Corporate Wokeness? Or Hall of Mirrors?

Some food for thought from a savvy commenter in today's NY Times responding to a rare, sporadically lucid op ed from Ross Douthat.
Because facts still do matter to the mentally intact.
 

drspock   New York 44 minutes ago

We have to remember that "the corporation" is a creation of capital. It's function is to consolidate and increase surplus capital. It always magnifies the the difference between the rent producers and the rent collectors.

The period that refers to as "the Treaty of Detroit" was a time where organized labor still had some power. More importantly, it was a time when overseas markets had not recovered from WWII and couldn't afford the consumer good that we were churning out.

Globalism isn't about "free trade" and it didn't just happen. It was engineered when capital expansion was tapping out the American worker and economic growth abroad had reached level where its exploitation could be profitable.

Treaties were negotiated, laws were changed, tax policies changed, all toward that end. The final piece of the puzzle was globalizing the financial system. The enormous capital surplus established in the US now reached the entire globe. When countries pushed back, we made them an offer they couldn't refuse.

If the question raised by this article is does capitalism have a conscious? The answer is a resounding NO. It has a single, prime directive-profit and more profit. Profit that leaves social destruction in its wake, profit that is rapidly destroying the planet itself, and profit that has seized control of the levers of government and turned it, like the corporation into another of capital's tools.

And then there's this guy, just as brill:

Matt Carnicelli

 is a trusted commenter Brooklyn, NY 1 hour ago

Ross, did you seriously believe that these tax cuts would lead to significantly higher wages?

Please, voodoo economics is, was, and forever shall be a scam. By the year 2017, everyone with a brain should known it was a scam - and that the deficits this scam would incur will not be productive deficits. We are just redistributing money back to oligarchs who will only hide it in the Cayman Islands or use it buy more politicians.

The question that conscience-based conservatives like yourself should be addressing is what went horribly wrong in Christianity after Luther's Reformation - like how Jesus' compassion for the poor and de facto socialist attitudes were transformed into the idiocy of predestination, and the sadism of Calvinist economics; or how Jesus' authentic ethos of compassion, brotherhood, and non-violence was exchanged for one of "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition".

Ross, the fact is that ever since the Reagan devolution, wealth-obsessed conservatives have again and again made fools of conscience-based conservatives; and as openly acknowledged by David Brody in his now infamous Sunday apologia for evangelicals supporting Trump - in which he writes that "the goal of evangelicals has always been winning the larger battle over control of the culture" - these same conservatives long ago sold their souls in an attempt to impose their constipated, corrupted style of Christianity on a nation originally conceived out of an ethos of perfect spiritual freedom.

"The sadism of Calvinist economics"... Nailed it. Thank you, Matt! 

French Women: Deja Woke

IS THERE ANYTHING these two Comedic Geniuses CAN'T do?

And in heels?

Is This Any Way to Run a Government?

Read it and weep.

http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG00/20180129/106822/HMTG-115-IG00-Transcript-20180129.pdf

From Michele Goldberg's excellent Op-ed today explaining all this memo mess;

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/opinion/dont-believe-the-liberal-fbi.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

It really is time for the men to step aside, don't you think? As Mattis looks for justifiable reasons to take us to war with Syria. Yes, it seems The Don feels it's time for a more serious distraction from the Mueller Probe than a measly memo. Mmmmm, a good solid episode of American boots on the ground, that's what's needed. Buck the people up, as it were. Make 'em proud to be 'Mercans again.