The Corporate Surrender Death Spiral

You can't negotiate with cannibals.

It’s a trap!

The first week of the Trump Administration has truly demonstrated how many people who call themselves leaders or titans of industry are really just cowards desperate to keep their power and money. While there has been an absolute flood of Executive Orders, Memorandums, and policies causing chaos in the government, private industry has stepped up to show their fealty to extremist pressure.

On Friday, Target announced that it was ending its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives and programs joining a host of other major companies including Walmart, McDonalds, Ford, Harley-Davidson, and John Deere. They are all rushing to show their subservience to conservative pressure as Trump attacks any efforts to support minorities.

CBS has the story:

“The Minneapolis-based retailer said the changes to its "Belonging at the Bullseye" strategy would include ending a program it established to help Black employees build meaningful careers, improve the experience of Black shoppers and to promote Black-owned businesses following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.

Target, which operates nearly 2,000 stores nationwide and employs more than 400,000 people, said it already had planned to end the racial program this year. The company said Friday that it also would conclude the diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, goals it previously set in three-year cycles.

The goals included hiring and promoting more women and members of racial minority groups, and recruiting more diverse suppliers, including businesses owned by people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, veterans and people with disabilities.”

The move sent a shock to many advocates for minority, LGTBQ+, and women’s rights. Target has long been a strong advocate for inclusivity, black communities and LGTBQ+. After the George Floyd riots they pledged $10 million to help rebuild parts of the Twin Cities that were damaged and where Target has its corporate headquarters. They have sponsored Pride Festivals and supported gay creators.

All of that began changing after the far right led by Christopher Rufo began their crusade against transgender Americans, CRT and then, DEI. They were attacked starting in 2016 for supporting transgender customers and fielded neutral single use bathrooms to try to defuse the attacks.

Then in 2021 stores were being boycotted for supporting Pride Month and having rainbow shirts for kids. They were shamed for having POC, or vaguely transgender models in ads, and even had employees attacked by lunatics screaming they were grooming children.

Last year they did not recognize Pride Month at all and didn’t stock any products in stores acknowledging it.

Now they have eliminated DEI in a flurry of bureaucratic bullshit talk. In a memo to employees Kiera Fernandez, Target's chief community impact and equity officer, wrote, "Many years of data, insights, listening and learning have been shaping this next chapter in our strategy, and as a retailer that serves millions of consumers every day, we understand the importance of staying in step with the evolving external landscape, now and in the future."

So…that clears it up.

All of this is simply a trap and they keep walking into each one.

The extremists will never be happy and this is all simply a surrender death spiral.

You can’t negotiate with cannibals

What Target, and all of these other companies, are doing is negotiating with cannibals. “I know you’re hungry…so I tell you what. You can have my left foot.” The cannibal takes it, makes a dinner of your foot and you think you’re safe.

The thing is, they wake up hungry the very next day and will want more. You will never satisfy a cannibal’s hunger for more and you will never ever satisfy the extremists of hate until you give them every last thing that served as moral compass.

• Black manager of a store?

• Full figure model on an in-store end cap display?

• Employee wearing a headscarf?

• Prominent display of a POC partner’s products?

DEI, DEI, DEI, DEI…..on and on.

They want you to create a whites only happy place and that’s it. You will never satisfy their thirst for more food.

Then there is courage

Costco is having none of this bullshit. Another CBS News report lays out how they handled it,

“In a pre-recorded statement which was played at Costco's 2025 annual shareholders meeting on Jan. 23, the shareholder proposing the anti-DEI resolution, The National Center for Public Policy Research, said that "Diversity, equity and inclusion may sound benign on the surface, but in reality it is weaponized language concealing a radical Marxist agenda. They continued to say that DEI "comes at the expense of merit by not hiring and promoting completely, irrespective of race and sex."

It doesn’t get more ridiculous than that in any way shape or form. Recognizing historical racial inequality and wanting your company to reflect its customers is “Marxism” to these fucking lunatics. That’s before the openly racist, bigoted, and misogynistic bullshit that DEI efforts put merit aside.

More from the article, “Costco's board of directors had voted unanimously to ask investors to reject the motion. The board had said it believes "our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary. The report requested by this proposal would not provide meaningful additional information."

Results came back with 98% of voting shareholders rejecting this stupidity.

It appears Costco isn’t alone. The same group is asking Apple to surrender too at their upcoming shareholder meeting and the board has staunchly recommended against it. JPMorgan CEO Jami Dimon has staunchly refused to walk away from their initiatives as well.

Speaking to CNBC he said,"We are going to continue to reach out to the Black community, Hispanic community, the LGBT community, the veterans community," he said, speaking Wednesday from the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. "And wherever I go, red states, blue states, green states, mayors, governors and they said they like what we do."

Fight back

I have some advice for companies: Stop surrendering!

They will never be happy. It will never end. You can never feed the cannibal a snack. They aren’t happy until you’re rotating on the barbecue. Even then they will still fight over their favorite parts.

There will never be a day where Charlie Kirk’s gums stop flapping. There will never be a day when Jesse Watters recognizes the need for a diverse workforce or welcoming to all customers that he can’t hit on.

Build a communications and legal department to fight back and stop giving them the satisfaction of your surrender.

We stop now or we will lose it all.