Some Minds Slowly Awaken Before Going Back To Sleep

Capitalist 'morals': At a gathering of a business advisory group in 2019, 

Tim Cook of Apple told Mr. Trump that it was “an honor” to serve

Someone allegedly said that when a person's paycheck depends on them not understanding something, e.g., denying an obvious reality or fact, it is hard to get them to understand it. That applies to CEOs, who are usually intelligent, highly educated and reasonably politically informed. The New York Times writes:

Many in corporate America endorsed the president’s economic policies, which were good for them and gave him mainstream business credibility. It was “fool’s gold,” one said on Thursday.

Big business struck a Faustian bargain with President Trump.

When he said something incendiary or flirted with authoritarianism, high-minded chief executives would issue vague, moralizing statements and try to distance themselves from a pro-business president who coveted their approval.

But when Mr. Trump cut taxes, rolled back onerous regulations or used them as props for a photo op, they would applaud his leadership and grin for the cameras.

After Wednesday’s events on Capitol Hill, the true cost of that balancing act was plain to see, even through the tear gas wafting in the rotunda.

The executives who stood by Mr. Trump were ultimately among his enablers, bestowing him with the imprimatur of mainstream business credibility and normalizing a president who has turned the country against itself.

“This is what happens when we subordinate our moral principles for what we perceive to be business interests,” said Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation and a board member at Square and Ralph Lauren. “It is ultimately bad for business and bad for society.”  

“I joined because the president asked me to join, and I thought it was the right thing to do as the C.E.O. of a company like Merck,” Ken Frazier, one of the most prominent Black executives in the country, who was the first to quit the councils, said shortly after leaving. “I just felt that as a matter of my own personal conscience, I could not remain.”

But money has a short memory, and it wasn’t long after Charlottesville that Mr. Trump was back in the good graces of corporate America. Just months later, the Trump administration passed a tax overhaul that delivered a windfall to corporations and wealthy individuals.
By lowering corporate taxes, Mr. Trump delivered the business community one of its most coveted prizes, and business leaders lined up to support the effort.  

By 2019, it was as if Charlottesville had never happened at all, and a new business advisory group was formed, this one with the likes of Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple; Doug McMillon, the chief executive of Walmart; and Julie Sweet, the chief executive of Accenture.  (emphasis added)

What? Moral principles?? Bad for society?? None of has been a problem before, so why it is now? What is different? Is that that the social harm is now so sever and blatant that even CEOs raking in millions from Trump brand politics can no longer deny what has been blatantly obvious for years?

Apparently, what triggered this current spasm of social conscience among some (a few?) powerful business elites is the attempted coup of yesterday. But minds, like money, have short memories. The next radical right GOP candidate who makes a run at demagogue-tyrant will entrance the CEOs with promises of lower taxes and fewer regulations. That will make the social conscience fade back into near non-existence where it usually resides when things are just business as usual.

This brief flash of social conscience is more evidence of why government needs to defend the public interest. The business community can't do it. The stack of cash standing in the way of reality and morality is just too damn big. 

In other words, it's hard to impossible to have a social conscience when your massive paycheck depends on not having one.