Big Business isn’t your friend
I have been thinking a lot about this lately. The GOP always had a reputation for being the party of Big Business, but that appears to have changed. Well, the truth of the reputation has certainly changed at least. Some may think the GOP is the Big Business party still, but given the way corporations have shunned / attacked the GOP & conservative values, I am not sure why we should cater to them at all. Anyway, I saw this article on Washington Examiner and thought it was interesting.
Public trust of business keeps falling, according to the latest Gallup poll, and over the past few years, this collapse has been most acute among Republicans.
Democrats are more likely than Republicans to trust Hollywood, Big Tech, advertisers, and sports franchises. It makes perfect sense.
The Left has always been a better fit for Big Business than the Right.
The Republican marriage with Big Business was never a sustainable relationship. Tax cuts and deregulation can only take you so far. Corporate America depends on breaking our pre-existing bonds. Tradition, community, and family — those are obstacles to our maximal consumption. Sales resistance, to borrow a term from Wendell Berry, is grounded in delayed gratification or a supernatural worldview.
In Big Business, Democrats always had an ally in the culture war. As the rivals of church, tradition, and community, Hollywood, Big Tech, and marketers of all stripes were forces of revolution and “progress.” In the last few years, woke capitalism has revealed itself in perfect clarity.
Major League Baseball pointlessly sided with the Democrats on Georgia’s election law, and Big Tech throttled news stories that reflected poorly on Joe Biden just before the 2020 election. Big Business is pushing gender ideology on its customers and silly, race-baiting snake oil from “anti-racist” grifters onto its employees. Corporate America is admitting which side it has always been on in the culture wars.
The open partisanship is refreshing in a way, both from business and from its Democratic allies.
Posing as the foes of Big Business was long a part of the Democratic identity. During the Bush years, this was the easiest, with Vice President Dick Cheney embodying Halliburton, Big Oil, and all of Big Business.
Democrats used this perception to their advantage long past the point when it was true. President Barack Obama said Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was “in the pocket” of Big Oil — all while Obama’s campaign outraised McCain’s from all five oil majors.
Hillary Clinton in 2016 clearly signaled it was time for Democrats to own their Big Business allegiance. After her loss, she bragged, “I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product.”
Clinton’s defeat left Sen. Chuck Schumer as the head of the Democratic Party, and he deliberately steered his party’s elected officials in an explicitly pro-corporate direction. This being an age of overcentralized hyperpartisanship, the people are following.
The Republican Party was mostly good for cutting taxes and regulations, but those were always contingent goods for Big Business, which could always adapt to Big Government conditions. It is the Democratic Party that has mostly focused its governance on the culture wars in recent decades, and prying us away from other attachments (faith, family, tradition, community) has turned us into perfect consumers and employees.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/courage-strength-optimism/big-business-isnt-your-friend
