I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).
Corporate Bullshit: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America is Nick Hanauer, Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen's 2023 book on the history of corporate apologetics; it's great:
https://thenewpress.com/books/corporate-bullsht
I found out about this book last fall when David Dayen reviewed it for the The American Prospect; Dayen did a great job of breaking down its thesis, and I picked it up for my newsletter, which prompted Hanauer to send me a copy, which I finally got around to reading yesterday (I have gigantic backlog of reading):
The authors' thesis is that the business world has a well-worn playbook that they roll out whenever anything that might cause industry to behave even slightly less destructively is proposed. What's more, we keep falling for it. Every time we try to have nice things, our bosses – and their well-paid Renfields – dust off their talking points from the last go-round, do a little madlibs-style search and replace, and bust it out again.
It's a four-stage plan:
I. First, insist that there is no problem.
Enslaved people are actually happy. Smoking doesn't cause cancer. Higher CO2 levels are imaginary and they're caused by sunspots and they're good for crop yields. The hole in the ozone layer is only a problem if you foolishly decide to hang around outside (this is real!).
II. OK, there's a problem, but it's your fault.
An epidemic of on-the-job maimings is actually an epidemic of sloppy workers. A gigantic housing crash is really a gigantic cohort of greedy, feckless borrowers. Rampant price gouging is actually a problem of too much "spending power" (that is, "money") in the hands of working people.
III. Any attempt to fix this will make it worse.
Equal wages for equal work will cause bosses to fire women and people of color. Protecting people with disabilities will cause bosses to fire disable people. Minimum wages will cause bosses to buy machines and fire "unskilled" workers. Gun control will only increase underground gun sales. Banning carcinogenic pesticides will end agriculture as we know and we'll all starve to death.
IV. This is socialism.
Income tax is socialism. Estate tax is socialism. Medicare and Medicaid are socialism. Food stamps are socialism. Child labor laws are socialism. Public education is socialism. The National Labor Relations Act is socialism. Unions are socialism. Social security is socialism. The Fair Labor Standards Act is socialism. Obamacare is socialism. The Civil Rights Act is socialism. The Occupational Health and Safety Act is socialism. The Family Medical Leave Act is socialism. FDR is a socialist. JFK is a socialist. Lyndon Johnson is a socialist. Carter is a socialist. Clinton is a socialist. Obama is a socialist. Biden is a socialist (Biden: "I beat the socialist. That's how I got the nomination").
Though this playbook has been in existence since the nation's founding, the authors point out that from the New Deal until the Reagan era, it didn't get much traction. But starting in the Reagan years, the well-funded network of billionaire-backed think-tanks, endowed economics chairs, and latter-day propaganda vehicles like Prageru breathed new life into these tactics.
We can see this playing out right now as the corporate world scrambles for a response to the Harris campaign's proposal to address price-gouging. Reading Matt Stoller's dissection of this response, we can see the whole playbook on display:
First, corporate apologists insisted that greedflation didn't exist, despite the fact that CEOs kept getting on earnings calls and boasting to their investors about how they were using the excuse of inflation to jack up prices:
There are all these out-in-the-open commercial entities whose sole purpose is to "advise" large corporations about their prices, which is just a barely disguised euphemism for price-fixing, from meat-packing:
That's stage one: "there's no problem." Stage two is "it's your fault." That's Larry Summers and co insisting that a couple of stimulus checks a couple years ago are responsible for inflation, because it gave you too much "buying power," and so the only possible fix is to jack up interest rates and trigger mass layoffs and sharp wage decreases across the economy:
Stage three is "any attempt to fix this will make it worse." When Isabella Weber pointed out that there was a long history of price-controls being used to fight price-gouging, corporate apologists lost their minds and brigaded her, calling her all kinds of nasty names and insisting that her prescription didn't even warrant serious discussion, because any attempt to control prices would destroy the economy:
You may recognize this as cousin to the response to rent control proposals, which inevitably trigger a barrage of economists screaming that this will not work and will actually reduce the housing supply and drive up prices, which is true, provided that you ignore all evidence and history:
And stage four is "this is socialism." Look, I am a literal card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America and I can assure you, Kamala Harris is not a socialist (and more's the pity). But that didn't stop the most eminently guillotineable members of the investor class from hair-on-fire, ALL-CAPS denunciations of the Harris proposal as SOCIALISM and Harris herself as a COMMUNIST:
The author's thesis is that by naming the playbook and giving examples of it – for example, showing how the "proof" that minimum wage increases will destroy jobs was also offered as "proof" not to abolish slavery, ban child labor, add fireproofing to textile factories, and pay women and Black people the same as white guys – we can vaccinate ourselves against it.
