>a) They made up wholly out of thin air just so they could drop their "have to" line

I mean, you made up international federations of managers "out of thin air" too. That's how conversations work, people introduce things, if you have issue with a particular point you can discuss that.

>and b) If an IC "is combative and fighting with their manager at every turn.", then holy hell, is it not an interpersonal conflict, it's even more of a management failure.

It's possible some people are just combative and unprofessional, and should never have been hired in the first place (or changed over time). I agree that a manager has more responsibility for a relationship with their reports than vice versa. But, I also think it's entirely possible for an employee/contractor to just be too combative and hostile, and it not necessarily reflect on the manager too.

>A lot of this entire thread sounds like "perfect victim" blaming. Only the perfect victims are allowed to point out abuse in the system, if you have some prior criminal history or you've made some sexual missteps in the past, then you "deserve" the police brutality/sexual harassment that was put upon you.

I'm seeing the view that everyone always remain professional at work - even if other people are not. I don't think that means you "have to" disregard someone's opinion. But it means if you're not professional there can be consequences. If someone is insubordinate at work (disobeying a manager, creating sarcastic/mocking backlog issues) its common grounds for termination and blacklisting. I'm not saying this to support the status quo, I'm saying this as advice for people reading these threads and trying to navigate professional waters. It would be bad advice to suggest otherwise.

Ultimately, businesses generally function by paying you for your time. If they pay for your time, but you're not doing what they want with it, they're going to stop paying you for your time. If you have a bad manager, you need to frame it in terms of how it's detrimental to the whole business.

I disagree this has anything to do with police brutality or that those parallels are helpful. I have no requirement to be professional to the police (although, for better or worse, it's often unwise to be an asshole to cops, it is legal). Whereas I do have a requirement to be professional at work. I see the point you're trying to make, how often people who suffer police brutality are maligned due to unrelated crimes they may have commited. And that's fair, that's just personality assassination. But I would say the issues have to be taken separately - the police abuse is clearly heinous and should be stopped, but also the crimes should be treated in isolation (as they likely had been in the past). Returning to our manager/IC discussion, I'd say the unprofessional behaviour of both parties would lead to both parties getting terminated. But in reality, companies will protect management more readily than IC contractors, so I'd advise anyone in the IC's waters to tread carefully.

> An interpersonal conflict is when there is genuine differences of opinion that come from honest differences in values. Not when one or both sides are clearly wrong.

That's a good point, I agree with your framing.