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This Is the Age of the Coward

“The brazen hypocrisy staggers the mind. Disney, which commands a market cap larger than the GDP of many nations, can't find the courage to even wait for court challenges? Meta, which regularly boasts its power to connect billions, suddenly can't muster the strength to defend its own policies and users? These aren't businesses making tough choices – they're paper empires run by moral cowards—simpering, whimpering, and weak.”

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  • These aren’t businesses making tough choices – they’re paper empires run by moral cowards—simpering, whimpering, and weak.”

    How desperate to hide from reality can someone be??

    These are the most powerful people on the planet making perfectly reasonable decisions for their own benefit, because that's literally the only thing they've ever cared about.

    The idea that corporations and the people who run them should be "brave" and stand up against the very system that enables them to exist, or somehow give a single fuck about society at large, otherwise they're "cowards" (and not simply self serving oppressors) is so far beyond absurd, it's actually enraging at this point.

    • While I disagree with the usual joke that says "corporations are people," I do think they represent the people who run them. In modern USA, our big companies are infinitely more powerful than our government, and it seems like SOME of them should be putting up a fight, standing up for their queer employees, Hispanic customers or at least the Palestinian family members of the board. Literally no one with real power is opposing this fascist takeover, and it fucking disgusts me. Companies are jumping at the chance to appease orange Hitler, and all struck down their gay pride policies before even being ordered or threatened. I guess somehow I was naive enough to hope that Starbucks or Patagonia or Target would pretend to resist the erasure of queer people, or even just push the oppressors into a courtroom before kneeling down to lick their spray tanned boots. This is America. Land of the cowards.

      • our big companies are infinitely more powerful than our government

        The big companies ARE your government. Wtf do you think "lobbying" is? Who the fuck do you think funds both your parties? (Hint: It's bribery and billionaires, respectively)

        and it seems like SOME of them should be putting up a fight, standing up for their queer employees, Hispanic customers or at least the Palestinian family members of the board.

        Why the fuck would they?

        Because they used pink/green/crip/whatever wash for a few days each year to fool you in to believing they care? They don't. Never have.

        Companies exist to make profit, as long as appropriating marginalised peoples' struggles and pretending to care made them money, they kept the mask on, now it no longer does, nor do they have rules like (what they would consider) that "silly" DEI keeping them from openly discriminating and maintaining the white supremacist cis-heteronormative ableist patriarchy they still openly favoured even when the rules were in place. Bending the knee to fascism (which capitalism will always decay in to precisely for this reason) will ultimately be much more profitable for them - the billionaires who own the companies (the companies are just a shell, that they will drop for a bigger one. Prison labour? Deportation camp labour? Slave labour? They're already here, and are about to have a growth spurt) in a fucking flash.

        Literally no one with real power is opposing this fascist takeover, and it fucking disgusts me.

        Literally anyone with real power under capitalism is fascist, or at least dedicated to maintain the the capitalist system that leads to it, what the fuck did you expect?

        Companies are jumping at the chance to appease orange Hitler, and all struck down their gay pride policies before even being ordered or threatened.

        Welcome to pinkwashing, queers have been telling you for decades that rainbow capitalism is a mask and a trick you shouldn't fall for.

        Also maybe consider doing some research in to war and other oppression, see how motherfuckingly eye-wateringly profitable it is.

        I guess somehow I was naive enough to hope that Starbucks or Patagonia or Target would pretend to resist the erasure of queer people, or even just push the oppressors into a courtroom before kneeling down to lick their spray tanned boots.

        I'm sorry, but that is beyond naive, that is wilfully out of touch. These companies, the government, and capitalism itself have been telling you all along who they are, and those who they oppress have been scream it forever, it was all there for you to see and hear, but you chose not to, probably because it was more comforting to believe the lie, and marginalised people couldn't possibly be right with our "cynicism".

        This is America. Land of the cowards corporation.

        FTFY.

        These people are not cowards, and the longer you continue to frame them as such, instead of as the intentionally oppressive individuals, and their machine, that they are, that machine will continue to chug along uninterrupted.

        The idea that corporations and the people who run them should be “brave” and stand up against the very system that enables them to exist, or somehow give a single fuck about society at large, otherwise they’re “cowards” (and not simply self serving oppressors) is so far beyond absurd, it’s actually enraging at this point.

      • Sorry what's the joke about 'corporations are people'?

  • Businesses will never willingly support the minority at the expense of the majority. They will always cater to the largest immediate profit margin

    • I think I get where you’re going, but more accurately…

      MAGA are a minority. The thing business support is profit. In this case, via sucking up to those in power.

      And being considerate of racial minorities and gender minorities doesn’t cost the majority any expense. Regardless of the lies GOP and Fox “News” want us to believe.

  • Defining an age while it's happening is the same mistake as trying to define a generation outside of an historic context. You either use arbitrary boundaries to define the category, or you wait for a historical context to define boundaries and categories under. We're in the ages of glass, plastic, misinformation, cowardice, social networks, corporations, etc. You have no idea what the defining characteristics will be to history until you are looking back from the next category or epoch.

  • It's a modern day worldwide religion .... the religion of money. It only exists if we faithfully attend church every week or every day and pray to the gods of finance and hold everlasting faith to the almighty dollar. Our churchs are the banks, ATMs, restaurants, stores, malls and online shopping sites we see every day. Our membership cards carry our prayers in our credit and debit cards. Once the brethen lose faith in any part of it, the whole organization starts to fall apart.

    We've always been like this. 3,000 years ago it was a golden calf. Today it's the little numbers counting which god is winning or losing on a stock market website.

60 comments