Certainly, we've reached a moment where the public is increasingly skeptical of claims that we can't fix anything because the economists say that this is the best of all possible worlds, and if that means that we're all going to boil to death in our own skin, so be it:
In other words, after 40 years of subordinating politics to economics, there's a resurgence of belief in politics – that is, doing stuff – rather than hunkering down and waiting for the technocrats to fix everything:
Corporate Bullshit is a brisk and bracing read – I got through it in about an hour in my hammock yesterday – and, in laying out the bullshit playbook's long history of nonsensical predictions and pronouncements, it does make a very good case that we should stop listening to people who quote from it.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
From a manuscript of poems that tangles with American consumerism and the effects of corporate mediation on language, people's lives, and life itself. Some potion makers who have inebriated 🍺this work: George Lakoff, Joan Jett, Foucault, John Ashbery, Don Dellilo, Wisława Szymborska, The Beatles, Emily Dickinson, Tracy K. Smith, Led Zeppelin, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Social Distortion, Rage Against the Machine, Full Time Fuckits, Donald Fucking Trump and the cult of stupidity, Kenneth Fearing, Philip Larkin, Roger McGough. #poetry #americanpoetryreview #pharma #bigpharma #what #modernliving #inamerica #americanstyle #poison #design #media #advertising #panopticon #foucault #georgelakoff #lakoff #hahaha #poetry #freeverse #terrifying #quitefunny #no (at EARTH) https://www.instagram.com/p/CncXwtgr7om/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
“A metaphor is an expression in which one kind of thing is understood and experienced in terms of another entirely unrelated thing; the metaphors in a language can reveal aspects of the culture of its speakers. Take, for example, the concept of an argument. In logic and philosophy, an argument is a discussion involving differing points of view, or a debate. But the conceptual metaphor in American culture can be stated as ARGUMENT IS WAR. This metaphor is reflected in many expressions of the everyday language of American speakers: I won the argument. He shot down every point I made. They attacked every argument we made. Your point is right on target. I had a fight with my boyfriend last night. In other words, we use words appropriate for discussing war when we talk about arguments, which are certainly not real war. But we actually think of arguments as a verbal battle that often involve anger, and even violence, which then structures how we argue.
To illustrate that this concept of argument is not universal, Lakoff suggests imagining a culture where an argument is not something to be won or lost, with no strategies for attacking or defending, but rather as a dance where the dancers’ goal is to perform in an artful, pleasing way. No anger or violence would occur or even be relevant to speakers of this language, because the metaphor for that culture would be ARGUMENT IS DANCE.”
Linda Light in “Perspectives : An Open Introduction to Cultural Anthropology”.
Misguided, or Sloppy Thinking is More Prevalent Than We Might Be Comfortable With...
...Even from the minds of the confident, or the competent.
It is epidemic at the moment. Not spread by kissing, but other kinds of contact. Like memes, and infographics. Especially, the well designed, and colorful. This is something that has been bugging me for a while, now.
There's a new/obscure sub-field primarily of psychology, and philosophy. It's called "Noology". The "-ology" part most people understand as indicating a field of study. The "No-" part is the same as the "kno-" in knowing, and knowledge. It's the same as the "gno-" in gnostic. As I understand it Noology is specifically the study of thinking. Thought processes. How we think, how we arrive at conclusions.
My suggestion is to think about thinking. Think about what you are hearing, especially what you are repeating. Viral doesn't mean correct, even if it's enthusiastic, or colorful. Repeating is you. No matter the source, even if the historic person you most admire is accredited. Once you repeat it it becomes your credibility, it reflects you. This is a silly, and potentially costly way to be trendy.
