Pippin is the son of the Thrain, who is the hobbits’ stand-in for the absent King in Gondor.
Frodo is a Baggins, but like Bilbo has Took relations, as both families are old, powerful, and often intermarried. His family also owns much of the land in and around Hobbiton. So basically landed gentry in all but name.
Merry is the son of the Master of Buckland, one of the oldest families running one of the oldest parts of the Shire. So also basically landed gentry.
Gimli is a descendant of Durin, although not in a direct oldest-son line like Thorin was.
And of course Boromir is the son of the Steward, who was just shy of a king in all but name.
So it’s important to remember that companies are not, by and large, moral. They exist for three reasons: to get the money, to get the money, and to get the money. Almost every choice a company makes is in service of that goal.
They are rarely, if ever, going to take moral stands, and it is useless to look at them through the lens of leading a moral crusade. Instead, it is better to look at them as a barometer of public opinion.
Politicians will say anything. Polls can be manipulated. But companies won’t bother with that slight-of-hand nonsense. They want money, and therefore they want people shopping with them as much as possible. And so they will do whatever they think will get them the most business.
50 years ago, can you imagine a business even uttering the term LGBTQ? It would have gotten them crucified. So they didn’t. Now LGBTQ rights are popular with the majority of Americans, so they make it part of their brand.
This thing with Target shows what happens when they get it wrong. And they really, really don’t like being wrong.
I’m going to post this idea by agent_nycto, because it’s another good way to deal with them, especially if you run into them IRL:
I don't think you should be quiet, it makes them feel like everyone is agreeing with them and makes everyone miserable. Time to introduce you to my favorite game to play with conservatives, Politics Judo!
So you hear them rant about a thing. Some dumbass talking point. Let's use gun control. It's pretty easy to know in advance what the talking points are since they never shut up and parrot the same problem and solution over and over. "Shouldn't take guns, it's a mental problem not a gun problem".
Things are basically boiled down to a problem and a solution. A lot of people try to convince people that the problem isn't what people think it is, and that's hard to do. Even if they are just misinformed, it feels like trying to dismiss their fears.
So what you do is you agree with the problem, then use lefty talking points as the solution.
"Oh yeah, gun violence is pretty bad! And I love the Constitution, we shouldn't mess with that!" (Use small words and also throw in some patriotism, makes them feel like you're on their side. You want to sound like a right wing media con artist) "so instead of taking guns away, we should instead start having more, free, mental health care in this country. Since it's a mental health problem and these people are crazy, that is the solution that makes the most sense!" (Don't try to get them to agree to your solution, just state it as the obvious one)
It becomes weaponized cognitive dissonance. Their brains fry because you said the things you should to agree with them, flagged yourself as an ally, but then said the thing they were told is the bad and shouldn't want.
If they try to argue with your solution, rinse and repeat to a different talking point. "Oh yeah it might cost more, and we shouldn't have to pay more for it, so we should get the rich people who are screwing average hard working Americans over by not paying taxes to do that. We should shut down tax loopholes and increase funding to the IRS so they can go after them instead of the little guy"
Always sound like you're agreeing with them, but giving solutions that they disagree with that seem to be off topic but are related.
I remember a meme circulating a little while ago that went something like, ‘People who change their opinions because they’re annoyed by liberals are weak-willed; liberals are annoyed by other liberals every single day.’
No, it’s worse than even that. The sycophants surrounding him fall into two camps: the uber-wealthy who want to buy businesses, houses, everything for a song, and see this as a golden opportunity since they have more than enough wealth to ride this out; and the loons who believe the end times are almost upon us and will let Trump do whatever he wants as long as he triggers the Rapture.
Really, there’s three groups, because there’s also a small subset (Zuckerberg is one of them, Elon is another) who fall into both camps. They dream of the day that the world implodes, the governments dissolve into chaos, the environment turns horrible and hostile.
Then they will retreat into their lavish bunkers (Zuckerberg’s is in Hawaii) with their servants and security guards (their loyalty guaranteed by shock collars and their families being held hostage) and wait for everything to subside. And then they will emerge with their loyal army to build their perfect paradise, with them at the head of it, of course.
Seriously, they write long think-pieces and even whole books about this stuff.
As long as everyone else has to scrabble in the mud, they don’t care. Their desire to feel superior and rub it in everyone’s faces is stronger than even their desire to live.
Historically, yes. But these days almost all the proselytizing going on these days is from American groups, or groups bankrolled by American religious groups.
But it does appear that he was just doing it for TikTok clout.
People who want money or resources. You have to remember though, these aren’t the brilliant businessmen they think they are.
Most of these rich people are rich through family and luck, and believe they have magical powers to resurrect businesses and economies with a snap of their fingers.
They think they’ll just put everything back together with them at the top. They really have no idea how they’ll do that, of course.
In this case it’s just the rich punishing a plebeian for daring to challenge them, in the hopes of they make his punishment terrible enough everyone else will be too scared to rise up.
But in answer to you astute observation that the ‘pro-life’ people love the death penalty, the reason is simple: to these people, being ‘bad’ isn’t something you do, it’s something you are.
So to them it’s not a break in internal logic at all. They gave the pure, innocent baby a chance, but they turned out to be a Bad Person, so they must be punished, because that’s what you deserve for being a Bad Person.
This is why they favor punitive jailing and killing criminals instead of trying to reform criminals; criminals are Bad, and so they will always do Bad Things.
It’s also why they do stuff like try to get rid of abortion. If a woman got pregnant from ‘sleeping around’ then she’s a Bad Person and deserves to be punished by carrying the child to term.
You’ll notice the language in that article describing the success of the businessmen is stock-market-bro speak for ‘gobbled up businesses for pennies on the dollar thanks to the depression, then rode out the storm and made bank’.
Lots of guys on the market these days dreaming of building empires that way.
Yeah, nothing’s ‘plunged’ at all. He’s still in the 45-49% approval rating he’s had since taking office. Hell, any ‘dips’ are statistically insignificant enough to possibly be rounding errors.
Pippin is the son of the Thrain, who is the hobbits’ stand-in for the absent King in Gondor.
Frodo is a Baggins, but like Bilbo has Took relations, as both families are old, powerful, and often intermarried. His family also owns much of the land in and around Hobbiton. So basically landed gentry in all but name.
Merry is the son of the Master of Buckland, one of the oldest families running one of the oldest parts of the Shire. So also basically landed gentry.
Gimli is a descendant of Durin, although not in a direct oldest-son line like Thorin was.
And of course Boromir is the son of the Steward, who was just shy of a king in all but name.