My boss (a VP) at a Construction Management firm (that I work for) dropped by my office to discuss politics of all things! I guess he was just shooting the breeze. He has 40 years in the business (at age 65), highly educated, an architect by trade and probably has a base salary of close to half a million dollars per year.
Although our business focuses on overseeing the design and construction of public facilities in Southern California (hospitals, K-12, higher learning, muni, aviation, correctional) he believes that all government employees are weenies and incompetent. Furthermore, the amount of anti-immigrant bashing, tacit and overt racism (conveniently cloaked within jokes) that I hear on a daily basis from upper management is appalling.
My VP of HR out of Atlanta has been making various visits to the office to properly train this region on proper attitude on dealing with employees, protected classes, etc..Most of our office is politically neo-liberal, but the higher level Managers happen to all be Drude Report kind of guys - and this goes with most of the upper level people that I've encountered at various companies throughout my corporate career.
Well, my VP mentioned Obama and said that he would never get the vote because he is a Socialist!! and believes in "redistribution of income" - according to him a very dangerous word. Because of the implicit, unspoken heirarchy in a corporate office environment, I had no choice but to water down my responses while he was able to spew his ignorant tirade about welfare mothers, illegals stealing the hard working people's money, how California is going broke servicing illegals, ad nauseam. He even quoted Hannity and Lou Dobbs as a source! I asked him how many illegal aliens are in America right now. He replied, "about twenty million and growing."
Now - here is a man - quite educated with experience in the public and private sector and whose basic philosophy is of the "I earned it, nobody is going to bleed me dry" avariety. These are the people from the upper middle class and above that we have to deal with - who are the most vicious defenders of the Corporatist perspective (BTW - he claims that his sister is a retired CIA spook who worked under Clinton and Bush Jr. for a few years and was one of the architects of the invasion of the war in Iraq). He doesn't see this about oil - but about a few "bureacratic weenies" who took advantage of the system.
However - with that said in my few years in the job - I have unfortunately witnessed terrible waste and corruption in the way public tax money has been squandered by many of these government agencies during our construction projects - although most of the manuevering and the worse excesses are partaken by outside consulting firms who overcharge, etc...
The upper management portion of the firm is filled with Neo-Cons, Conservatives and Libertarians of every stripe. The lower level people tend to be Neo-Liberals (split between Hilary and Obama). Most of the liberals are gay, women and/or less than 30 years old.
When I finally have a chance to debate them during our lunch, they acquiesce at needing to tax for social programs - but are upset because of the following -
1) Lack of accountability and inability to get incompetent people removed from their positions
2) Lack of tracking on where and how the money is utilized.
3) Lack of an efficient mechanism to insure that the money is used effectively for its original purpose.
Of course, the consensus in my office is that private industry is the place to be if one wants, 1) efficiency, 2) the ability to grow and meet personal goals - i.e. make more money and obtain some modicum of power over others.
I'm sure all of you know about this or have some personal experience, but still I wanted to share the experience.
To be honest - this completely flabbergasted me - almost the last straw. Everywhere I have gone within the corporate mileau - its the same mentality - as if programmed by a computer - people spew the same opinion verbatim without looking at the big picture and the complexities. I need the money and it funds my passion - but spending all day with supposedly intelligent people who preach this nonsense does take its toll after awhile.
For example: I asked my VP - why does he think people leave Mexico? He responded, "Because its a shithole and those people can't do anything right. They come to this country and work illegally, we pay taxes for services they take advantage of, and then send the money back to their families in their respective countries." I thought of going into American Imperialism - but instead chose the politically correct response of comparing the social system in Europe - where there is a wealth tax and a bit more parity. Of course, he responded that the Europeans, "are the worst colonialists" and after hundreds of years of war they probably got tired of everything." Basically, he states that they are different than us and that Americans should either WORK or DIE. Or, he mentioned (jokingly) that the Civil Liberties nuts should let the government kill gangmembers (MS-80) who murder people immediately without due process.
My jaw literally dropped to the ground. He admits imperialism as a normal fact of life - and probably wouldn't mind the US colonizing the "minorities" of the world, as long as it means more money in his paycheck for his family's spending habits.
This is the consensus attitude that embodies America's corporate class?
Best,
Paul
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