Pride Month in the Trump Era Feels Like a Party After a Funeral
Someone wise observed that corporations do not have convictions; they have marketing strategies. There are exceptions that prove the rule, of course. I’m pretty sure that the folks behind Ben & Jerry’s really are progressive hippies and that Mike Lindell thinks that Donald Trump is a modern-day Jesus. Additionally, Elon Musk seemed to have a strong affinity for Trump, at least until recently.
For most businesses, however, celebrating Pride Month and diversity was largely a matter of strategy. It was a way to show the world that they were not stuck in the past while appealing directly to potentially lucrative new markets.
Pride Month was seen as celebratory, fun, empowering, and diverse. What corporation or business wouldn’t want to be involved with something like that? Pride Month was a month-long party, and nobody throws better parties than the LGBTQ community.
This was also true of politicians, schools, and sports teams.
I might be overly cynical. There’s a chance that the Vincenzo Brothers Heating and Cooling really did feel passionately about celebrating and protecting queer youth, but the whole shebang felt a little mercenary and half-hearted, even in the best of times.
We are in the worst of times. The tremendous progress the LGBTQ community has made over the past few decades, particularly in terms of trans rights and visibility, has been met with an even fiercer backlash.
Twice-impeached felon Donald Trump defeated a Black and Asian woman who was far more qualified than he was on a cynical, hate-fueled anti-woke, anti-DEI, and anti-trans ticket. He ran as a culture warrior not just willing but eager to wage war with the Hollywood sickos out to groom, brainwash and molest your children.
In a post-Obama, post-legal-gay-marriage world, there didn’t seem to be too much of a downside, as far as public relations were concerned, with earnestly insisting that Black Lives Matter, love is love, and trans women are women.
Even Nancy Mace briefly pretended not to be horrible and support a trans community, she has made her enemy.
Then Trump swept into office and forcefully insisted that, actually, diversity is bad because it discriminates against white people and Asians, Black Lives Matter is a racist, anti-white hate organization, and equity and inclusion are not worthy principles but instead unethical and illegal and trans people are mentally ill and abusive, and should be shunned and rejected, not embraced or celebrated.
I could be wrong, but it sure felt like there wasn’t a lot of blowback. The response was not a united front of colleges, law firms, big tech companies, and news divisions passionately defending diversity as noble, regardless of the consequences.
Instead it felt like the whole goddamn country said, “Sure thing, boss” and set about kowtowing to the mad king before he went nutty in a way that fucked with rich people’s money, which is the only thing that can really hurt him at this point.
That cockamamie quasi-commitment to progressive ideals dissipated instantly in the face of opposition. Trump had made it clear that he was eager to use the government to punish his enemies and enforce his will.
It got so ridiculous that a news department whose corporate masters needed approval for a merger offered to pay fifteen million dollars to Trump for the unforgivable crime of editing a Kamala Harris interview for clarity, something every fucking body does all the time and has never been worth suing someone over, let alone forking over millions and publicly apologizing, until Trump got into office and was all, “There are no checks on my power this time so I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want.”
People were mostly fine until Trump started fucking with rich people’s money out of greed and ignorance.
When a business or organization runs an image of their logo in rainbow colors one day, it means even less.
It feels more performative and less sincere, more half-hearted and less authentic.
I’m proud that Harvard and the Supreme Court are standing up to Trump, but they’re, you know, Harvard and the Supreme Court. They’re super-powerful. It’s time for the rest of us to do our part in fighting tyranny by taking actions like writing impassioned blog posts.
Pride month in the era of Trump feels like a party after a funeral. Or at least the tepid way it is commemorated online.
Target’s Pride Month campaign now consists of a single white t-shirt featuring the words “Out and Proud” in microscopic black letters.
I’m beginning to think that big corporations weren’t as progressive as they claimed to be after all. Nah, that can't be it. If you can’t trust big corporations, who can you trust?
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