 So this next story is so unbelievably outrageous that there is a high likelihood that my head might actually pop off of my shoulders and explode once it hits the ground. It's that ridiculous. I don't even know how to process this level of absurdity, but Mitch McConnell, the individual who helped create the late-stage capitalist society that we all currently live in, he's now questioning whether or not large multinational corporations have too much power in our political system. The guy who for decades has argued that there should be more money in politics who literally wrote a legal brief in favor of Citizens United when it was being argued in front of the Supreme Court is now mad because corporations have too much power in our political system. Unbelievable. So as Bergus Everett of Politico explains, in the wake of the cancellation of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Georgia over new election laws there, McConnell flashed frustration that companies appear to be taking direction from democratic complaints about the law. Our private sector must stop taking cues from the outrage-industrial complex. Americans do not need or want big business to amplify disinformation or react to every manufactured controversy with frantic left-wing signaling McConnell said in a lengthy statement on Monday. Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order. The cozy relationship between Republicans and business is no secret in Washington. The party's last major legislative achievement was a tax cut bill that focused on shaving down the corporate tax rate, but that relationship has shifted in the early weeks of the presidency of Joe Biden. So I find this hilarious. And when I say hilarious, I mean insufferable. Because he's pretending as if he doesn't know the way that large multinational corporations operate. And in the article, they quote him as saying that they're being woke and that the problem with them is that they're too woke. I think that someone who's a capitalist knows the way that corporations operate. These large corporations, they don't have a cohesive political ideology. Every action that they take is going to be a way that they increase their profits. So when they donate to politicians in both parties, it's not because they think that Democrats and Republicans have really stellar ideas and they want to support these politicians out of the goodness of their hearts. They donate to these politicians in both parties because they are doing that to foster goodwill with both parties. So that way, when power changes, they still have people in power to advocate on their behalf, opt for less regulations, opt for more tax cuts for them. So they don't have a political ideology. They're not woke. They might virtue signal and take aside when it comes to cultural issues. But them doing that is nothing more than marketing because they try to cultivate goodwill, not just among lawmakers, but among the general public who they need to buy their products to survive. And to the extent that large corporations end up denouncing legislation produced by politicians that they donated to will be because it is a bad look. The optics are bad. It's a PR issue and they want to correct that. Now AP reported that corporations gave $50 million to lawmakers in Georgia that supported the racist voter suppression legislation that was recently passed. And now these companies are facing pressure to stop supporting said politicians and even publicly denounce them because this is bad for business, right? So companies like Coca-Cola, Delta, they denounced Georgia's voter suppression law, which in turn led to Trump calling on conservatives to boycott these companies. Now the whole reason why they're speaking up is not because ideologically they disagree with this, but it's a business decision. But to Trump's call to boycott companies like Coca-Cola, I've just got to ask, how's that working out for you? Because in this photograph shared on Twitter by white supremacist Stephen Miller, it looks as if you're not necessarily participating in the cancel culture that you are promoting. So how's that, how's that Coke boycott working out Donald Trump? But here's the thing. We live in a democracy. So theoretically, if we want to affect change, we should be able to pick up the phone, pressure lawmakers organize. I mean, you can't really do too much in person political activities during a pandemic. But in theory, we should be able to just directly impact our lawmakers. But since we live in a late stage capitalist society, thanks to individuals like Mitch McConnell, we can't just do that. It's not so simple. We actually have to use proxies to affect change. We have to put pressure on large corporations so that way they'll in turn put pressure on politicians because that's the only way that we will actually make a difference. And as Hasan put it, incredibly scary state of affairs when we need Coca-Cola to step in against restrictive legislation because people virtually have zero power to make politicians do anything through direct action. And that's the issue here. The issue is that we know nothing is going to get done. Nothing that we want will be accomplished unless corporate America says do it because when corporate America tells politicians to jump, they ask how high. But when Americans ask politicians to do something, they don't hear us. And if you look to a 2014 Princeton University study that Dr. Gillens and Page produced, they found that special interests and business elites, they have a really significant impact on policy outcomes. But normal Americans have a statistically insignificant impact on policy outcomes. So this is why people are now putting pressure on Coca-Cola, on Delta, companies based in Georgia. This is why we are trying to pressure the Israeli government to stop oppressing the Palestinian people by opting for boycott, divestment and sanctions because when capitalism reigns supreme around the world and in the United States, really you have to hit them where it hurts and that is in their wallets. So if they think that we're not going to buy their products if they don't speak out or if they're not woke enough, for example, then that will encourage these large multinational corporations to take action. And again, I just want to stress here that these corporations don't have a political ideology. Their ideology is to increase profits, increase shareholder value. That's the only thing that they care about. And that explains why you can have companies like Walmart, for example, put out pro-gay advertisements saying, oh, well, we respect the LGBTQ community. We support LGBTQ pride. But on another hand, donate thousands of dollars to anti-trans lawmakers in Arkansas, for example, who end up passing bills that ban gender-affirming care for trans youth. I mean, not necessarily very woke if you're funding anti-gay and anti-trans politicians, but at the same time, you speak out in favor of pride. I mean, to them, it's all about the money. They don't actually care about gay pride. Nobody believes that when Xbox changes their logo to the pride flag that they're doing it because they genuinely care about gay people. It's virtue signaling because this is marketing to them. They're trying to say, hey, we support gay people and you probably know someone who's gay or you might be gay yourself. Buy an Xbox, buy, you know, a Microsoft computer. That's why they do it. It's marketing. Someone who's a capitalist like Mitch McConnell, he knows this, but he's lying to you. He's being disingenuous. He's trying to make it seem as if, well, look, this is just the woke mob. And so he's trying to trigger the opposite backlash that these companies are expecting, right? Because they know that if they support politicians who keep passing anti-trans bills or voter suppression bills, then that might lead to blowback. But what Mitch McConnell is trying to do is trigger the opposite effect where it leads to conservative blowback, right? That's what Trump is trying to do as well. But ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, what these corporations do will be dictated specifically and exclusively by what is going to make them the most money. If it became financially acceptable for them, it would increase money and value and be a good marketing tactic for them to sign on to a ban on interracial marriage. They would do it like that because they don't care about our political issues. They care about money. But Mitch McConnell, of all people, he never has the right to complain about the amount of power that corporations have. You are the one who created this dystopian hellscape that we're all currently living in. So unless your proposal is to reduce the amount of political power that large multinational corporations have, kindly shut your big fucking mouth, Mitch McConnell, because nobody believes you. Everyone sees right through what you're doing. It's not that you think they have too much power. It's that the corporate power that you gave to large multinational corporations doesn't always benefit your party.