The Woke Effect: Support for Big Business lower than ever

By Rubashov

Over the last year, the antics of woke capitalism have gutted support for major corporations among Republicans – while not improving its already low standing among Democrats. According to the Gallup polling organization’s annual snapshot of America, among Republicans and Republican leaners “satisfaction with the size and influence of major corporations” declined 26 percentage points – from 57 percent a year ago to 31 percent today.

Among Democrats and Democrat leaners, it declined 1 percentage point – from 25 percent a year ago to 24 percent today. Overall, Big Business in America is now less popular than the federal government. Among all Americans, satisfaction with the size and influence of major corporations declined 15 percentage points – from 41 percent a year ago to 26 percent today.

Among all Americans, satisfaction with “the size and power of the federal government” declined 7 percentage points – from 38 percent a year ago to 31 percent today. It lost 15 percentage points among Republicans/ Republican leaners – declining from 35 percent to 20 percent, while going up slightly among Democrats, from 38 to 41 percent.

Overall, Americans are more satisfied with the power of the federal government than with the influence of major corporations – 31 percent to 26 percent. This is a major shift and indicates that support for big corporations among Republican and Republican leaning voters has been wiped out. While many elected Republicans are still pro-Big Business, there is no longer a base for it among the party’s voters.

A decade or more of openly woke corporate activism has done its work. Now government is free to screw big corporations with taxes and regulations until they squeak. All that Big Business has left is its lobbyist shield and the various options of legal bribery open to them.

Overall, the nation is broadly unhappy with its institutions. Reformers take note, satisfaction with “our system of government and how well it works” declined 16 percentage points from 43 percent to 27 percent. Among Republicans and Republican leaners it collapsed 24 percent – from 54 percent to 30 percent. Among Democrats/ Democrat leaners it declined 6 percent from 30 percent to 24 percent.

This points up the mistake cheerleaders of the Establishment make in trying to replace what President Nixon called “the silent majority” of notionally “patriotic” Americans with those who don’t even like the sound of the word. Now that President Biden appears set to make war on them – we wonder, just who will support the Establishment’s foreign adventures? We can’t ever imagine A.O.C. breaking into a chorus of “U.S.A., U.S.A.!” as we embark on some new “adventure”.

Which brings us to the nation’s moral and ethical climate. Again, reformers take note… America’s satisfaction with its “moral and ethical climate” is reminiscent of the 1970’s – the period just before the Reagan revolution. It declined 14 percent in a year – from 32 percent to 18 percent. Among Republicans and Republican leaners it went down 18 percent – from 35 percent to 17 percent. Among Democrats/ Democrat leaners it went down 13 points – from 29 percent to 16 percent.

That said, if you are waiting for a fifth “great awakening” you might wish to pay attention to this data. For the first time in Gallup’s polling, Americans’ satisfaction with the “influence of organized religion” slipped below 50 percent. It fell 11 points in a year – from 59 percent to 48 percent. It does remain high among Republicans/ Republican leaners, however, falling just 4 percentage points – from 70 percent to 66 percent. Among Democrats/ Democrat leaners it fell 12 points – from 49 percent to 37 percent. Well, there are other organized “religions” to believe in these days – like the “original sin” made evident by the paleness of someone’s skin or the very religious notion that you can transubstantiate one’s chromosomes.

Despite the war on them by the federal government, Republicans and Republican leaners are bigger fans of America than Democrats and Democrat leaners. Republicans are more up on America, have more confidence in the idea of America, and generally like it more. 82 percent of Republicans are still satisfied with the “opportunity to get ahead” that America offers. That’s down from 93 percent a year ago, but still far ahead of the paltry 41 percent of Democrats who have the same feeling towards America.

58 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners are still “satisfied with the way income and wealth is distributed’ in America. Although that is down from 65 percent a year ago, it is way ahead of the 18 percent of Democrats and Democrat leaners who feel the same. That’s real funny, given the fact that so many One Percenters are Democrats. It looks like they are asking to have their taxes hiked.

