This week, as Donald Trump hammered on Amazon for taking advantage of discounted shipping rates from the U.S. Postal Service, some progressive-minded readers felt a certain cognitive dissonance. When a tetchy president takes on a voracious mega-retailer and its owner (the world’s richest man), who were they supposed to root for, again?
Not taking sides does not appear to be an option. This is a strange era, when policy disagreements have become personal and vindictive, with even huge corporations seeming to turn into anthropomorphized characters in a struggle for moral righteousness. With a profoundly divisive leader in office, it might be tempting to think of Apple and Starbucks and Amazon as allies in the Resistance when they become targets of the president’s frequent attacks on private businesses and respond in self-defense (or, in Amazon’s case, keep mum).
