Bright Gold in Dark Times

On August 6th, in the White House, Tim Cook announced that Apple is committing an additional $100 billion dollars in American manufacturing. If only he’d left it at that. If only Cook had simply announced the additional investment, bringing Apple’s commitment up to $600 billion over the next four years, and then politely thanked the president and walked out of the room, he may have held on to his integrity. But that’s not what happened. Instead, Cook kissed Trump’s ass and gave him a gold participation trophy.

The trophy is a glass plaque, “made in America”, and “designed by a former Marine” (probably while a bald eagle flew overhead singing “God Bless the U.S.A.”, wearing the American flag as a cape, with a gun in one claw and the Constitution in the other) that sits in a 24 karat gold base. The trophy itself is, honestly, kind of ugly. It doesn’t give off the “Designed by Apple in California” vibes I would expect from something that they actually put a lot of effort into. It looks like a high-school shop class project. However mediocre the actual object, Cook’s gift represented his, and Apple’s, subjugation. Bending the knee and kissing the ring. I nearly threw my iMac out the window.

But I didn’t, because my mind grinds slow and fine. I thought on it for days before reading Gruber’s take on Daring Fireball, where he says that Cook:

…is keenly aware that trust and reputation are only accrued slowly, but are always at risk of being squandered quickly, and that this applies both to how he is perceived personally and how Apple is perceived as an institution — a pillar of American ingenuity and industry. His life’s work. And that despite all of that, Cook concluded that debasing himself, selling some shares of his own dignity, was the best course of action — for Apple, for Apple’s customers (and, yes, shareholders), and perhaps even for the country. That ruthless practicality is necessary merely to stay afloat in a sea of abject graft, extortion, and cronyism. That’s dark. That requires considering that the problem isn’t the greed of a few billionaires and executives who ought to resist burgeoning corruption, but that Trump and his sycophants in the Republican Party have already succeeded in corrupting the system. That the corruption isn’t happening, but happened. The United States isn’t heading for existential trouble. We’re in it — and a pathway out is not yet clear. That’s not to say all is forever lost, but that we are, in our current political moment, beyond the point where the game can be played successfully on the level. You can choose to play a crooked game straight, but you can’t win. Business is competition. A loser who played above reproach is still a loser. You need to choose your battles. US manufacturing is Cook’s choice.

Once again, Gruber is faster to put into words what I’ve been mulling over.

To be clear, I fully support Apple bringing manufacturing back to the United States. In rural Iowa, small towns have been decimated over the past few decades by big manufacturers leaving the country and building overseas or in Mexico. Newton’s loss of Maytag is the poster child for describing how lives can be upended and entire ways of life lost due to the greed of corporations chasing the cheapest labor. The loss of identity and self-respect associated with losing a career is one of the reasons we’re in this mess with Trump and his ilk to begin with. But, one can both agree with bringing manufacturing back to the US and despise the bootlicking at the same time. With many things with the Trump administration, it’s not just what is being done, but how they are going about doing it.

Yes, bringing manufacturing back to the US is a good and nobel goal. I hope we can actually do it, but I also hope that we can do it in an environmentally clean way, leveraging renewable energy and sustainable materials harvesting whenever possible. The Republicans want to tout new investments in the US and new jobs, but they don’t believe in climate change, and their oil-drilling overlords won’t let them invest in clean energy alternatives. Since the MAGA cult is in charge of everythign for at least the next year and a half, if not till 2029, the United States is in a downward spiral that I don’t see a way out of.

The government is now blatantly, openly corrupt. Gifts like Cooks are now just the way things are done to win favor. The US is doing everything it can to roll back environmental protections, dissuade people from buying electric or investing at all in renewable energy. The health department is making it harder to get vaccinated. The Department of Education is being dismantled, which will make it easier to send public funds to private religious schools. There are literally masked gangs of thugs kidnapping people off the street in broad daylight and putting them in camps. And just to really own the libs, they give the camps fun names like “Alligator Alcatraz”.

Cook’s display of fealty has given me pause when considering future Apple purchases, but changing my computing platform of choice would be like cutting off my nose to spite my face. The answer isn’t in punishing individual companies (which would also be punishing myself and my family) that are playing by the current rules, the answer is to change the rules. To try to rebuild a fair, just, and civil society, free from the corruption of the MAGA movement. The only way we are going to do that is by making sure we vote out every Republican currently in office, so that not a single one of those sycophantic cowards ever get close to holding power again. Is that likely? Probably not. Not anytime soon anyway. The bad guys won. We’re living in their world now.

I hope Trump scratches the base of his little trophy someday to discover that it is only “gold plated”, and as fake as his orange tan.