Only the Poor Can Afford to Have Morals

For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? - Matthew 16:26

Tech CEOs, who stand to benefit from the beneficence of our mighty ruler or suffer from his displeasure, know the game. During the first term they could afford to sit on the sidelines hoping that the new rules were temporary, that they could get back to the old rules after this aberration got voted out. Surely, "common sense" and "normality" would return, at least in some measure. Trump was trying to bend politics into some kind of prison circus, making it an entirely different sport, something like full contact basketball with trampolines. And like Trump, this is an oddity which actually exists. It's called Slamball.

Like Slamball, the Trump game looked too outlandish to stick around. Can you imagine going to your taxpayer funded Slamball court or colleges offering Slamball scholarships? It's too weird, too niche, and the costs associated with insurance and the trampolines make it impractical, but new ideas rarely seem practical at first.

The problem was that, with the election of Joe Biden, the old political game did return. And with it some semblance of "common sense" and "normality". But the "normality" was just as stultifyingly immoral and absurd as before. The Biden people kept telling us that things were good, but we didn't feel good. They told us that inflation was lower, but we could see that prices weren't. They told us that they were doing everything they could to end the genocidal carnage in Gaza, but they were selling Israel billions of dollars in weapons. We could all feel in our bones the baseline truth to, as Will Menaker so concisely put it, "[The Democrats] stand for their donors, they stand for Wall Street, and they stand for American military empire."

The sad thing is that Trump's rule changes aren't even different enough to qualify as a new sport. While the titans of tech giving millions for front row seats to the inauguration is a departure from the past, the fundamentals of money for influence are the same. Before, all the filthy peddling was done by lawyers, lobbyists, and lapdogs behind closed doors. At least now we get to see the unseemly sausage getting made, with the most powerful people in the world raising their glasses and groveling before someone who, I'm assuming, most of them find repugnant.

But why did they do it? Why did the tech CEOs have to go to the inauguration?

Imagine if you awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, and, like some Neoliberal version of Kafka, were somehow transformed into Jeff Bezos, the second wealthiest man in the world. You might assume that the only limits imposed on you would be those of physics. If there is such a thing as "F#$! you money", Bezos' almost 250 thousand million dollars, ie. $250B, surely qualifies. So why would you debase yourself by kissing Trump's ring in front of God and everybody?

Well, let's game out what happens if Bezos takes the moral high road and stays home. Trump gets offended, fires off some anti-Bezos missive on Truth Social and makes sure that he punishes Bezos' companies that have business with the federal government, like the rocket company Blue Origin or Amazon Web Services. The Wal-Mart people smell blood in the water and start lobbying Trump hard, ie. giving away lots of money, and Trump starts saying that people should boycott Amazon, that Wal-Mart is a great American company they should support instead. Also, Amazon has been very corrupt and the justice department is investigating them for price fixing and anti-competitive, monopolistic practices that hurt the hardworking American people.

Shareholders, who only care about future profits get skittish and start selling. The next thing Bezos knows, he's only the third, or maybe even 4th wealthiest person in the world. After all, current 3rd and 4th, Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg are neck and neck, and are still in Trump's good graces after attending the inauguration. So, the second wealthiest man in the world, if he wants to keep his billions and his status as a top oligarch, sees no alternative but to put aside whatever might be holding him back and play the game to stay in the game.

We will assuredly never know Jeff Bezos' true thoughts, but in some future dramatization, I like to imagine him, ailing in his dotage, entombed deep in the bowels of some colossal bunker-mansion. He sits alone next to a fireplace in an overstuffed chair, a cashmere blanket covers his lap. A nubile young nurse comes in. As she reaches to dab the spittle from the corner of his mouth, he suddenly grasps her wrist, fixes her with a rheumy stare, and in a forced whisper proclaims, "Only the poor can afford to have morals."