New Orleans This is a phrase and a concept unknown to me: “anticipatory obedience.” The whole notion in an American context seems foreign to how the country sees itself and its institutions. How does one square that with the vaunted national self-regard for individualism and independence? I don’t think you can.
The phrase hit me reading an article about President Trump’s first week in office. The piece quoted a professor this way:
“He’s using the tools of government to challenge the limits on the post-Watergate presidency,” said Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth College. “Some of these efforts will be turned back by the courts, but the level of anticipatory obedience we’re seeing from business, universities and the media is unlike anything I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
The professor is hitting the nail on the head. It’s not just the self-interested tech oligarchs who have bent the knee and are genuflecting to Trump’s imperil pretensions, it’s the whole lot of them. All of a sudden, it’s news when a company like Costco announces that it is NOT getting rid of its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. As Walmart, Target, and just about every big money bank any of us can name and most of where we have our accounts, announce the they have deep-sixed any DEI commitments, the outliers like Costco stand out. These are the same companies that made pledges during the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter moments. It turns out it was all fingers-behind-the-back situational, with the other finger in the air seeing which way the wind might be blowing.
For the techies, it’s blatantly obvious that the Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg crowds are just looking to score on the main chance to make more billions for themselves and their companies. With billionaires, who among us would expect anything else? But, for grocery chains, banks, media companies, and others that depend on all of us to pad their purses, what do they have to gain from Trump really? It turns out that one of the characteristics of US-based late stage capitalism is that all of these companies and their CEOs just have jelly for backbones. They don’t want to make the wingers unhappy and, lord knows, they don’t want to stand out in a crowd. This “anticipatory obedience” posture even stretches to climate change, which is undeniable. Banks and big financial institutions are stepping on each other’s toes trying to get out of climate agreements. Did someone threaten them or make that demand? Nope. Is it fiscally responsible? No way. It’s all cluck, cluck, cluck all the way down to the ground.
Universities, almost all of which are nonprofit and tax exempt, and market themselves as bastions of independent thought and action, have also run for the hills. Already, the Gaza War outed them as servants of their donors, rather than seekers of knowledge. Now, led in their retreat by Harvard, they are also abandoning free speech and diversity.
It’s one thing to moderate the resistance to Trump II, while looking for an appropriate and successful strategic and tactical response. It’s another to aid and abet erosion of rights and freedoms. This is a new America, unknown to any of us who have fought for the dream despite decades of disappointment. Anticipatory obedience is the survival technique common to citizens of dictatorships and worse. It’s one thing for businesses and institutions to be sheep hiding in the herd, but that doesn’t mean they have to help the wolf. We’re now going to have to decide for ourselves whether we’ll live on our knees or continue to try and stand true.