15 May 2023

GOP Turns On J.P. Morgan

The Wall Street Journal reported as front page news this weekend that J.P. Morgan is being attacked en masse by GOP politicians for being anti-religious. 

Some of these claims, as shown by J.P. Morgan's released customer service tape transcripts are flat out lies with religious groups actually suffering red tape because they don't fill out basic account setup paperwork (much of which is basically required of all financial institutions), or because they sense their surveys to the wrong email.

Beneath the claims that would be colorably fair if true, but are actually false, the real beef conservatives have with J.P. Morgan, like most big businesses, is that it isn't homophobic or racist enough for them.

Apparently, in the great national divorce, conservatives want to hand Democrats not just higher education, the tech industry, and the NFL, but also all of Wall Street.

This is really not a smart move for them, because they are biting the hand that feeds them. The upper middle class of college educated executive and professionals has already abandoned the GOP ship. Without the Wall Street rich, they'll have no one to finance their campaigns, interest groups, and think tanks.

Winning over Wall Street is going to be a challenge for MAGA Republicans, however. Its top institutions are staffed with elite college graduates because they have among the greatest potential for return on investments in securing the most academically able employees. This population, while full of socially liberal, fiscally conservative people, and "God and country" mainline Christians, is one of the most non-Christian and especially non-Evangelical Christian populations in the country. They collectively cringe at MAGA's anti-intellectual populism and overwhelmingly live in deep blue metropolitan areas. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more LGBT+ people in important positions on Wall Street than they are MAGA Republicans.

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