[U] Hinderaker Wants… Antitrust Law Re-Cast… As A Version Of “Woke” Capitalism?!

It is sad.

John Hinderaker… needs a gripping (and wedge issue/divisive) narrative, desperately. Three weeks ago now, it was — being racist, in suggesting falsely that most of Target’s crime upsurge was primarily from black and brown people… to tonight, where when the Sherman and Clayton Acts have something to say about Kroegers and Albertsons groceries getting together… it is (wait for it!) a form of “woke capitalism” at play.

That’s just… precious. When gas prices rise, John won’t blame the oil oligopoly. He blames Democratic politicians. But it is actually due to Clayton Act-violative suppression of US market price competition at work, there.

And tonight he cheers GOP Congress-critters (Arkansas’ GOP Rep. Tom Cotton, primarily) telling one of the two grocery chains… the GOP doesn’t want to see the law evenly applied here.

UPDATED: I realized, about an hour after writing this, that my mocking him might be mistaken for a view that I don’t think the cynical GOP stance on US antitrust enforcement is a serious problem. It certainly IS.

This idea of Rep. Cotton’s, that he will not evenly apply the black letter US law — a law that has nearly nothing to do with any “(imagined) liberal” cause, but instead is about robust market competition… solely to punish business interests that do not donate enough to GOP coffers (a direct bribe), or more indirectly — and commonly, by using non-enforcement, to punish companies that support LBGTQ+ friendly policies, or are progressive on social equity, or seek to end racist policing / profiling… is truly totalitarian. Russian, even. Cotton will not press the Antitrust Div. of the DoJ to look at a merger which injures price competition in many markets for groceries, because the one to be wiped out… was too liberal for his tastes — and so, his constituents will pay arguably unlawful higher prices… for his vanity.

That is… in a nutshell, everything wrong with Hinderaker’s GOP compatriots. End updated portion.

So — when John soon has to pay $15 for a pound of coffee in his Marianos (owned by these chains), he will again blame “Democratic politicians” — instead of the failure of Republicans to insist that violating the US antitrust laws (in force, since the end of the 19^th Century)… is somehow whatever he thinks “woke capitalism” is, and is at fault.

The guy really is out to lunch. Senile. Utterly.

Out.