Penny succumbed in 2012 to opening stores at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving. The following year, the company joined many others in opening at 8 p.m. (20:00h). Nothing punctures a pressurizing balloon quite like that the piercing edge of hypocrisy. Put another way, having stores open on Thanksgiving evening not only cuts into or even eliminates Thanksgiving dinner (i.e., in the evening) for many store managers and non-supervisory employees, but also sends the passive-aggressive message that they don’t count after all. Actions speak louder than words. 
So J.C. Penny’s management wimped out, or lapsed back to the bottle yet without hitting bottom. Being less fit than otherwise to navigate the turgid currents in natural selection over the long term, the retail giant risked being caught unaware should a careening stone hit a sweet spot from a smaller foe releasing a burst of (stored) potential energy to take advantage of a steep energy gradient. From this tale, we can now recognize the tyranny of the road most traveled as a well-worn, deep-rutted path of self-destructive (i.e., dysfunctional) business strategy. In other words, business as usual is woefully far indeed from good business management. Nevertheless, the vast majority of management groups in companies are under the false impression that scientific management has optimized modern management. While technical coordination aimed at the perfection of efficiency is important to a business functioning as an energy-attractor and transductor along a steep slope, the size and depth of the shared blind-spot bewilders me and beguiles the pro-business American society at large. If I am correct, business could be done much, much better.
 

1. Stephanie Clifford, “Thanksgiving as Day to Shop Meets Rejection,” The New York Times, November 11, 2011.
2. Ibid.

3. William C. Frederick, Natural Corporate Management: From the Big Bang to Wall Street (Sheffield, UK: Greenleaf Publishing, 2012).

4. Hadley Malcolm, “Black Friday Backlash as Stores Add to Thanksgiving Hours,” USA Today, November 15, 2011.