Doom Report (Week 32: Target on Their Back)

I’ve said before that I was a bit surprised that so many companies instantly caved to pressure from Trump on the whole DEI thing, after pointing out way back in Week 1 that all companies really care about is their bottom line, and diversity boosts that.  Of course, I forgot, apparently, that companies are run by people, and people are emotional creatures who don’t always make the most amoral, profit-increasing decision.  Well, it looks like Target has become the poster child for the finding out phase of jettisoning DEI, with their CEO announcing his departure amidst a loss that some estimate at over $10 billion.  The Target boycott is discussed in typically amusing fashion by Josh Johnson, if you’re willing to enjoy a longer video (with, to be fair, a lot of trenchant observations and really funny quips).

Now, some articles understand that Target’s decline is tied to its reversal of DEI policies, but a surprising amount don’t.  Yes, the anti-DEI measures happened, and subsequently profits declined, but of course correlation is not causation.  Both things could have been the result of a third factor, or it could just be a complete coincidence.  It frankly amazed me that I found so many articles that claimed the DEI policy change was completely unrelated to the drop in profits, or just failed to mention it altogether, like an entire cadre of financial reporters are sitting somewhere with fingers in ears, saying “la la la I can’t hear you!” in a too-loud voice.  But here’s the thing: Target’s profits increased shortly after they first instituted their DEI-friendly policies.  Sure, that too could be a coincidence, but those who desperately cling to the correlation-not-causation principle often forget another important principle: Occam’s Razor, which tells us that, all other things being equal, the most simple explanation is usually the correct one.  It’s not always true, of course, but in this case we might want to revisit William of Ockham’s original formulation: “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.”  I think some of these financial guys are multiplying the hell out of some entities up in here.

Other things you need to know this week:

• Apparently, you can’t get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.

• On one of this week’s Even More News episodes, Trump reports that “people are saying” that maybe we need a dictator.  Just floating the idea, you understand.  More amusingly, the transcript of Ghislaine Maxwell’s conversation with Todd Blanche has her trying to convince us that Trump was a “gentleman.”  As Cody and crew point out, it would have been way more believable if she’d said “well, of course he was a sleazy asshole, but never with any underage girls.”  But calling the Miss-Teen-USA-dressing-room-crashing, if-she-weren’t-my-daughter-I’d-be-dating-her, sleeping-with-a-porn-star-while-his-wife-was-home-with-a-newborn, grab-’em-by-the-pussy guy a gentleman ... it’s such a laughably obvious lie that it might as well have a flashing neon sign pointing to it saying “PARDON PLEASE!”.

Apparently, Robert Reich said this in 1995:

The steady decline of the median wage in this country and the widening gap between the people at the top and the rest of us threatens the stability and the prosperity of this nation.

I suppose that, in 1995, people thought he was nutso.  How on Earth could a wage gap threaten our national security?  But then the CEO pay went from 30x that of the average worker to 350x, and a bloviating orange idiot who knew who to say all the right things managed to get himself elected twice, and now we’re cozying up to Russia and North Korea and pissing off our allies.  So, you know, he looks like a fucking psychic from our present day vantage.

The only question is, will the Democrats learn the right lesson?  So far, it seems like, every time they get beat, they decide that they need to act more like the other guys and completely miss the fact that people are just voting against whoever’s in charge and not changing anything.  I wish our hopes and dreams for a secure future weren’t pinned on the Democrats, who are just as useless as the Republicans but way less effective.  But I’ve yet to see any realistic chance for any third party or independent candidate, so I guess it’s the Democrats or nothing.

And, yes, we have people such as Bernie and AOC and Mamdani showing the way, but Bernie’s been doing that decades with no traction, and Mamdani can’t even get the support of his fellow New York Democrats.  You know, on this week’s Coffee Klatch, when talking about what is probably the very speech I quote above, Reich says that

The saddest and heartbreaking aspect to me is that the road we were on ... carried with it the inevitability of somebody like Trump.  If it hadn’t been Donald Trump, it would be another demagogue.  ... we couldn’t have stayed on the path we were on.  And maybe we needed something like ... Trump to shake us up—to, to wake us up.  We were taking so much for granted.  We were taking democracy, the rule of law, due process, the economy: we were taking it all for granted.  And we can’t, and shouldn’t, do that.

Now the only questions is, are the Democrats awake yet?