Trump Unleashes the Corporate Beast
Soon, very soon, even Trump’s supporters will see the harm from deregulation
Welcome to the Corporate Slaughterhouse.
This was always the plan: Once the fools throughout the land were conned into turning over their votes, the big-money moguls could come in and do what they wanted.
They’re not subtle. It is an abattoir — heads are being chopped off, government entities demolished, and their very purpose negated. The ultimate goal: to reverse everything President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal did, and then some.
Roosevelt gave the vast majority of Americans a less tilted playing field against the mega-rich manipulators of the economy and other levers of power. And he put into place policies and instruments to protect the weakest from the brutality of the market and corporate practices.
Now the New Deal is being replaced with digitally-amped predatory practices — by the author of The Art of the Deal — and the public gets the most raw deal since, well, pretty much since deals were invented.
These modern day robber barons cut a slick deal with their MAGA allies: Remove government constraints on us and we’ll help you win elections.
We knew what was coming.
Trump did warn us with his promise of what he would order on Day 1 of his administration: “Drill, drill, drill.” And here’s BP saying they’re basically abandoning their commitment to developing clean energy — such as it was — for their old Black Gold game.
Corporations and tycoons are only able to do what they do because we let them.
Over at the Environmental Protection Agency, Trump’s new agency head, Lee Zeldin, says climate change is no longer a thing. And he wants to cut 65 percent of the EPA workforce.
At the Food and Drug Administration, the woman in charge of protecting us from carcinogens, Lynn Dekleva, comes straight from having blocked efforts to regulate carcinogens. Think of it. The person now in charge of approving what chemicals can be used, was only recently a lobbyist for the use of formaldehyde, a very dangerous carcinogen.
The folks responsible for protecting animals of all types, crops — basically the entire food supply — are being fired en masse.
Some big media organizations, especially those controlled by tech oligarchs, are signaling their willingness to get on board with the slash-and-burn approach. Jeff Bezos caved The Washington Post, saying the opinion section will now turn its focus to “personal liberties and free markets.”
We’ll soon find out if that includes open-carry AR-15 rifles in downtown DC. Because, out of context, the Bezos Doctrine might sound reasonable enough, but in the context of the Great Capitulation, it’s not hard to crack the coded soul-embrace of the Trump/MAGA agenda.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Black, a Trump-appointed son of billionaire Leon Black, wants USAID — which once helped people around the world feed their families and poor women get proper, often lifesaving, health care — to focus on developing a “market” mentality.
Like mining Greenland. And he wants a return on our investment. It apparently doesn’t occur to him that, with USAID, we have been getting a return on our investment, like combating diseases in Africa (ebola, anyone?) that would otherwise surely have made their way to the US. But of course what he has in mind is the kind of investment return that lines the pockets of millionaires.
Talk about raw deals, that same “market” mentality was apparently operative in Trump’s proposed arrangement with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. Originally, Trump had demanded a $500 billion share in Ukraine’s minerals, rare earths, oil, and gas (and related infrastructure) for the aid Ukraine has already received from the US, without any future security guarantees. (In fact, the US has given Ukraine $182.8 billion, most of it in the form of weaponry purchased by the US from American arms manufacturers, according to the US federal government and other sources.) And Zelensky said earlier that he wouldn’t sign a deal that would mean the next 10 generations of Ukrainians would be indebted.
On February 28, negotiations blew up when Vice President JD Vance and Trump attacked Zelensky in the Oval Office, claiming he was not sufficiently grateful for America’s help. In fact, he has thanked America 33 times. But the point of the attack seems to have been to prevent Zelensky from being heard as he tried to describe details of Putin’s treachery, how he does not keep his word.
Trump/Vance’s Godfatheresque treatment of Zelensky, trying to force him to “cry uncle” and bow down, confirms the thug mentality at the heart of MAGA.
Republicans, of course, far from condemning our president and vice president’s appalling behavior, got right on board with the shakedown and humiliation, claiming they had warned Zelensky to play nice, express infinite gratitude, and just get the minerals deal done. Warm and friendly to the leader in the morning, all but a pair of brave, and sure bet to be primaried, congressional Republicans turned savagely on him after the meeting. There were even calls for the Ukrainian president to resign.
Trump blithely and cruelly ignores Ukraine’s tremendous sacrifice to stop a ruthless, corrupt tyrant whose damage could otherwise be worldwide. But nothing counts with Trump if it is not preceded by a dollar sign. He said,
“We’re going to get our money back and we’re going to get a lot of money in the future.”
Sounds just like a corporation, only cruder, doesn’t he?
***
What does a full corporate takeover mean? It means that the very idea of protecting the public against hugely powerful entities is gone.
It means money will have its way every time “return on investment” comes up against the health and safety of vulnerable people — which, in the case of a contaminated food supply and preventable “natural” disasters like devastating floods and wildfires, increasingly means all of us.
Although everything about the Trump second presidency is terrifying, there’s something especially nauseating about this breathless capitulation to what President Theodore Roosevelt called “malefactors of great wealth,” which will have deep and broad consequences for every person in this country and around the world.
Many will start getting sick, dying — including children who could have been saved by a cheap dose of a vaccine. Entire communities will be ravaged. Trump’s America will not be spared.
MAGA voters will be gobsmacked, because they saw and liked Trump on TV’s The Apprentice and bought into the great fun it would mean to have him in charge, “owning the libtards,” putting people who are “different” in their place, making it all Great Again — whatever that meant — then suddenly discovering the horrific reality.
It’s like young people who bought into TV ads about how heroic it would be to enlist in the military, go off to faraway places, like Vietnam and Iraq, and have an adventure — who ended up with missing limbs, PTSD, addicted to drugs, inadequate benefits, discarded on the street, homeless, and hopeless. Be all you can be, indeed.
People like Trump, Musk, and the sycophants around them have nothing but contempt for ordinary people. The mega-rich can afford special personnel and services that will protect them from many of the horrors they’re unleashing on the public. Can we afford to let them do it?
We certainly cannot. And we have the means to apply pressure. On Saturday, 300 protesters converged on a Tesla showroom, holding aloft signs condemning Elon Musk; nine were arrested, and the action received media coverage, letting others know that they, too, should feel free to take action.
Personally, many of us participated in #BlackOutFriday and withheld our dollars from large national entities to let them know what may be coming if they don’t behave responsibly and defend our Constitution and our democracy.
I’ve also rerouted my daily purchases away from Amazon to other retailers, because most of what is available there is available elsewhere.
Corporations and tycoons are only able to do what they do because we let them.
The late P.J. O'Rourke once declared that the three branches of Government were 'money, television, and bullsh*t'. They could equally be the constituent elements of 'The Apprentice' and the means of State Capture.
'they saw and liked Trump on TV’s The Apprentice and bought into the great fun it would mean to have him in charge'
.................................
The comparison with youngsters who bought into the military recruitment ads is tragically resonant, and I can't help suspect that some Trump voters bought into the illusion upon which 'The Apprentice' was predicated: Trump as the successful self-made man: ('you too could be like me !'). For many, this on its own may have been seductive enough even without the 'owning the libtards' BS. As for electing a tyrant, that's something that happens in other countries...
What I don't understand is the continuing delusion about Trump as a 'dealmaker' - how many dodgy bankruptcies, bailouts and backhanders vs STRAIGHT deals ? (Not to mention the 30+ convictions for dishonest business practices.)
'Money, television, and bullsh*t' anybody ?
This is an exhausting, exhaustive list of predation, but the windup seems off - living in the global corporate supersystem is not an elective. The social power held by extraction/production corporations is beyond comprehension in its scale and massivity.