Abandoned, Left Behind, and Dangerous

A farmer’s barn in Somerset, Ohio, shows support for Trump. While the majority of rural Americans supported the Republican candidate, it might be to the detriment of the agriculture system. Photography Christine Ruddy / Shutterstock.com

“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” said F. Scott Fitzgerald, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.” Understanding economic populism is simpler: You need to keep two non-opposing ideas in mind at once. The conventional wisdom in progressive circles is that economic populism is about race, not economics. Recent studies clearly show it’s about economics … but it’s also about race. Crucially, we can’t stop there.

Populism also reflects class anger about cultural disrespect, expressed as culture wars (including those waged over abortion and gender roles). None of this is surprising coming from me. To quote my husband, I can see gender in a ham sandwich; race and class, too. We’d better unpack this sandwich fast, or democracy’s days may be numbered.

~ Joan C. Williams, in New Republic, April 19, 2022.

Fiona Hill, in a recent interview, equated the American Corn Belt that elected Trump with the British Rust Belt that ratified Brexit, where middle and lower working class constituents have been left behind by corporate industry that simply abandoned them. Instead of transforming technical and mechanical industry infrastructure to reflect scientific, medical, environmental, moral, ethical and sustainable findings long in its possession (Exxon being a prime example), responsibly retraining and offering employment incentives to re-education and socio-cultural adaptation and development, corporate industry’s policy, across the board, is just to dump outdated or outsourced workers in depraved policies predicated on the theory of human obsolescence.

These constituencies’ level of life, education, cultural viability, general awareness and wellbeing has been critically degraded by this wholesale abandonment by corporate industry/technology and its depraved adherence to the ‘bottom line’ over every other social, cultural, spiritual, moral or ethical concern affecting the Greater Good, so it is not surprising that they don’t understand what is happening or what is true and verifiable and what is not, and that they cling to cultic ‘culture heroes’ and their conspiratorial cant, in that such dross speaks directly to and exploits the very fear, confusion, anger and shame that they and their agents (QAnon, The Heritage Foundation, Republicans, Big Oil, Big Pharma, industrialized agriculture, dark money corporate funders, the Koch Brothers, Putin’s kleptocratic Kremlin oligarchy, et al.) have implanted, fed, watered and cultivated.

In a 2019 article responding to the documentary film, ‘The Corporation,’ is which the corporate entity deemed a legal person is psychologically profiled as psychopathic, Sarah Jones presented this checklist and analysis:

Since the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people, it’s time for the American living beings (aka, the real people) to recognize the toxic impact of granting what amounts to sociopathic monsters in the human realm control over the government.

Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to make a profit, to put their economic and profit interests first above all else. Clearly, civilization and democracies are not built on the premise that money takes precedent over all else.

In the movie “The Corporation” they use the personality diagnostic checklist DSM-IV to test corporations for pathological symptoms:

Callous disregard for the feelings of others. Check.

Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships. Check.

Reckless disregard for the safety of others. Check.

Deceitfulness: repeated lying and conniving others for profit. Check.

Incapacity to experience guilt. Check.

Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors. Check.

Result? Corporations are Psychopaths.

~ Sarah Jones, ‘If Corporations Are People, They Are Psychopaths,’ Posted on Thu, Apr 19th, 2012 in PoliticusUSA.

The real culprits in this apocalyptic breakdown of cultural and societal values, principles and cognitive culture? The hegemony of corporate industry that, deemed legal ‘persons’ in the most shameful and illogical corporate law ruling of all time, have all the protections of a human being and none of the responsibility to the common weal. The law must be reformed and corporations must be held to account and made answerable. They must be made responsible for the wellbeing of their people, and not just dump them like so much used up garbage.