So what was that Corporatism post about

What more and more young people see

It came to mind this last Christmas when we realized we were out of tags for last minute wrapping.  So I went out to the stores, knowing it was a long shot.  No doubt this happened to us late Christmas eve, right?  No.  It was a few days before Christmas Eve.  So why the trouble?  Because, just as stores begin putting up the first Christmas paraphernalia before football season properly begins each year, so they begin taking down their Christmas paraphernalia sooner and sooner just the same.

The first time I saw this was way back in the late 90s when we were still living in Louisville.  Being me, I had a few last minute things to get.  It was 1998 I believe, when our second son had been born.  I went out to buy what I needed and noticed that the stores were already packing up.  As one who had made a life long habit of shopping late on Christmas Eve, that was the first time I recalled seeing the decorations being removed in force before Christmas proper.

Over the years, it has crept slowly on. Sometimes there might be a rebound.  Some years it might seem closer to Christmas Eve that they are removing things, only to see the following year be even earlier. Of course putting up Christmas decorations ridiculously early isn't anything new.  The 1974 It's the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown addresses that very thing. 

But the symbolism of tearing things down, even as - from a traditional Christian perspective - the holiday has yet to formally begin, seems to me symbolic of the problem with our modern corporate structure.  In the days of consumerism or commercialism, corporations at least had to pretend they cared.  Oh your average person of even limited intelligence could guess it was always about the money.  But commercial enterprises had to put on a good show.  They had to entice.  To sell.  To put up a good front. To occasionally pander to the wishes of the all important consumer. 

But today?  Not really.  They don't even pretend to care.  In the old days, they had to put on a good face and act like it was important to appease the consumer.  The customer, as they used to say, was always right.  But today?  Nowhere close.  And I fear it isn't just the trappings of a Christmas holiday that is on the block.  It's anything really, and not even apologizing or trying to excuse. It's just 'we do it to make billions, so suck on it.'  Whether it be the consumers, the employees, the national well-being, the common weal, it matters not.  

I had to go to a local auto parts store recently.  I stood in line for over half an hour because there was only one guy working in the whole store.  He apologized to everyone as we made our way to the register.  Then someone in front of me asked him why he was alone.  Apparently they just cut staff and hours.  Not that they're hurting.  I looked it up and nothing about the company tanking or anything.  In fact, it has had a financial turnaround.  Apparently, that includes closing stores and cutting staff and hours to save money, at least for the uppers.   Does it hurt the customer experience?  Sure.  Does it decrease the quality of service? You bet. Does the corporation appear to care?  No more than it does putting on airs about Christmas time any longer than financially needed, no matter what people might want. You might say it obviously is no big deal.  The company in question has seen a financial turnaround, so apparently the consumer isn't bothered.  Or in our neck of the woods, there aren't many alternatives.   

Yet that's the big thing I see.  On the short term, it does appear corporations can almost flip everyone the bird today and people just keep coming back for more.  But what of longer term consequences?  Conservatives are running around with their hair on fire as poll after survey after study finds more and more youngsters up and coming are at least open to the possibility of socialism, Marxism or even by name communism!  How can this be?  How can they be so stupid?

Because of this.  Somewhere along the line corporations found a way to game the system; an out from the old 'it leads to competition and innovation and creates wealth' paradigm.  Giving less for more, lowering quality, slashing quantity, and all while shellacking the consumer and frequently screwing over their own employees willy-nilly makes it somewhat easy to explain the average younger person's skepticism about the bountiful blessings of the private sector and that all important Capitalism experience.  

In fact, I also hear a lot of people harp on your Gen-Z types as being lazy and entitled and having no loyalty to their employers. But that door swings both ways.  As I said here, what used to be the season for Christmas bonuses and office parties has become, in many sectors, when employees cower down with targets on their backs.  And seniority doesn't cut it.  A fellow I talked to a few years ago said that in many companies today, seniority and experience make you feel like a prime target. After all, ditch you and a couple others, consolidate your positions, and hire some newbie for a fraction of the cost.  But doesn't that cause a glitch in quality and harm the potential consumer?  See 'pack up Jingle Bells whatever the shmuck consumer base thinks' above. 

