Corporate flag of America
Last night I happened to watch an old episode of "Foyle's War", a 2003 PBS series set in England during the early years of W.W.II. This particular program was set in October, 1940.
Though the characters are all fictional (it is police investigative docudrama) the series attempts to give a serious sense of that time in England.
What was most interesting about this episode was how it connects to our time today. One character in particular was a business man who ran a large English product manufacturing enterprise that exported its products (in this case margarine) using Swiss intermediaries (Switzerland of course was neutral during the war) to trade with Nazi Germany.
Surprising though it seemed that he was able to legally conduct business with the enemy in this way, what was more astonishing was his attitude and what he said with police Inspector Foyle (the title character) during a routine murder inquiry that really caught my attention.
This captain of industry said, "It didn't matter which side wins the war. All that mattered was doing business."
Well" what struck me was, though he was English and his business was located in England, even in this time of war, he obviously had no allegiance to his country. Doing business with the enemy was superfluous. All that mattered was doing business!
It then occurred to me this series was first run in 2003, five years prior to our own 2008 great recession so the author couldn't have been influenced by the financial meltdown and economic catastrophe brought about by the financial "masters of the universe" and their malevolent ways of conducting "business."
For like the business character depicted in the "Foyle's War" series our contemporary "American" big business moguls also have no allegiance to their country. All that matters to them is doing business, even if the way they conduct that business often brings great harm and misery to their "fellow" Americans.
What is equally surprising today conservatives openly embrace these large free enterprise corporatists and see them as patriots. They apparently ignore the closing and decline of American manufacturing, the loss of American jobs and the outsourcing of jobs to 3 rd world countries brought about by these titans of industry and incredibly extol them as job creators.
This supreme irony seems lost on today's conservatives so steeped as they are in their phony capitalist ideology and in complete denial of today's reality.
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