The Democrat Party intends to criminalize the half of America that still likes the idea of America and still has confidence in it. When they are through, the Establishment will have a country without a constituency. Everybody will be a malcontent. That’s some plan.

Here is Gallup’s guy discussing this poll on The Hill…

“That’s what they’re doing now in the United States. They want to make it toxic. They want to make you afraid to fraternize with other Americans. Because it helps their political agenda.

That’s the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party wants you to keep thinking half the country is your enemy.

”

Jimmy Dore
#ForceTheVote
on Medicare for all

N.B. We welcome a conversation on this and all topics raised on this website. Jersey Conservative is entirely open to your ideas and opinions. To submit a column for publication, please contact Marianna at Marianna@JerseyConservative.org.

The Case for Optimism

Michael Rozeff has an important piece out at LRC today, The War Against Antifa/BLM, he explains how utterly insane the Antifa/BLM movement is.

He concludes:

The antifa/BLM thinking and agenda are so far out as to appear psychotic or mad, and they are. No one in his right mind who understands what antifa and BLM are aiming for can possibly support them. What is the current society supposed to be replaced by? Communism? An equally bad social democracy? Nonetheless, for various reasons, antifa/BLM is receiving support and backing, and we are in for a war of sorts to suppress their criminal rampages and violations of decent people and decent order.

This is a big challenge, but it will be met because most Americans have the good sense to know that antifa/BLM means them no good whatsoever.

I consider this the optimistic case.

In the land, we are starting to see resistance develop to the madness. Leaders are starting to emerge. Indeed, I highlighted one of them just the other day in Carlos Zapata.

There are others. Indeed, I suspect that some youth that were touched by the Ron Paul presidential campaigns of 2008 and 2012 may emerge soon. Not many, perhaps a half-dozen or maybe a dozen that heard Dr. Paul in their late teens or twenties and have been absorbing libertarian writings ever since and are born leaders. They have absorbed enough to take the next step and it is not a day too soon.

But periods like this are extremely complex and it is not clear how things will turn out.

The economist G.L. S. Shackle used to write about what he called kalidescopic periods. He wrote in Epistemics & Economics: A critique of economic doctrines (1991) P76:

It will be a kaleidic society, interspersing its moments or intervals of order assurance and beauty with sudden disintegration and a cascade into a new pattern. Such an account of the politico-economic process may at various epochs or in the course of various historical ages appear less or more suggestive and illuminating.

We are currently in this type of kalidescopic period. Austrian school economists understand the difficulty of forecasting the future at any time. The economist Walter Block says that economists forecasting the future proves they have a sense of humor.

But sometimes we can get general trends right. I discussed this point with Murray Rothbard once and he agreed but the specifics are impossible.

And when you have a point like the present, it is impossible. There are much too many moving parts. The kaleidoscope is spinning, what the pieces look like when it stops is impossible to tell.

Here is what we could have seen already.

Rozeff quotes the Daily Caller:

From the very start of the Trump administration, far-left actors declared their intention to use massive demonstrations to disrupt the American political process as much as possible.

This should not have come as a surprise. I wrote 48 hours after Trump was elected:

Heading into the election, I felt that for strategic reasons Hillary Clinton was the best alternative for libertarians. Not because she is good on many issues, she is not, but because she would come with a ready-made opposition that would listen to libertarian arguments against her.

It would have been a great opportunity to reach out to Trump supporters and spread the libertarian message. That opportunity is now gone with the Trump victory. Trump supporters are rabid, they will likely follow him down almost any hell hole.

These people are not going to listen to our arguments for smaller government. Their man is in power.

There will be opposition to Trump but it will be coming from the left, not the Trump right.

The left is all about expanding the state. Thus, it will be very difficult to reach out to these people and present state shrinking anti-Trump ideas. They are a perfect target for the socialists.