One of the reasons we have Trump is best described by my oldest son:  Trump is the wrong answer to all the right questions.  And those questions involve a growing segment of the population feeling that things are getting worse, not better; that more and more are being left behind; that fewer in our younger generations have hope for the future - and worse than anything, our leadership and institutions including, but not limited to, corporate America don't seem to care.  In fact, until 2016, it increasingly appeared that they didn't even have to pretend to care.  Which is why, as my one son likes to say, the biggest booster for communism today is corporate America.  Will it change since the era of Donald Trump?  Perhaps.  But it better change, or the unthinkable for so many of us older folks will become the acceptable option going forth for the younger ones. 

Duh

It turns out that brave corporations cheering on Pride Month, aren't doing so in places like the Middle East.  Can we say 'not surprised'? 

My eldest son, who possesses a good historian's head on his shoulders if I may say so, has a pretty solid theory for what we're seeing.  Long and short, we all grew up in the 'Age of Democracy' because, for over two hundred years, the individuals with all the wealth and power believed democracy, liberty and equality were part of the magic formula for ever more wealth and power.

After all, combined with a robust and free market, and some lag-over Christian ideals, that formula brought the West from a world of horses and buggies, candlelight and log cabins to a world of planes, trains, automobiles, television, computers, space travel, medical breakthroughs, agricultural breakthroughs, and unparalleled wealth, leisure and luxury.  And all within a half dozen or so generations.  Obviously, those factors in the formula had to be defended.

But they no longer believe that.  China, in some ways, changed all that.  Like Jeopardy James, they broke the game and showed the world you don't need those things to rake in the big bucks, at least for those on top.  In fact, you might do better avoiding those things.  After all, in our world today there are billions of potential costumers in nations and societies that have decidedly undemocratic, unfree and unequal laws and values.  But that's still billions of potential customers.

Why does the NBA call down hellfire on the USA as the four hundred year old racist Nazi state that we are, while turning a blind eye to China?  Because in China basketball is now the one of the most popular sports, and it's estimated that the NBA has hundreds of millions of bona fide fans in China - more fans than the United States has citizens.  Same with Disney.  Disney now makes more in China than it does America. 

Heck, America is now practically a 2.5 world country.  Not quite 2nd World.  America's standard of living, its wealth and leisure were so astronomically high compared to the rest of the world, that we could fall a thousand miles and still be at a higher standard that most of the world.  But not for much longer.  When was the last time America wowed the world?  When was the last time we built something that left the world in awe?  Today, you have to go to other parts of the world for that.  Heck, earlier in the year the world had to step in and bail us out when we couldn't produce enough formula for America's babies.  Remember when it was America that would step in when the world couldn't do those things? 

I think my son is correct.  In the end, the United States, and the West in general, simply isn't that important anymore.  The lofty values we took for granted aren't needed and, in some cases, might be obstacles for the emerging global ruling classes.  China, like some Middle Eastern countries, has learned if they just make deals with the big corporate interests, those interests will happily turn a blind eye to other problems. In fact, those corporate entities might find it in their best interest to shame the West and United States so they will shut up and stay out of the way.  That way those corporations can more easily roll in the money given them by countries that are the antithesis of the old life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness principle. 

Hence Pride month.  Corporations will gladly peddle that here.  It keeps America a godless, sexed up, drugged up customer base unlikely to resist any tearing away at its moral or even legal foundations.  But no way do those corporate interests really give two swigs about anything remotely gay.  Those same LGBTQ folks could be tossed off buildings in  other parts of the world for all those companies care.  Same with women and blacks or anyone.  As far as our global rulers care, whatever the countries and cultures with the billions of customers want, will eventually be what the rest of the world gets.  

There is no Woke capitalism

There is only Capitalism.  As I've been told a million times over the years, it's the bottom line.  Why do businesses meet added expenses born of government regulation by screwing their employees?  It's the bottom line.  Why do businesses meet the burden of taxation by cutting quantity and diminishing quality?  It's the bottom line.  The bottom line doth solve a multitude of problems. 

