January 20, 2025
Knowing is half the battle. Time for the second half.
I planned to publish today for months. The direction of my piece changed. It still wasn’t working, so I tossed it. I started a new topic, then tossed it. I went back to my thoughts after the election was called and landed here.
I knew, y’all.
I watched the penetration of Trumpism into Corporate American leadership and witnessed it filter into management and strategic decision-making. I raised my hand and my voice to challenge the lies. Lies about immigration. Lies about healthcare. And, worst of all, lies about the world we have witnessed over the last eight years.
I learned that speaking up was not popular.
Fuck that, I thought. I’ll return to my own business and keep talking. But the damage was done. I am too small to make an electoral difference.
Corporate America made their position clear by dismantling their commitments to environmental and social governance (ESG) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. By January 1, 2025, U.S. based investment managers no longer concern themselves with meeting decarbonization or equity goals. Workers were gaining too much power. Destroying the environment remains profitable. Wealthy, bigoted men are seeking the American social hierarchy of 1950s with a gutting of our regulatory environment that will make Reaganites jealous.
Fun Fact: Before 1965, Americans did not have a defined right to privacy. Three U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) rulings — Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, Eisenstadt v. Baird in 1972, and Roe v. Wade in 1973 – granted Americans the personal privacy to make their own family planning decisions.
America’s 2024 electorate believed the lies they were told and handed the executive and legislative branch to the same party in majority control of SCOTUS. The lies were easier to understand than the truth. They believe punishing women, immigrants, anyone who doesn’t look white enough, and the LGBTQ+ community for their marginal social progress over the last seventy years will somehow improve conditions for white men. It won’t. Most of us will be worse off, and that’s the tragedy.
America’s oligarchic situation is absurd. Corporate America supported the fascist ticket because they want to dismantle the U.S. regulatory bureaucracy. The trouble is that short-term profit maximization will bite them in the ass. Usually does.
Regulations to protect workers and our climate are good for long-term economic growth. People need to earn enough from their labor to cover their needs, with enough disposable income remaining to buy gadgets, doodads, and whatnots for the economy to grow. Ignoring climate risk is as silly as ignoring financial risk. It is absurd to buy a political party, demand unrestrained business practices, then expect sales and rents to grow to the sky.
The willful ignorance among the wealthy and the electorate is astounding. Centuries of history and decades of research show what happens next and it is all bad. Even worse, sifting out the possible and probable from Trump’s constantly overflowing bucket o’ rhetoric is a waste of time. This is not 2017. The people around the president in his second term are sycophants, not guard rails.
I embarked on my path to writing here because I knew. Knowing is half the battle. The other half is fighting.
I will use the scientific method and storytelling to explain the consequences of the policies they support. Ending healthcare makes us sicker. Tariffs make us poorer. Deporting our agricultural and construction labor force will make us both poorer and sicker. When rising inflation and falling labor force participation eat away at profit margins and asset performance, I will be here, writing it all down and sharing why policy that centers people over profits makes our economy stronger.
My hope is to prevent harm. We are all human and each of us deserves our human rights. It will take all of us fighting with our respective tools to keep America on its path to “rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed1.”
MLK’s Challenge to Social Scientists
On September 1, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to the APA’s Annual Convention in Washington, D.C., on The Role of the Behavorial Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement. His speech was given as a challenge to U.S. social scientists to help change a society "poisoned to its soul by racism." I share a few excerpts below from this speech I revisit often and encourage you to read the full text in the link.
“It is my deep conviction that justice is indivisible, that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
“We must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and racial segregation.”
“We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.”
“We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry.”
“We must never adjust ourselves to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.”
Cheers! - Sara