Thursday, April 02, 2015

WINGNUTS NO LONGER QUITE SO SURE ABOUT THIS PROSTRATION-BEFORE-CEOs THING

The Reagan revolution and the fall of communism have combined over the past 30-plus years to create a culture in which corporations are more powerful than they've been since the Roaring Twenties, if not the Gilded Age. Right-wingers used to be very, very happy about that, and the vast majority of them still are.

But some of them have suddenly noticed that the monster they've bred won't always do what they expect it to do with all the power they've given it. And they're peeved.

Here's National Review's Kevin Williamson stamping his foot in rage because the two most powerful corporations of the Reagan/post-Reagan era don't hate gays the way he does:
Tim Cook, who in his role as chief executive of the world’s most valuable company personifies precisely the sort of oppression to which gay people in America are subjected, led the hunting party when Indiana’s governor Mike Pence signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, while Walmart, a company that cannot present its hindquarters enthusiastically enough to the progressives who hate it and everything for which it stands, dispatched its CEO, C. Douglas McMillon, to head off a similar effort in Arkansas, where Governor Asa Hutchison rolled over immediately.
Oh, boo-hoo. You create a political system in which corporate money is all but unlimited, one that effectively turns all politicians into the plutocrats' clerks, then you're upset when the richies' unlimited right to make demands includes marching orders to which you object? Furthermore, you define capitalism as an economic system passed down directly by God on stone tablets, then you're angry when market forces motivate corporate chieftains to be inclusive?

Williamson writes as if he's been reading 1960s left-wing sociology, or at least listening to anti-establishment Classic Rock, and repurposing it to attack both liberals and megacorporations:
The self-styled progressive sets himself in rhetorical opposition to Big Business, but the corporate manager often suffers from the same fatal conceit as the economic étatist -- an unthinking, inhumane preference for uniformity, consistency, regimentation, and conformity. It is no surprise to see Apple and Walmart joining forces here against the private mind. There is a reason that the atmosphere and protocols of the corporate human-resources office are a great deal like those of the junior-high vice-principal’s office: All reeducation facilities have a little something in common.
IF YOU DON'T EAT YOUR MEAT, YOU CAN'T HAVE ANY PUDDING!

Meanwhile, in Sioux City, Iowa, Ted Cruz is also angry at The Man:
"The Fortune 500 is running shamelessly to endorse the radical gay marriage agenda over religious liberty to say: 'We will persecute a Christian pastor, a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi,' " he said. "Any person of faith is subject to persecution if they dare disagree, if their religious faith parts way from their political commitment to gay marriage."
Denouncing "the Fortune 500"? Damn, Ted, when did you go all Occupy?

And if you and Kevin hate the big corporations so much now, why don't you join us in trying to tax them? Or regulate them? Or punish their illegal acts in a way that actually has deterrent value?

7 comments:

Victor said...

Now our idiotic conservatives hate the corporations whose free market task is to make as much profit as possible, and that discrimination against any group cuts into their goal of maximizing profits?

Maybe that Indian pizza joint can survive just dealing with intolerant religious bigots in their town.
Most big businesses, can't, across the nation.

For once, I say "HUZZAH!" to our corporate profit mongers!

Now, onto addressing income inequality and paying livable wages!!!

Never Ben Better said...

Wouldn't it be hilarious if gay marriage was the wedge that forced a divorce between the corporatist and culture warrior wings of the GOP?

oc democrat said...

"IF YOU DON'T EAT YOUR MEAT, YOU CAN'T HAVE ANY PUDDING!"

I just want to be "Comfortably NUMB!"

retiredeng said...

"Wouldn't it be hilarious if gay marriage was the wedge that forced a divorce between the corporatist and culture warrior wings of the GOP?"
Looks like that's exactly what it is.

Roger said...

In New York City it is well known, that Kevin's looking for a fat and psychopathic wife to thrash him within inches of his life.

Ken_L said...

Williamson is a fearless champion of the freedom to destroy someone else's property when they do something you don't like, such as send texts during a theater performance. Dedicated to individual liberty, these folk, especially their own.

M. Bouffant said...

personifies precisely the sort of oppression to which gay people in America are subjected
So, is it that every CEO is gay, or that every gay person is a CEO? Inquiring minds want to know.