Well, I suppose it's time to admit the obvious.  Why is corporate America at the vanguard of the movement to destroy America, the Western Christian tradition and its values, and even ideas of equality, liberty and democracy?  Well my friends, I guess it's the bottom line. 

At some point, corporate execs and bean counters ran the numbers and realized there's more money to be made sucking up to tyranny and totalitarianism and appealing to people who want to see America and the West burn, than there is trying to preserve those same traditions.  And since conservatives have sanctified the bottom line as the end all 'get out of jail free' card for whatever corporations do, it's hard now to hear them bemoan what is logical per their own sanctioning of corporate decision making.  

Why are corporations promoting racism, tyranny, censorship, group identity, and a basic assault on America's history and the heritage of the Judeo-Christian West?  Because that's where the money is.  That precious bottom line.  

So by now, if we are clever, we'd start thinking long and hard about how long this has been the case.  How many things did conservatives of old cherish that the corporate interest concluded had to go?  Ross Douthat ponders the relationship between Capitalism and Conservatism.  

I'm no economist, so I can't speak to the details.  I can, however, admit that the problems conservatives are now struggling with as the corporate interests they have so long defended turns on them, are problems that are nothing new.  It's just now, they're more obvious than ever. 

To hate America now that spring is here

Or perhaps more seasonally appropriate, now is the winter of our dissing America.  So Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA team The Dallas Mavericks, has confirmed what anyone watching basketball had noticed.  That is, he has banned playing the United States National Anthem before his team's games. 

So there you go.  One of the greatest coups of the Left's war against the Christian West was its alliance with Corporate America.  Why are so many corporations jumping on board the various devices of the Left?  The anti-Christian, anti-American, anti-Male, anti-White, anti-undesirable, anti-God and even anti-Equality bandwagons that are becoming SOP in 2021 Leftism? 

Hard to say.  My boys think it's because a global market is worth more than an American one.  And  in a world where, despite multicultural narratives, oppression, terror, tyranny, slavery, genocide, discrimination and persecution are still as common as bad reality TV is in our country, it might be tough to justify making money off such nations in the same way it would have been tough making money off Nazi Germany during the early 1940s.

The smart business solution?  Join in the Left's attempts to portray the Christian West and American Experiment as the font of all evil in the world; as the most wicked, depraved, infamous and heartless civilization that ever existed.  After all, what right do Americans have to complain when they see American corporations milking China for what money they can all while China continues to slaughter, oppress and terrorize anyone and anything in its path?  Hey!  This is America, the most evil and deplorable nation in history people!  Back off and stop being hypocrites.  

Perhaps.  It certainly makes sense.  But whatever the reason, one thing is sure: Corporations and CEOs and other wealthy power players are embracing the death of the West for the same reason anyone in the market does anything - the bottom line.  Whatever financial hit we think they might take, they've run the numbers and concluded it's worth it for the overall benefit of the all important bottom line. 

That's what happens when we conservatives spent so many years defending corporate interests in the name of Capitalism at whatever cost.   For some reason, we forgot that if we defend the 'it's the bottom line' principle as the all important principle of everything, there might be a time when the bottom line is best served by those market interests destroying everything else we hold dear.  Live and learn I suppose. 

It was Capitalism all along

In a reminder that Capitalism without Christ can quickly spiral into the next Communism, once again we have the biggies of Corporate America, darlings of the free market, champions of Wall Street, joining forces to threaten within an inch of their financial lives those in Texas who dare blaspheme the gospel of the LGBTQ movement.  Just like N. Carolina not too long ago.

I was once asked how something like Capitalism or the Free Market could ever become like Communism.  Well, this.  And this is while we're still technically a free country.  Imagine what would happen if we weren't.  It might not be the government that steps in and destroys the precious freedoms of the market as much as the market that  hijacks the goverment and uses its own infinite financial resources to put a bullet in the 2500 year climb toward democracy and liberty.

