By Larry Bell
Imagine how boring it must be as a Big Corp exec in a panoramic viewing glass corner office overlooking verdant green windmill-crested hills of Wokatopia.
There you are, feet-on-desk, contemplating how to bring some excitement into your status quo existence now that your company’s airline’s schedules are expected to resume in time for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics where your media PR team will be running a child-friendly global warming-distressed polar bear ad.
Then, like a flash, an epiphany comes to you.
Why not do something REALLY BIG?
Like maybe shut down one of Woketopia’s largest revenue sports events during a postpandemic economic recovery — and in the process alienate half of your customers — in order to demonstrate that your visionary vainglorious election rules are best for the entire country.
Central to these priorities is to do away with racist restrictions that all legal voters be required to identify themselves.
As in a Zoom conference from hell, several similarly inclined CEOs joined the cancel chorus conspiracy choir.
According to Atlanta-headquartered Delta Airline CEO Ed Bastian, the new voting law “is unacceptable and does not match Delta’s values.”
Not explained is why Delta then expects and requires Blacks, along with all other racial and ethnic passengers on their aircraft, to supply proof of identity on all flights — including passports for international access eligibility.
Atlanta’s Coca-Cola-based CEO James Quincey was also quick to join the virtue-signaling parade, telling CNBC host Sara Eisen that the Georgia law was “unacceptable.”
Quincy said, “We are disappointed in the outcome of the Georgia voting legislation.”
Having previously endorsed the Democratproposed HR-1/SR-1 bill that would centralize all control over voting procedures in Washington, Quincy added that “Our focus is now on supporting federal legislation that protects voting access and addresses voter suppression across the country.”
Not to be left out, American Express CEO Steve Squeri said that his company “stands against any efforts to suppress voting.”
“BlackRock is concerned about efforts that could limit the ballot,” said CEO Larry Fink. Cisco’s CEO, Chuck Robbins, chimed in, saying that “Governments should be working to make it easier to vote, not harder.”
Joe Biden, the nation’s CEO, piled on. Referring to the Georgia legislation as “sick,” he claimed: "Instead of celebrating the rights of all Georgians to vote or winning campaigns on the merits of their ideas, Republicans in the state instead rushed through an un-American law to deny people the right to vote."
None of them apparently — including President Biden — ever bothered to have their legal departments check actual facts.
For example, although Georgia’s new law tries to reassure all citizens about ballot integrity, it also expands opportunities to vote beyond what existed even two years ago, and is far more permissive than prevailing laws in many blue states.
Unlike Biden’s beloved Delaware, Georgia offers no-excuse absentee ballots.
New Yorkers eligible for absentee ballots must be ill or disabled; a primary caregiver; or someone in jail awaiting grand-jury action or sentencing.
In addition, Georgia provides for more days of early voting than in New York.
And although the Georgia law places limits on mail-in drop boxes, it also makes them a permanent part of the voting system. Before COVID, drop boxes were illegal there.
That contrived controversy resulted in Commissioner Robert Manfred’s call to move Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver which is located in a state with tighter voting restrictions than Georgia’s.
Nevertheless, referring to the Georgia legislation as “Jim Crow on steroids,” Joe Biden said he’d “strongly support” the move. Even the reliably liberal Washington Post saw fit to award Biden four Pinocchio’s for his remarks.
So perhaps, like me, you are scratching your head in bewilderment why some CEOs publicly inserted themselves into attacks on legislative changes to Georgia’s voting ballot access and integrity laws which they obviously hadn’t read.
Why would such captains of capitalism be so eager to unnecessarily anger the conservative half of their politically divided customer base?
I seriously doubt that such self-righteous assaults on nonexistent Georgia voter suppression truly have much of anything to do with addressing civil rights issues. If such were the case, how does it square with hysterically hypocritical business deals that Big Baseball and Big Business are inking with Chinese oligarchs who aren’t generally known for prioritizing such freedoms for their own citizens … minority Uighur populations most particularly?
In what ways do interventions of prominent American business executives and corporate PR departments into cancel culture adventurism benefit economic interests and responsibilities to their stockholders and stakeholders?
And wouldn’t their employees — some of whom likely include many conservatives — then be expected to realize that resulting market losses will lead to lower profits and slower worker wage increases, along with higher consumer prices to make up for higher costs?
How does taking a knee to the groins of millions of conservatives in suppressing legitimate state voter integrity protections through radically rigged Democrat-Socialist legislative agendas comport with any plausible pretense of advancing election fairness?
If successfully ramrodded through the Senate, SR-1 will virtually ensure that Republicans never again fairly win a national presidential or congressional election.
On the other hand, what will happen to those power-pandering allegiances if/when — gasp Republicans overturn razor-thin Democratic congressional control in 2022, and the Oval Office in 2024?
Why would any CEO choose to bet her or his career — along with billions in company profits — on an assumption that aligning their “brand” with partisan Democratic politics will serve any long-term competitive advantages?
Do they realistically expect that doing so will provide any lasting extortion insurance against woke-washed mobs who will always turn on them demanding additional concessions?
Such corporations are in store for very rude woke re-awakenings if they expect loyalties from resentful former customers their toxic partisanship has turned away from buying their products and viewing MLBTV.
And many of us won’t miss them a bit.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 10 books, "What Makes Humans Truly Exceptional," (2021) is available on Amazon along with all others.