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Coca-Cola goes MAGA: joins Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Disney in kissing Trump’s ring [1]
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Date: 2025-01-15
On the eve of Trump’s elevation, Coca-Cola chose to honor the MAGA Godhead with a commemorative bottle of its soda. It’s yet more confirmation that corporate America has subscribed to Mussolini’s political philosophy: “Fascism is more appropriately called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
TBH, there is no evidence that Benito actually said it. But he should have, because he would have been right. Note: German corporations did more business under Naziism — even during WWII — than they did before or immediately after. Meanwhile, workers’ hourly wages remained stagnant. Sound familiar?
Which brings us back to Coca-Cola’s decision to give Trump a commemorative Inauguration bottle of Diet Coke.
On Tuesday evening, Coke’s CEO, James Quincey, oozed down to Hell’s Florida entrance to ingratiate himself with the Dear Leader. Margo Martin, Trump’s incoming Deputy Director of Communications (who should change her name to Mango in tribute ) celebrated the corporate capitulation with a tweet.
“Tonight, President Trump received the first ever Presidential Commemorative Inaugural Diet Coke bottle from the Chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola Company, James Quincey.”
I can understand it if Coke had done the like for every president — Bill Clinton also favored fast food and soda. But this is (as the tweet gleefully announces) the first time the venerable American brand has honored an incoming chief executive. Which raises the question — why?
Sadly, the reason for the craven ass-licking is obvious. The empty calorie conveyor has put its marketing might behind a malignancy simply to butter its corporate bread. The company that once celebrated “love” and “perfect harmony” has decided there is money to be made celebrating hate and division.
Will this decision prove to be as dumb as the beverage giant’s decision to rejigger its formula in 1985? (The Harvard Case Study of ‘New Coke’s’ disastrous roll-out could be called ‘It’s not broke. Let’s fix it.”) I don’t know. But it is sure to leave a bad taste in many mouths.
Coke’s CEO is, of course, not alone in wearing out his pant knees kowtowing. He joins Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Sam Altman (Open AI), Patrick Soon-Shiong (LA Times) and the Disney Company/ABC News in their corporate/personal obeisance. Their shameless display of cynical fealty was illustrated in an Ann Telneas cartoon Bezos’ Washington Post refused to run.
Telneas, showing a spine Republican politicians can only point to in others, quit over WaPo’s censorship.
Coke, a conscience-free corporation, is dealing in realpolitik and doing what it believes will increase its profits. It understands the political lay of the land and is acting accordingly.
Two tides lift MAGA’s boat. The ‘base’ who provided the votes. And the plutocrats who provide the money and spread the message. The movement’s motto is a perversion of Mr. Spock’s utilitarianist philosophy "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” In MAGA’s reinvention, the needs of the ‘few’ (the oligarchs) and the ‘one’ (Trump) outweigh the needs of the ‘many’ (the base — plus every other citizen).
The evidence is clear. Trump has never done anything for someone else unless it also benefits him bigly. The oligarchs support Trump because it benefits them. And neither give a shit about the many. Why should they? Enough of America’s have-nots believe that the 1% and their mandarine mongrel are patriotic altruists thinking nothing of themselves. And therefore voted against their economic interests. I concede some of the base know Trump is a bullshitter, but those realists appreciate the license he gives them to be bigots.
The bad news for Trump and the GOP is that America’s oligarchs are only interested in self-dealing. As soon as Trump’s economic theories ding stocks and promote inflation their ardor will diminish and they will dump their old partner for a younger sexier (ie more profit-driving) model. ‘’Ditch’em Donald’ knows how that works.
Sadly, at this point, it looks like Trump will be able to avoid the consequences of his crimes until full-blown Alzheimer’s or the grave brings his reign of error to an end. But the next generation of MAGA Republican politicians anticipating their commemorative bottle of sugar (or sugar-free) water will find fewer CEOs bending the knee. Especially when enough of the ‘many’ realize that they are victims of the very man they voted for — and wonder in the cold dawn light of their hangover who they got into bed with the night before.
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