Ep 32 -- Your Patriotic Duty to Get Screwed

 A bunch of years ago my wife and I took a trip to South Africa.  We had a friend in LA who was from there and was going to show us all around.  Overlooking Cape Town it's a stunning mountain plateau called Table Mountain.  We hiked up one side, walked across the plateau and stopped at the cafe by the cable car on the other side before descending back into the city.  My wife and I immediately noticed that at the cafe all the prices were, well, normal.  I mean, pretty much exactly the same as any normal cafe in town.  And we both remarked to our friend that if this were the U S these prices would be triple what they are.

I mean, come on, we're on a mountain. There's nothing around for miles. The only way to get stuff up here is by cable car. You've got a captive audience.  And our friend said, yeah, that phenomenon in the U S always surprised me. If they tried to do that here the locals wouldn't stand for it. They burn this place to the ground before getting screwed like that.  And I thought, he's right.  We are getting screwed. At the movie theater, at sporting events, of course at the airports.  It's become so ingrained in our national psyches that the thought of calling it out or even thinking about fighting back against it almost seems un-American.  So that got me thinking, if pushing back against getting screwed is unpatriotic,  does that mean that it's our patriotic duty to get screwed?  So this week, I want to talk a little bit about why I think we all think that way and what it says about us as a nation,  and how we might begin to change the way we think and to start not getting screwed. 

Stay tuned.

I'm Craig Boreth, and this is The Great Ungaslighting, a podcast about how we get conned into accepting a manmade culture. That's out of sync with our human nature, and how we can fight back and put the kind back into humankind. 

But first, a word about a sponsor. 

This week's episode of The Great Ungaslighting is not brought to you by MasterCard...and Coca-Cola...and Meta...and DoorDash...and SunLife financial services, and probably a few others. But those are the ones called out on a recent article in Popular Information, the excellent independent online newsletter founded by Judd Legun and dedicated to accountability journalism. I highly recommend you subscribe and support their work at popular.info.  Now I'm not calling out those companies just because they are sponsoring the 2024 Canada Strong and Free Regional Networking Conference, which promotes its goal of "fighting the left and wokeism" and features right-wing activists AKA troll Chris Rufo, the brains behind the anti critical race theory hysteria, and a crusader against diversity equity and inclusion initiatives who once wrote that LGBTQ advocates are "grooming in public schools."  If those companies want to sponsor this kind of event, that's up to them.  The problem is they're sponsoring the event while at the same time promoting themselves as champions of DEI.  For example on MasterCard's website, they proudly state to that to "diversity, equity and inclusion are what set MasterCard apart by making us more adaptable, more innovative, and more creative."  MasterCard is a gold sponsor of Canada strong and free.  Meta is also a gold sponsor of Canada, strong and free with CEO Mark Zuckerberg proclaiming, "It's important that we do better on diversity. Not only because it's the right thing to do for the country and for our people, but because that's the only way we're going to serve our community the best."  Of course, Meta cut its DEI team by at least 50% last year. So, I guess in one sense, its sponsorship of Canada strong and free isn't totally hypocritical.  Coca-Cola is a silver sponsor of the event fighting wokeism, saying on its website, diversity equity and inclusion are at the heart of our values and our growth strategy and play an important part in our company's success.  SunLife president Dan Fishbein said he wants to reflect the diversity of our clients and the communities in which we live and work and support the dismantling of racial injustice, systemic racism, and institutional inequality.  But, you know, people who believe institutionalizing equality, if it exists at all, actually hurts white folks the worst, those guys need investment advice too. So, what you're going to do?

I realized none of this is surprising. It's just a level of pandering and hypocrisy we've come to expect from corporate America.  But that doesn't mean we shouldn't take every opportunity to call it out. 

Popular Information reached out to Meta about their sponsorship of the event. Their response was that they support organizations on the left and the right. And that they had no role in choosing the speakers for the Canada Strong and Free event, which they've supported for years. Basically they're spreading some bullshit, excuse to excuse their bullshit stance on DEI. Now that's Meta. 

And we're back. 

As I was researching this week's episode, I kept coming back to that Calvin Coolidge quote, "The business of America is business." and how central that thinking is to our lives as part of American society.  It's actually a bit of a misquote. He actually said, "The chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing, and prospering in the world."  This was a speech that Coolidge gave in 1925 to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. It's actually a kind of amazing speech. In it, he addresses a rising concern about commercialism in the press. There was a worry at the time, now this is a hundred years ago, about newspapers being business enterprises controlled by men of wealth. Oh, come on, what could possibly go wrong with that?  But Coolidge dismisses any risk of pro-business bias by claiming there's no need to worry so long as the newspaper is quote, "sincerely trying to serve the public interests." And what is chief among those public interests? Well, what a coincidence, it just happens to be business. 

In the next paragraph of the speech, Coolidge lays it all out. He says, "There does not seem to be, cause for alarm in the dual relationship of the press to the public whereby it is on one side, a purveyor of information and opinion. And on the other side, a purely business enterprise. Rather it is probable that a press which maintains an intimate touch with the business currents of the nation. Is likely to be more reliable than it would be if it were a stranger to these influences.  After all the chief business of the American people is business." 

I love that line about a press that maintains an intimate touch with business is likely to be more reliable than if it were a stranger to such influences. It reminds me of this little bit of philosophy from David St. Hubbins in Spinal Tap, which is pretty much an equal logical validity to Coolidge's claim: 

"I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn't believe anything."

