Major corporations made the political calculation to get in bed with the party that hates their very existence, and it becomes more and more funny each time they discover this fact.
Apple is being sued by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice and 16 state attorneys general, 12 of whom are Democrats. The suit alleges Apple has a smartphone monopoly and that the company stifles innovation as it tries to shut out competition, including by having text messages from non-iPhones show up in different colors to stigmatize owning a non-iPhone.
Regardless of the merits of this suit and the debate over whether Apple is a monopoly engaging in anti-competitive practices, this action does make for a fun throwback to mid-2010s politics. It is undeniable that the Democratic Party has been the more anti-business, anti-free market, while Republicans were content to avoid anything that would be considered interfering in the markets.
Apple and Tim Cook, like other major corporations, decided to align themselves politically with Democrats. In 2008, Cook donated to Barack Obama’s campaign in what NPR said “appears to be the only time Cook has ever given money to a political candidate.” In 2016, Apple cut off its support for the Republican National Committee while it continued supporting the Democratic counterpart. Apple has also fallen into the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” racist left-wing ideology that is rotting our society.
As a reward for becoming a full team player for Democrats, Apple is getting sued by Biden and being occasionally cannibalized for not being “woke” enough by its new DEI allies. In the meantime, even though there is still a healthy amount of free-market sentiment, Republicans have moved toward being more critical of how big corporations run and the decisions they make, with that strain of conservatism clearly on the rise. That is to be expected when major corporations use their corporate power and social influence to become all-out political actors on behalf of Democrats, as we have seen from Coca-Cola and Kroger, among others.
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The result is that corporations like Apple have decided to align themselves with a party that hates them. Meanwhile, Apple and other companies have decided to tell the other party that they hate it and want to destroy it, leading to an erosion of the free-market sentiments that would normally protect them. As Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) told Kroger’s CEO as Democrats fought the company’s merger despite Kroger embracing the party’s social platform, “I’m sorry that’s happening to you. Best of luck.”
As other major corporations have done, they decided to become allies with people who view them as enemies and alienate people who would actually be willing to be their allies, even if just inaction. In terms of the purely cynical politics, it is a hilarious, completely foreseeable blunder. Again, as Cotton said, “I’m sorry that’s happening to you. Best of luck.”