General Discussion

babylonsister

(171,063 posts) Tue Jul 11, 2017, 11:53 AM Jul 2017

"It's just business."

https://www.facebook.com/william.r.pitt.1/posts/10155895435511111?comment_id=10155895502386111&notif_t=feed_comment_reply&notif_id=1499788271404656

William Rivers Pitt
15 mins ·

"It's just business."

Watching all this Fredo/Russia stuff unspool on the "news" networks has helped crystallize one of my core concerns regarding our current bleak estate. They had some slightly-less-than-full-batshit Republican on who was lamenting the moral gulf between public service and private business that is brazenly evidenced by the Trump administration. "In business, you do whatever you have to in order to gain an advantage," he said. "In public service, we just don't do that where I come from."

Leaving aside the fluffy bullshit coming from a modern Republican about the nobility of today's public servants, what he said was telling. "It's just business" is code for "I will light your balls on fire and throw you in the river if it gets me a few extra points of market share." This is widely accepted as "The Way It Is," and therein lies the problem.

Never mind the moral dilemma presented by Trump and his people. It's a larger issue: Cutthroat eat-what-you-kill ethics should not be within a parsec of health care, education, war-making, energy, food and a whole slew of life-and-death matters that affect us all every day. These need to be public entities, supported by public levies and subject to the will of the public, not left in the hands of "It's just business" mercenaries who profit from sorrow and deprivation because it helps the bottom line.

There's a connection here, too, to the Jesus-shouters who don't blink at banking a billion dollars off child-slave laborers who make Ivanka's shoes, or stalwart Christians who traffic in stolen Iraqi artifacts that help fund terrorism worldwide. "It's just business." Supply-Side Jesus understands completely, and forgives all.