So, this idea that America is first and foremost a business arrangement among businessmen and consumers, and only to a lesser degree, a social contract among equal citizens has been hammered into our head for at least a hundred years and most definitely longer.  And I think to this day, you can divide people into groups depending on where they stand on that hierarchy.  If you believe that business is paramount and government only gets in the way you are likely to agree with one political philosophy.  Whereas, if you believe that government  protects the citizenry from predatory businesses who have no concern for social wellbeing then you probably agree with the opposing political philosophy.

Now it's pretty clear to me that the former philosophy has been dominant in our country for generations.  And the proof of its dominance is found in the durability of the cowboy myth. The idea that real Americans are rugged individualists who don't want or need any help from anyone else.  But the truth is it's all a myth, which becomes perfectly clear when you realize that those cowboys were not independent entrepreneurs working for themselves.  They were ranch hands and they worked for wealthy, private ranch owners. They worked long, hard hours in miserable conditions for very little money. So our idolization of them is really an idolization of the system that exploited them to the benefit of wealthy businessmen.  Now a lot of people who believe the government is holding business back -- and don't get me wrong, in some ways the government is holding some businesses back with unnecessary regulations.  But there are also many essential regulations in place to protect the public from unscrupulous businesses. But some people are thinking, come on, you're just demonizing big business because they're successful.  Well, no, I'm not. I'm calling out businesses that subvert our democracy and the human rights of people all around the world to further their business interests.  I mean in the late fifties and early sixties, business leaders in bananas, oil, and copper basically just told CIA director, Allan Dulles that the democratic governments of Guatemala, Iran, and the Congo were doing things that were bad for business. In other words, bad for America.  So we just replaced those governments with authoritarian governments more friendly to business and America.  By the way, if any of you are unfamiliar with all of that, I very highly recommend you read The Devil's Chessboard by David Talbot, which is essentially a biography of Allan Dulles, the man who, at least in my opinion, has had greater influence on why the world is the way it is today than any other single human being.  So we saw through the fifties, this establishment of corporate dominance. This was challenged, of course, by the civil rights movement and the anti-war protests of the sixties and early seventies. Which in turn caused a huge establishment backlash that propelled us through the late seventies and into the era that we are still in today 45 years later.  In fact, I think I can actually pinpoint the exact moment when our current era actually began.  On July 15th, 1979, President Jimmy Carter delivered his famous crisis of confidence speech. In which he said this:

"I'm asking you, for your good, and for your nation's security, to take no unnecessary trips,  to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can.  To park your car one extra day per week,  to obey the speed limit,  and to set your thermostats to save fuel. Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense. I tell you, it is an act of patriotism."

Well, those suggestions weren't exactly received as acts of patriotism. They were ridiculed as wimpy, weak, and un-American.  That was pretty much the beginning of the end of the Carter presidency. Sure doing those things would have saved people money and would have dramatically decreased our dependence on Middle East oil. But they wouldn't have been very cowboy, meaning they would have ultimately been bad for big energy profits. And besides the middle east is the other side of the world. The geopolitics over there couldn't ever affect us at home, right?  

So. While Carter was absolutely correct, his speech pretty much ended his political career. And now 45 years later, not a whole lot has changed.  I mentioned this in an earlier episode, during the post-COVID inflation, I noticed at the supermarket that Haagen Daz, Ben and Jerry's, and Talenti ice cream all went up about the same amount on the same day.  Now that's not technically price fixing because corporate consolidation now finds all three brands owned by the same corporation.  But more importantly, one thing you'd never hear from our political leaders and you never heard it during the recent high inflation period was, Hey, you should shop around and find the lowest price for the things you need.  That's actually a really effective way for you as an individual to do your part to help fight inflation.

And why didn't we hear that?  Because you as an individual saving money is meaningless. In fact, it's worse than meaningless. It's bad for business. It's bad for the economy.  What's good for the economy is that corporate profits stay high, that the stock market stays high, and that the GDP stays high.  So it is in fact true that in America today, as it has been for generations, it remains your patriotic duty to get screwed.  

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So what can we do to change our mindset and help encourage and nurture a society that collectively pushes back against getting screwed?  To a certain extent, I think a lot of the problem is just due to the fact that we live in this era characterized by a libertarian, the-business-of-America-is-business zeitgeist.  So it may be that only a shift into a whole new era can make a difference.  And while I don't think anyone can predict what event could shift an entire culture into a new era.  I thought for sure COVID would do it, but of course, it had the exact opposite effect.  One trend that I see taking hold that might ultimately make the difference is the enforcement of US antitrust laws.  The FTC under the leadership of Lena Khan has started going after monopolies more aggressively than the agency has in decades.  It's interesting that while JD Vance has praised Khan, even though that's probably a completely hollow political ploy,  the Harris campaign has been very quiet on whether or not they support what Khan is doing at the FTC.  I think that's a huge missed opportunity for the campaign.  Sure it would probably cost them a sizable donation of a few left-wing promo monopoly billionaires. But it would also put them on the right side of history and could help usher in a totally new era.  That's because while Americans may only have a fleeting sense that monopolies are screwing them over, it's really not until a lawsuit gets going and really exposes their anti-competitive and anti-consumer behaviors that the general public can begin to conceive of a better path forward,  toward an America whose business is something much more human more fulfilling and more fair than just business as usual.  

Well, that's it for this week. If you like this episode, please post a review and share it with anyone you think might also enjoy it.  And until next time, be kind to yourself, cut each other some slack, and use your f*cking turn signal..