CEOs seem to have settled on calling for “de-escalation” as their euphemistic non-response to the horrors we’re experiencing in Minneapolis, and this quisling shit pisses me off so much I can’t even🧵 https://mastodon.social/@MikeElgan/115970651228010281

@inthehands strategies for handling this and recovering from receiving the anger about it is the main thing I talk about when women reach out to me about their experiences in leadership

Seriously, my freelancing has shown me the inner workings of a •lot• of different companies, I’ve heard a lot of corporatespeak in my day, and…this letter from a bunch of Minnesota CEOs —

❝we are calling for an immediate deescalation of tensions❞
❝state, local and federal officials to work together❞
❝find real solutions❞

— is some of the most hollow, tone-deaf, embarrassing, Bristol Type 7 dribble I’ve ever heard from corporate leadership.

https://www.mnchamber.com/blog/open-letter-more-60-ceos-minnesota-based-companies

Seriously, my freelancing has shown me the inner workings of a •lot• of different companies, I’ve heard a lot of corporatespeak in my day, and…this letter from a bunch of Minnesota CEOs —

❝we are calling for an immediate deescalation of tensions❞
❝state, local and federal officials to work together❞
❝find real solutions❞

— is some of the most hollow, tone-deaf, embarrassing, Bristol Type 7 dribble I’ve ever heard from corporate leadership.

https://www.mnchamber.com/blog/open-letter-more-60-ceos-minnesota-based-companies

Seriously, my freelancing has shown me the inner workings of a •lot• of different companies, I’ve heard a lot of corporatespeak in my day, and…this letter from a bunch of Minnesota CEOs —

❝we are calling for an immediate deescalation of tensions❞
❝state, local and federal officials to work together❞
❝find real solutions❞

— is some of the most hollow, tone-deaf, embarrassing, Bristol Type 7 dribble I’ve ever heard from corporate leadership.

https://www.mnchamber.com/blog/open-letter-more-60-ceos-minnesota-based-companies

@grimalkina
Oh wow, I had not even thought about that specific intersection 🤯

@inthehands @steltenpower Are we talking Bristol Stool Scale here?

@inthehands Yepper. And given that *same day* Cook sat in a private screening for "Melania", itself essentially a money-laundering vehicle for Bezo's MGM to the White House, it's beyond mealy mouthed. https://theintercept.com/2026/01/27/apple-tim-cook-trump-alex-pretti/

They are talking about gangs of white supremacist fascists conducting street executions using federal money.

“find real solutions”

my dude

no

@inthehands This is theater aimed at their customers, not the administration. Stop paying them, stop buying their products, march in front of their offices, and you won’t see weak efforts like this. You won’t even hear from them because they’ll be crying directly to Trump, asking for help by demanding change so they can get their customers back (and the money we pay them with).

@grimalkina @inthehands my whole life in the United States has been a long series of Pikachú faces from white people because i don't fear them. even David Bowie feared them and wrote a whole ass song about it. i just don't.

and, just to be clear: this *is* an expectation from GRINGOS, your sundry ugly white american. i have never had this experience in Puerto Rico, Canada or Europe. this is a very specific gringo, white supremacist expectation.

they hate it when you don't fear them.

@mdavis
But if it’s aimed at their customers, they’re aiming incredibly poorly: everybody I’ve talked to here in MN who’s heard of that letter at all just cringed when I mention it.

I’m not sure it •is• aimed at customers. At the president? the governor? their investors? each other? their own egos? I’m not sure.

@blogdiva @grimalkina
One lens for all of Nov 2024 to now is the moving boundary of whiteness: Trump finding some support among Latine voters who believed they had an opportunity to gain the status of whiteness (as my Irish ancestors did); ICE agents and the administration trying to rescind the whiteness of Renee Good and Alex Pretti so they can be murdered with impunity just like the police murder Black people. I don’t have the knowledge to competently work out this whole train of thought and synthesize it with what you said, but…I think there is something there.

@sandorspruit @inthehands Today I Learnt (TIL) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_stool_scale

CEOs seem to have settled on calling for “de-escalation” as their euphemistic non-response to the horrors we’re experiencing in Minneapolis, and this quisling shit pisses me off so much I can’t even
🧵 https://mastodon.social/@MikeElgan/115970651228010281

@blogdiva @grimalkina
One lens for all of Nov 2024 to now is the moving boundary of whiteness: Trump finding some support among Latine voters who believed they had an opportunity to gain the status of whiteness (as my Irish ancestors did); ICE agents and the administration trying to rescind the whiteness of Renee Good and Alex Pretti so they can be murdered with impunity just like the police murder Black people. I don’t have the knowledge to competently work out this whole train of thought and synthesize it with what you said, but…I think there is something there.

whiteness, like fascism & capitalism, is very plastic. they are oxymorons: imaginary elite systems of oppression that rule as if they were also representative of the majority they oppress.

you cannot be both a chosen few and a majority. so that’s why they’re always expanding the definitions of who is in and who is out.

and why they can't exist without violence. it’s not just the police state, the whole financial system, starting with money, is violence.

@inthehands @grimalkina

@inthehands Yepper. And given that *same day* Cook sat in a private screening for "Melania", itself essentially a money-laundering vehicle for Bezo's MGM to the White House, it's beyond mealy mouthed. https://theintercept.com/2026/01/27/apple-tim-cook-trump-alex-pretti/

@inthehands Yepper. And given that *same day* Cook sat in a private screening for "Melania", itself essentially a money-laundering vehicle for Bezo's MGM to the White House, it's beyond mealy mouthed. https://theintercept.com/2026/01/27/apple-tim-cook-trump-alex-pretti/

@inthehands @MikeElgan Wow ... this sounds like a globalized bag holder 2026 call for unity to me, idk. ️

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Call_for_Unity

In my experience interacting with them, CEOs are all over the map as human beings — some incredible jerks, some surprisingly decent, a few truly marvelous people — but on the whole, and increasingly so as the company gets larger, they are some of the most fear-driven people I’ve ever met in my life.