American View: Morale? Motivation? Hope? We’re Fresh Out This Week.

Responsible Business12 Nov 2024

Obviously, writing under a byline like “American View” meant I’m compelled to talk about the bloody awful U.S. presidential election. From the moment Pennsylvania declared for fascism, I was sure I’d have no choice but to discuss the vote’s implications for security, risk management, and leadership in a corporate environment. I mean … what the hell other topic might drive the discourse for the rest of this year? Early reviews of Mission Impossible 8: More Train Stunts or Passion of the Christ 2: Crucify This aren’t gonna influence the promised deportation of millions of people in 1Q25. Casual distractions and TikTok shorts can’t numb the shock we’ve just experienced.

As such, I spent most of this week researching the probable impacts of this monumental outcome on businesses through probable threats to our workforce. I initially drew on Madison Pauly and Sarah Szilagy’s article in Mother Jones titled What the “Most Anti-LGBTQ” Election in Decades Means for Trans People because some of my friends in the community contacted me to discuss just how scared they should be after the transition. This section from the article came up time again in our talks:

“If Trump wins the presidency … the attacks [on LGBTQ+ Americans] succeeding now on the state level can be expected to graduate to the federal government. In his first term, Trump already provided a model for targeting transgender people. He banned them from the military; permitted anti-trans discrimination in health care; rolled back protections for trans students; and created a broad license for businesses to discriminate based on “religious objections” – often against LGBTQ people. More clues for a second term come from Project 2025, much of which was written by former Trump administration members, which equates ‘transgender ideology’ with pornography and declares that it should be banned. The blueprint for a second Trump administration proposes wiping the terms ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ completely out of all federal policy.

“And if the GOP wins both Congress and the White House, Trump has pledged to go further than before – cutting off federal funding for gender-affirming medical care and making it illegal nationwide for doctors to provide such care to minors.”

To say nothing of the women our “leaders” are condemning to death in the cause of religious persecution.

One friend is terrified that her marriage will be nullified, thereby allowing Christofascist state actors to seize her children. Another is afraid that the removal of all legal restrictions on workplace harassment will make it impossible for her to remain employed. Everyone I spoke with feared a surge of sexist and homophobic abuse as the incoming administration’s blatant misogyny becomes normalized and, yeah … that’s already happening.

My line of attack on the story was going to take the form of a challenge to business leaders in general and to risk management specialists in particular: start planning now for how you’re going to mitigate the risk of losing essential personnel when American business culture becomes too toxic to ignore in the new year. When your executives, program managers, technical experts, etc. feel their survival depends on leaving your organisation, the community they live in, or your industry sector, how are you going to ensure continuity of operations? Do you naïvely believe you can easily backfill experienced people with obscure skills or essential tribal knowledge quickly enough to prevent severe disruptions? Especially when every other employer is simultaneously trying to backfill their own sudden losses … What’s your backup plan?

More importantly, just how far is your organisation willing to go to defy the social, legal, and regulatory pressures coming from the pro-bigotry administration? How long will your owners or stakeholders allow you to lost money on lawsuits and boycotts before you’re forced to abandon your principals and turn on your “valued employees?” And how will that inevitable surrender to amoral calculus affect your organisation’s future? Will it trigger a backlash from your more progressive suppliers and customers? Or invite a warm welcome from pro-fascist entities that demand you double-down?

I tried assembling that argument a half-dozen ways, but it didn’t work. Every draft ran out steam before I could finish it. Not from hopelessness or despair, but because there’s an essential truth to modern corporate life that makes arguments based on justice, morality, decency, honour, or ethics ultimately pointless. Our nation’s official state religion – neoclassical economics – demands profits über alles. Individuals, groups, communities … we’re all expendable. In late-stage capitalism, workers are fungible, rights are anything but, and only the Almighty Dollar™ matters. Appeals to reason or compassion might as well be prayers to Crom.

The way things are devolving around us, maybe the Auld Ways of resolving philosophical disputes with a battleaxe might make a comeback.

Based on that inescapable truth of the contemporary American experience, all the destructive changes queued up in Project 2025 will most likely be implemented with little resistance so long as the NYSE, the FTSE, and the SEE keep growing. Our leaders and institutions have made it clear that results matter and people don’t. Hardly a surprise; that’s the world our parents and grandparents explicitly wanted. It’s our poisoned inheritance and no one who can afford to fix it cares to.

So … no. I’m not going to waste another weekend exhorting VPs and MDs and CXOs to value their workers’ well-being over their profits because it’s clear from the recent election that I’d be wasting my efforts. As Chris Maisano pointed out in his Jacobin article Republicans’ and Democrats’ Biggest Corporate Sponsors: “Forty percent of all political donations come from an extremely rarified set: the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent.” This election wasn’t a plebiscite on civil rights, justice, or foreign policy; it was a referendum on whether the U.S.A. was finally ready to stop playing coy and go all-in on transitioning to a Wall-Mart brand cyberpunk dystopia.

Think I’m exaggerating? Hell, I’m just re-warming predictions for the end of America that were old before my kids were born! Consider the first two paragraphs on the first page of R. Talsorian Games’ classic 1995 TTRPG Cybergeneration:

“Good and evil have become mutable concepts, replaced by the realities of expedience and the soulless will of the mega-corporations who have saved Technological Man at the cost of his soul.

“Now the shape of the Dark Future has finally become clear. A new power rules America: a power born of the corporate meritocracy and its lapdog government agencies. It is a power dedicated to retaining an iron grip on the nation it has obtained, no matter what it costs, no matter what is destroyed in the process.”

Take comfort from the “best wishes” card your office mates gave you while you’re waiting for your deportation flight to a random foreign country.

So much for the preventative value of cautionary tales ... Some smeghead billionaire must have read that and thought “Gee, that sounds swell!” and now here we are. Glorious.

I’m not sure what advice I’m supposed to give my friends when our policy makers openly joke about how they want to revoke women’s right to vote to ensure they’re never voted out of power again. We’re so far past the point of compromise or mutual respect that there are no viable strategies left for finding common ground with the half of the country that wants to put the other half in concentration camps. There are no “safe” places left to escape to. There are no viable solutions for holding the new Incorporated States of America at arm’s length and pretending that our society hasn’t passed through a one-way gate. Enough people wanted this that we’re all stuck with it.

I guess the only advice I have left is get out if you can, go down fighting if you can’t. There are no good options. If you think your bosses or neighbours will protect you … they’ve just shown you that they won’t.

To quote another brilliant and prescient dystopian future TTRPG from the 1990s: Good luck. You’re on your own.