With each new executive order, each refusal by Congress to assert its Constitutional authority, each administration-friendly misinterpretation of the Constitution by the Supreme Court, the United States moves closer and closer to dictatorship. Yet the government is not solely responsible. Businesses are equally culpable.
Each time a corporation capitulates to threats from the White House, each time a law firm abandons legal principles to avoid penalties, each time a university agrees to modify its curricula, and each time state and local governments collaborate with Washington to threaten individual rights and replace freedom with fear, it becomes easier for the administration to continue to impose its unConstitutional will on the nation.
The new American mafia
The closest equivalent to the administration’s current modus operandi is organized crime. The demand for protection money to be “allowed” to continue in business. The bribes to be permitted to engage in free trade. The taxes (in the form of tariffs) that negatively affect profitability and reduce revenues while raising prices for consumers. All of it is harmful. All of it is based on ignorance of economics and an unwillingness — by business leaders, especially — to make it clear that the emperor, the capo dei capi of the D. C. mob, has no clothes.
By now, it’s clear that Mr. Trump desires to be king. His gold-encrusted office would embarras King Midas. That’s true, in part, because Mr. Trump’s Midas touch turns everything to mufflers.
Government of, by, and for the people may perish
His tendencies are always self-serving and intent on eliminating Americans’ knowledge of the real world. Replacing museum exhibits that trace the truth of history with displays of whitewashed reinterpretations that mirror an uneducated man’s lack of knowledge only serves to make Americans willfully uninformed, unable to face reality, and incapable of dealing with people, institutions, and nations that recognize the facts.
CEOs have paraded through the Oval Office with gifts of gold, as if they were courtiers in the court of Ivan the Terrible, hoping to be rewarded for ignoring that the recipient is not smart enough to know he’s not. They argue or are interpreted to claim that their actions are designed to protect investors and the company itself. They don’t. They only serve to give power to an individual who rules with an iron whim and could, at the mere perception of a slight, take action to inflict greater harm. It is a vicious circle of delusion and deceit.
Now is the time for all good men…
The longer business leaders stay silent, the more they capitulate to unwarranted decrees, the less power they will have to control the destinies of their companies, their employees, and their fortunes. They must take a stand.
They must refuse to donate to the political campaigns of any candidate who has abnegated their responsibility to their constituents and the Constitution. They must withdraw support from political action committees that endorse the policies of Project 2025 which undermine democracy and the rule of law. They must let their suppliers, distributors, partners, employees, and customers know that they will not follow in the footsteps of Volkswagen, Bayer, Siemens, Bertelsmann, Hugo Boss, and American companies that supplied the Nazi government.
In 1935, Doubleday published Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here. Ninety years later, it has.
Each time a corporation capitulates to threats from the White House, each time a law firm abandons legal principles to avoid penalties, each time a university agrees to modify its curricula, and each time state and local governments collaborate with Washington to threaten individual rights and replace freedom with fear, it becomes easier for the administration to continue to impose its unConstitutional will on the nation.
The new American mafia
The closest equivalent to the administration’s current modus operandi is organized crime. The demand for protection money to be “allowed” to continue in business. The bribes to be permitted to engage in free trade. The taxes (in the form of tariffs) that negatively affect profitability and reduce revenues while raising prices for consumers. All of it is harmful. All of it is based on ignorance of economics and an unwillingness — by business leaders, especially — to make it clear that the emperor, the capo dei capi of the D. C. mob, has no clothes.
By now, it’s clear that Mr. Trump desires to be king. His gold-encrusted office would embarras King Midas. That’s true, in part, because Mr. Trump’s Midas touch turns everything to mufflers.
Government of, by, and for the people may perish
His tendencies are always self-serving and intent on eliminating Americans’ knowledge of the real world. Replacing museum exhibits that trace the truth of history with displays of whitewashed reinterpretations that mirror an uneducated man’s lack of knowledge only serves to make Americans willfully uninformed, unable to face reality, and incapable of dealing with people, institutions, and nations that recognize the facts.
CEOs have paraded through the Oval Office with gifts of gold, as if they were courtiers in the court of Ivan the Terrible, hoping to be rewarded for ignoring that the recipient is not smart enough to know he’s not. They argue or are interpreted to claim that their actions are designed to protect investors and the company itself. They don’t. They only serve to give power to an individual who rules with an iron whim and could, at the mere perception of a slight, take action to inflict greater harm. It is a vicious circle of delusion and deceit.
Now is the time for all good men…
The longer business leaders stay silent, the more they capitulate to unwarranted decrees, the less power they will have to control the destinies of their companies, their employees, and their fortunes. They must take a stand.
They must refuse to donate to the political campaigns of any candidate who has abnegated their responsibility to their constituents and the Constitution. They must withdraw support from political action committees that endorse the policies of Project 2025 which undermine democracy and the rule of law. They must let their suppliers, distributors, partners, employees, and customers know that they will not follow in the footsteps of Volkswagen, Bayer, Siemens, Bertelsmann, Hugo Boss, and American companies that supplied the Nazi government.
In 1935, Doubleday published Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here. Ninety years later, it has.
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