One thing we have to be grateful for in the election of President Donald Trump is that it has let a mask slip – the mask that corporate America has been forcing itself to wear for years now, one which it seems to have always hated.
Let us for a second leave aside the utterly shameless supplication of the media and tech billionaires – Elon Musk and his Nazis salutes, the money and largesse that Jeff Bezos’s Amazon is pouring into the pockets of the president’s family, the moral cowardice of Mark Zuckerberg and the pathetic kowtowing of these and other multi-billionaires whose donations ensured Trump’s second coming was every bit as showy as the man himself.
It seems they are willing to do just about anything to be even bigger multi-billionaires and shaft their staff in the process. Who knew? Well, we all did really.
The rest of corporate America is now also showing us who they really are. For decvades they have been telling us that despite being megacorps they had morals, ethics and principles, that they cared desperately about inclusion, the environment, corporate responsibility, diversity, fairness and decency.
All it took was for a president who believes in none of these things to get his feet under the desk in the Oval Office again and they have dropped the lot like so many hot potatoes. It is going to be a grim old time for those who work for big US corporations in HR, or on programmes designed to boost diversity or ease the climate crisis.
The oil and gas industry which poured more than $75m into Donald Trump’s campaign were obviously always lying about their green credentials and the programmes of change they signed up to. Big banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Dachs have dropped their memberships of networks against climate change too.
They no longer need to care that Trump’s climate denial is estimated to produce an extra 4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030 – the same as the combined annual emissions of the EU and Japan taken together. That estimate would wipe out, twice over, all the savings made around the world from wind power, solar power and other green tech over the past five years.
Similarly liberated are the white, male, middle class and middle-aged managers of so many companies who have suddenly emerged to announce that they were the victims of “woke culture”, and that that they never wanted to recruit women, or blacks or the disabled, never wanted higher environmental standards, that all those adverts promoting their corporate responsibility and diversity were just so much camouflage, they had not really changed at all.
Walmart, McDonald’s and Meta have all joined the stampede to dump diversity targets, although some like Apple are holding out, the tide has changed and much of corporate America is only too happy to go with the flow. This kind of stuff was apparently forced on them by politically correct socialists, they never wanted anything to do with it and are only too happy to follow the president’s lead and scrap the lot.
And what a bunch of utter shits it turns out they were all along. There can be no more appalling quote this year than the one from the top Wall Street banker who told the Financial Times: “I feel liberated, we can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled… it’s a new dawn.”
When someone is stupid enough to show you who they really are, believe them. Then think about this: How would British business act if a far right, anti-woke, bigoted, racist Tory or Reform government got into power?
I am sure they would do the right thing, redoubling their efforts to be green, ethical and fair. Aren’t you?
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