Morning, we’ll start with this as it’s relevant to the things Hugh and I talked about on the Horizon Scan episode we recorded last night that should be live this afternoon sometime - thanks to paid subscriber Mark for joining in the audience.
We were talking about what will actually change if and when Trump gets into office. I said I thought that one of the things would be that companies pivot away from DEI and similar policies, Hugh disagreed. He said that was so entrenched within large corporates that it wouldn’t happen. But here we have Microsoft laying off it’s entire department because ‘it’s no longer business critical’. The timing is what we should focus on here. The vast majority of companies have found that that having tried this type of policy on, they’d rather not have them as they stop them hiring who they want and being purely merit focused. Now it’s intrenched though, it’s very hard to buck the trend and be the first mover, that’s where the timing comes in. They know now like everyone else that in all likelihood Trump is the next President and things will have a different focus once he’s in. But the failed assassination attempt and the shit show that was his security detail is what allows them to make this move in line with current focus, public sentiment and optics. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, DEI is being blamed at all levels of that fuck up. It’s all over the media. As a company that’s your free pass to get something done in line with that narrative that will be memory holed once the spotlight moves somewhere else. You’ll find this happening slowly everywhere now, maybe not as decisively as Microsoft or as public, but the policy is green lit for the bin.
Events, optics and signalling are what matters a lot of the time when you’re trying to understand what’s going on. Another example of the Trump assassination event enabling an action was the lawsuit against him for holding secret documents getting kicked out. At this point everyone knows it’s bollocks, everyone with malice knows it hasn’t worked, the judge wants rid of it. So within 24hrs of the photo of Trump with his fist in the air and the public sentiment around that becoming obvious, she binned it. Memory holed while the news cycle attention is elsewhere.
So what we’re seeing here is the ‘deepstate’ trying the Iran thing on, seeding a new narrative to the public in the hope that it sticks or is at least familiar when they act. We saw one of the first things Vance did in his speech after getting the VP nod from Trump was to say something needs to be done about Iran. We know how much influence a small Middle Eastern country and weapons manufacturers have in US politics, so it looks like Ukraine will get shut down and the forever war continues in the Middle East. They’re trying to make out the ‘Iranian threat’ was something they were aware of prior to Trump getting shot at, that security was ramped up, but we’ve seen that’s clearly shite. What’s actually happening is they’ve seen the public reaction to Trump nearly dying, so they’re trying to ride on that wave of emotion, harness it and plug it into the enemy that they actually want. That will work with a lot of emotional low IQ and not terminally online Americans, but I think enough people have learnt the game now that it’ll get called out as bullshit - the reaction in comments on X to posts about it seem to confirm this. Don’t be surprised if you see rent-a-comment morons getting wheeled out to talk about linking any kind of badness to Iran. My wildcard for fun is that they eventually break the security on the Trump shooters phone and SHOCK he has some sort of link to Iran, ‘oh we said he was a Republican (when we thought the right wing extremist gun nut line worked better for us), but it looks like that was just a cover’. It’s unlikely, but this is a wild timeline so who knows!
This isn’t a joke, she really said that. When you’re wondering why nothing works and everything seems to be getting worse, this is a huge contributing factor. To be clear, I’m not saying it’s because she’s female in that females can’t do that job, though it’s possible she got the job because they wanted a female in that position, they’re two different things and I’m not denying that. I’m saying this person has been promoted far beyond her competency and people were killed and injured as a result. If it can happy in a position as important as this, it can happen anywhere. I think the only real reason she’s still in the job other than refusing to resign is that it’s better optics for Trump if he’s seen to clean house and it’s a nice payback story for him. Although her position may prove to be untenable if there’s any more fuck ups.
The back story to this is that the Governor of California Gavin Newson signed a bill that bans schools from making rules requiring parental notification if their child identifies as transgender. As a result Elon is taking his businesses and their tax contributions elsewhere. The State should not be between parents and their children. Elon doing this - likely an excuse for better taxes and he prefers Texas anyway - will draw attention to it that it wouldn’t have gotten other wise. Bad optics for Newson. Another sign that the Democrats have all but given up, accepted the Trump win and are no longer considering Newson as a runner. There’s a lot of talk in the US now of unity and the country coming together, you’ll see that from Trump too now he knows he’s going to win. At the end of the day he has to run the country for 4 years, so it’s not sensible practically to sew division. But the longer blue states persist with the woke stuff - popular online right term for it is Gae Race Communism - and don’t accept the zeitgeist update, the worse they’ll look in comparison to red states and the more tax dollars they’ll loose as people and business follow Elons’ example.
Just came up on the feed, could be bullshit. But if not, wild times.
Firstly and most importantly I’m very much in approval of Dom’s Trucker cap look, big win there. Defo click this link and listen to what he says. I won’t do much to explain here other than if you want things to work properly and efficiently, there’s a lot to be done that you may not see to end of or get credit for once it’s complete. In modern politics that’s unacceptable because the focus is on tomorrows headlines not enduring prosperity and progress for the country. ‘Why would I do that, I’ll get all of the bad optics and reputational risk, the media will try and hound me out of my position and even if I succeed whoever is in power at the time will take the credit while I’m writing my memoirs that no one will buy because I got Lizz Truss’d’. Good quote for this that I have no idea who said it-
“Society becomes great when men plant trees, the shade of which they know they’ll never sit in”
Let’s leave it there. Have a good day, HS out this afternoon/evening.