Indeed, the protest that occurred in New York City last night, where thousands turned out, was launched by a socialist group, the Socialist Alternative. The socialists are going to experience a boom in followers under Trump.

That these radical lefty anarchists are around should also not come as a surprise either, I wrote, 6 years ago, in 2014:

It is instructive to understand, who is taking part in these protests. The overwhelming majority are generally outraged over the police killings. This group includes students from nearby colleges, aging hippies and assorted northern California lefties.

However, there are two other groups that infiltrate these protests, who do not necessarily share the same outrage as the majority of protesters. One group can best be described as opportunists. They mix in with the crowd and appear to have identified in advance stores that they want to loot for the goods in them. They use the crowds as cover to get their dirty work done...

But in addition to these opportunists, there is another group that infiltrates the protests, anarchists.

These are not Rothbardian anarcho-capitalists, who see problems with governments, banksters and the ruling elite, but see no problem with corporations operating in the private sector (who are not part of the elite). These are full-fledged anarchists, who believe the entire structure of society must be torn down, including,corporations who operate in the private sector and have no strong ties to the government.

A friend familiar with their thinking tells me that they believe that once the entire structure is torn down, out of the ashes, phoenix-like, a new wonderful society will emerge. Thus, they see their current role as being one of wreaking havoc to advance the collapse. And Oakland is a hotbed for these anarchists.

I ran these photos in 2014 with the story. It shows the combination of lefty useful idiots in Oakland and those who want to destroy society (Yes, despite the masks these are 2014 photos):

Here is the problem. The radical Marxists who want to destroy society are very, very sophisticated in terms of strategy and tactics. They have studied Lenin. They know they have to form alliances with useful idiots because their group, in and of itself is too small. 

In addition to older lefties, they pretty much can move the young to advance their goals--after the years of government financing of postmodern and Critical Theory teaching in colleges and universities. The young have been dumbed down to think central planning is the way to go.

The radical Marxists understand this and they are opportunists. 

They are using the death of mostly black thugs at the hands of police to their advantage.

I have discussed in a podcast dread risk fear,  early on having pictures flashed of how COVID-19 was being treated in China and Italy spooked many Americans, it caused the COVID-19 panic in the US. That panic was dread risk fear. It wasn't logical, it was the beaming of the images that did it.

Something of the same has happened with the anti-police movement.

We saw the pictures of the copper with his knee on George Floyd. Those who react on emotion reacted immediately. It was a type of dread risk fear and then the accomplice mainstream press flooded the airwaves of other cop killings without context, solidifying the great copper dread risk fear. 

As Gerd Gigerenzer, former head of the Max Planck Institute, writes it is pretty much impossible to talk logic to those who have been impacted by such fear, only a greater fear will change their minds. 

So maybe the radical left's attack on restaurants and looting will knock some out of their anti-cop trance (which is really an anti-civilization)  but I suspect that this is what the Marxists behind the curtain want. They want the people to be fearful, so that Trump is re-elected to "fix things." The Marxists know a Trump victory will continue the recruiting of socialists to the cause.

Police I am talking to tell me that they are preparing for a straight 30 days of riots if Trump is elected.

With an election victory behind him, Trump would likely declare a national emergency and order the cracking heads on the streets to begin. How that would turn out is anybody's guess. Right now coppers tell me that it is a period like none they have ever seen. They see hate displayed toward them everywhere. "It's visceral," one copper told me. 

The kaleidoscope is turning. How the pieces look when it stops spinning, I have no idea. There is an optimistic scenario that things do get back to normal but there are other potential scenarios where things end up far from good. 

-RW

New Jersey Law Enforcement News blasts Sweeney

Yesterday, the leading figures of New Jersey’s legislative, governmental, legal, judicial, and political establishment (aka Trenton “insiders”) gathered together at a press conference to decry the state’s criminal justice system. NJ.com’s Blake Nelson did some great straight-forward reporting on this, with an assist from fellow journalist Brent Johnson:

Gov. Phil Murphy and leaders of the state Legislature said they’re planning to act swiftly on new recommendations to overhaul how people are sentenced in New Jersey, where prisons have had the worst racial disparity in the nation.

