Corporations Abandon The Left

Death and taxes are two assurances that will face everyone in this life, though some people will go to great lengths to avoid both. Likely everything else should have some degree of optionality – no one but advertisers enjoy billboards planted like forests along the highway (or anywhere), interjecting some inane new product into your field of view. An exception to the rule is when the advertisement is traded. You watch a clip before a YouTube video and thus don't have to pay money to view the following content. It’s almost as if Ray Bradbury’s prediction of a future filled with billboards in Fahrenheit 451 has come true and is now also a part of our human existence: like death, like taxes.
People had seemed to swallow this new law of nature, even when businesses started advertising for their acceptance of new political tides and dogma. As an independent myself, I found it strange when the party of hippies that distrusts big corporations began cheering for and supporting corporations that painted left-leaning policies on those very same real and virtual billboards and championed things like DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives and reductions in carbon emissions. Where did the party that loved trees go? The party that distrusted big corporations?
All the political left served to do then was enrich those few men at the top for a temporary soothing of witnessing their dogmas on billboards because since it was clear that Trump was coming back into the Whitehouse, major corporations have been dropping many DEI initiatives. Target's corporate website lists that they are terminating their “Racial Equity Action and Change initiative,” as it has “concluded as scheduled." Major U.S. banks and assets managers such as JP Morgan, Citi Group, Bank of America, and Blackrock have all withdrawn from climate commitments to reduce dealings and loans that would bring net carbon emissions to zero.
Those people who would shop at or do dealings with places that would profess and change to imitate leftist policies only served to enrich corporations that never cared about their dogmas themselves. Reuters reports that the following corporations have scaled back or abandoned DEI completely: META, Walmart, Amazon, Starbucks, Deere & Co, Ford, Boeing, McDonalds, and Lowes. Much could be told in this regard at Trump’s Inauguration, where the CEOs of Amazon, META (Facebook), and Tesla/Space X were seen supporting the incoming President.
But like a child that keeps repeating your name over and over again while you are busy, those adverts and self-proclamations from corporations have reached a point where Americans have shown through Gallup poll data (over the previous two years up until now) that they are willing to punish companies that show any political affiliation at all. Sixty-eight percent of Democrats reported that they were much less likely to buy from a business that supports Republican ideologies, while sixty-one percent of Republicans said the same. This data is not initially damning towards companies until the third leg of the political spectrum comes in: independents are three times less likely to buy from any company that shows any political leanings or dogma.
Recent statista.com reports claim that around twenty-eight percent of U.S. adults lean Democrat, and another twenty-eight percent are Republican while the rest reject political parties and are independent. The most recent U.S. government census data shows the population to be 341,143,670 million people. That's 146 million Independent Americans who are three times less likely to purchase from any company that shows in any way that it leans one way or the other politically.
Even with these numbers, Gallup showed that over these past two years, Democrats and Republicans are also less interested in seeing any political affiliations or dogmas displayed in any company. Democrats have dropped a whole twenty-two percent in two years. Crazier still is not even a month ago, Costco shareholders voted so strongly against introducing DEI initiatives that it was nearly every single one; ninety-eight percent voted, “no thanks."
If a company, let’s say the videogame giant Ubisoft, puts a leftist ideology like DEI into its games, statistically that's sixty percent of Republicans, and all 141 million independents that are much less likely to buy their game. Recently, the upcoming (and twice delayed) game “Assassin’s Creed: Shadows” has a black-skinned protagonist set in ancient Japan where racial diversity was virtually zero (though he was a historical figure). Seen by some as yet another DEI push by a company, purchasers have revolted, and in a single year, the company's stock has somersaulted down a canyon to be fifty-one percent less than it was previously.
In another video game titled “Dragonage:Veilguard” (a fantasy adventure set in an ancient, medieval world) was expected by its giant company, Electronic Arts, to “reach" at least three million players, but because of DEI inclusions (such as a trans character lecturing their parent on pronouns), it didn't get close and was rejected by consumers. Following the failure, Electronic Art’s stock dropped a whopping sixteen-point-seven percent.
Statistically, people either don’t agree with seeing current politics in front of them or don’t agree at all. Monetarily, too, for companies it seems, if less than a third of purchasers in the U.S. prefer to buy from them if they champion political ideas one way or the other. Since the loss of the election, the left has had to face some realities: that Trump won the popular vote – that voters were increasingly tired of the politics that were smeared across billboards everywhere they looked, and that when it was financially opportune the companies that proclaimed and upheld Diversity, Equity, and Inclusive policies have begun to dump them like the rest of the waste they dump into the environment already.
Where are the hippies that distrusted big corporations? Shall this new era spawn them once more, or will the corporate betrayal be met with apathy? Will the left choose to adopt a stance somewhere in between their hardliners and independents to win more votes? If not, it would seem they would have learned nothing from their recent loss. Statistically, Americans are tired of being forced to consume – via businesses – either the opposing political dogmas or any political dogma at all, and in turn, Corporations are starting to dump the left in pursuit of more income.
Austin Petak is an aspiring novelist and freelance journalist who loves seeking stories and the quiet passions of the soul. If you are interested in reaching out to him to cover a story, you may find him at austinpetak@gmail.com.
Opinions expressed by columnists in The Daily Record are not necessarily those of its management or staff, and do not constitute an endorsement or recommendation. Any errors or omissions should be called to our attention so that they may be corrected. Contact us at news@omahadailyrecord.com.
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