As I said, our march toward tyranny and a Marxist totalitarian state based on debauchery and blasphemy would be nowhere without Madison Avenue running along, encouraging every step of the way.

Bonus: Another Godfather reference that came to mind when thinking of conservatives who still fall on the sword for the Market, even as we have to realize it has been the Market handing us hammers and nails with which to crucify Jesus or else:

I really need to watch that film again, it's been too long.

Nike to conservative Americans

Screw you!   Yep. I have a feeling that Nike, like most corporations, would fly China's communist flag if they thought it would increase their bottom line.  There are hundreds of NFL players, or other athletes, Nike could choose.  Nike chose this as a statement every bit as much as Kaepernick's statement. It reflects Nike's attitudes about the US, and those who don't subscribe to the Kaepernick perspective.  Note well, Nike did not - repeat, not - choose Tim Tebow, despite how popular or 'inspirational' he was to some.

UPDATE: I realize that Tebow had signed a deal with Nike. My point is that it never elevated Tebow to that level, despite the fact that Tebow was a bona fide cultural phenomenon who inspired millions and had a passionate following. 

An answer for William Ligon

Senator Ligon asks, over at the Wall Street Journal, why so many American companies are aligning themselves against religious liberty and basic First Amendment freedoms.

It's pretty easy to figure out, if we want to be honest.  First, most American companies are headed by decidedly left leaning corporate leaders.  And nobody loves ending freedoms above the waistline more than the modern Left. 

Second, most in our society support sex deviations out of convenience, since a growing number of Americans prefer a hedonistic society over a religious one.  This is something corporate America prefers as well, since hedonistic Americans make better consumers than ones dedicated to a religion of poverty and moderation.  

Which leads to third reason, in which we concede that most Americans are not religious, or if they are religious, they place their religion somewhere in the bottom half of the top ten list of priorities, if there.  

Fourth, Americans have been indoctrinated against traditional Christian values for almost half a century.  Younger Americans (who many of these companies cater to), have been raised to believe that the Western Tradition and its Christian heritage are the true evils of history, and all who challenge these value systems and Christian morality are by default the good guys.  See the comment by reader 'Tom Bradshaw' for an example of the hatred and contempt for any who desire the right to believe in traditional religious morality. 

Finally, Corporate America is about the bottom line, and if the bottom line is buttressed by a majority of people who want to end other people's freedoms, then that is who they will cater to.  Since the willingness to fight has long left the majority of Christians, and those who still desire to resist are increasingly piled on by fellow believers both to the left of center, as well as those who would try to appear as the voices of reason, there just isn't a sound, financial reason based on demographics to do other than throw their corporate logos decidedly on the side of oppression and retribution for failing to be liberal.  After all, most of these companies also have plenty of revenue outside of the US, so if there was to be a 'what comes around, goes around' backlash down the road, they wouldn't be the ones to pay the price anyway.  They would just move physically to be where their bank accounts and tax shelters have been all along. 

Conservatives love capitalism

So I'm sure they'll be heartened to know that Target is among those stores leading the way to ditch this laughable notion of families and get together celebrating God's blessings on refugees seeking religious freedom in the New World.  And the really great part is that these stores are doing it for the all important bottom line.

One of the great tensions of our age is that conservatives, including religious conservatives, are among the last true defenders of Capitalism and the Free Market (not necessarily the same thing).  And yet there are few areas more dedicated to promoting godless hedonism, debauchery and the right to slaughter endless hordes of hapless unborn in the name of sexual debauchery than modern corporate America. 

Of course not all business owners or corporations worship money, promote animal debauchery and could care less about God.  But a sizeable portion of corporate moguls today are quite proud of their godless support of leftist hedonism and narcissism.  After all, that's where brainless consumers come from. 

So Target is simply one of many joining the wave.  I said some time ago that Thanksgiving would go the way of everything else linked to the dying Christian West.  And it won't be replaced with anything good.  It will be the lowest animal cultural denominator.  But at least it will be an animal culture with the latest smartphone.  And for that, American religious conservatives who so zealously support the Market can be proud.