Murphy said during a news conference in Trenton on Thursday that he supports calls to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug and property crime and to speed up when people convicted of second-degree robbery or burglary are eligible for parole in the Garden State.

The recommendations were detailed in a new report by the New Jersey Criminal Sentencing and Disposition Commission.

Some of the changes, if adopted, could apply retroactively, although the Democratic governor emphasized that nobody was guaranteed release.
Murphy called the fact that black residents are incarcerated at far higher rates than whites “galling,” and he said the reforms would ensure that the criminal justice system works "for all communities.”

… State Senate President Stephen Sweeney said the changes were “long past due.”

“We’re destroying people," Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said. "People that made mistakes. They’re not criminals. But we turn them into criminals if we keep them in jail for a long period of time.”

Deborah Poritz, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court and the leader of the commission, said there was “overwhelming consensus” behind the proposals.

The hypocrisy here is rich.

If this was Pennsylvania – a state where the voters ELECT every judge and every prosecutor – there might be some cause for Establishment types gathering to point the finger at a system that they have only a partial hand in creating. But this is New Jersey, where EVERY facet of the criminal justice system is ENTIRELY controlled by this same Establishment. EVERY judge is a political appointment. EVERY prosecutor is a political appointment. The state Attorney General is a POLITICAL APPOINTMENT.

Trenton insider Deborah Poritz, who presented the recommendations, has worked in state government since 1981. Poritz was the APPOINTED state Attorney General from 1994 to 1996. Then she became the APPOINTED Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court from 1996 to 2006. She is critiquing the very system she played a huge role in creating!

Is it the sentencing… or the laws? New Jersey regulates or criminalizes some new behavior nearly every week. Even now, the Legislature is hard at work trying to criminalize menthol cigarettes. In his famous article on the subject, conservative columnist George Will argued that "overcriminalization" was responsible for the death of Eric Garner, a sidewalk merchant who was killed in a confrontation with police trying to crack down on sales tax scofflaws.

Will raises the question of how many new laws are created by state legislatures and by Congress in the rush to be seen to be "doing something". Will's brilliant column is a must read for legislators thinking about proposing their next round of ideas that will end up being enforced by men with guns. New Jersey has too many laws, too many restrictions, too many regulations. It suffers under a New Deal Era constitution that idealized the kind of authoritarian central-control necessary to fight a world war, but stifling in normal times. And to top it all off, it has the least democratic Legislature in America.

Perhaps those Establishment types should read a little before opening their mouths. We recommend Douglas Husak’s Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law or Harvey Silverglate’s Three Felonies a Day. What we do know is this: Whenever the Legislature makes a law that requires blue-collar law enforcement officers to enforce it, when something inevitably goes wrong, you can always count on the white-collar Establishment to blame the cops who they sent to enforce the law. It’s a class thing.

To feign outrage over something created from the top down – as though you and your fellow Trenton insiders were innocent bystanders – is the height of hypocrisy. It is play-acting. The New Jersey Law Enforcement News summed up the politics behind the Establishment’s performance art…

New Jersey Law Enforcement News
“We’re destroying people," Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said. "People that made mistakes. They’re not criminals. But we turn them into criminals if we keep them in jail for a long period of time.”

WTF is Sweeney talking about? If you're in prison, you are in fact a "criminal." You committed a crime, you were prosecuted, sentenced and incarcerated. 100% leftist drivel here. The leftists believe you, the LEO are the criminal, the law abiding citizen is the "criminal," working people who want to enjoy the prosperity they've earned are the "criminals" To them capitalism is the crime, and "criminals" are merely political prisoners and victims of the "system." This is an evil philosophy. If you support, or vote for Murphy or any Democrat, in my opinion you are voting for self-destruction.
- NJLEN