Are you ready for the 4th of July? » « Who the heck is “Eddie”?

Rural American values

Believe me, they suck. A corporation, Tractor Supply Co., has announced some revisions to their policy.

Going forward, we will ensure our activities and giving tie directly to our business. For instance, this means we will:

  1. No longer submit data to the Human Rights Campaign
  2. Refocus our Team Member Engagement Groups on mentoring, networking and supporting the business
  3. Further focus on rural America priorities including ag education, animal welfare, veteran causes and being a good neighbor and stop sponsoring nonbusiness activities like pride festivals and voting campaigns
  4. Eliminate DEI roles and retire our current DEI goals while still ensuring a respectful environment
  5. Withdraw our carbon emission goals and focus on our land and water conservation efforts

Human rights? Unamerican. Fuck pride, we gotta support our veterans (who are all heterosexual, of course). Why support diversity, there are plenty of straight white men we can hire. Global climate change, we’re not worried that that will affect local land and water.

Short-sighted and stupid and selfish, those are core rural values.

Are you ready for the 4th of July? » « Who the heck is “Eddie”?

Comments

  1. Akira MacKenzie says

    Careful PZ. Saying that will get you an earful from those who think hicks and are poor benighted dupes, brainwashed by the 1% to be racist, religious zealots as if white supremacy, homophobia, and superstition WEREN’T an inherent part of their culture before hedge fund billionaires came along.

  4. birgerjohansson says

    Akira MacKenzie @ 1
    The quote about ‘the salt of the Earth’ from Blazing Saddles still holds true.

  5. raven says

    Rural American Values aren’t all that different from…white suburban values.
    Which aren’t all that different from Red state values or Red state urban values.

    Tractor Supply company isn’t reflecting rural values. It’s reflecting Red state and GOP/Trump values.

  6. raven says

    FWIW, I’d barely heard of Tractor Supply company.

    I’ll be sure to never buy anything from them now.
    They are on my never, ever to buy from list along with Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby, both run by christofascist haters.

    Then again, Tractor Supply won’t even notice. I’ve never bought anything from them and don’t even know if there is one near where I live.

  7. StevoR says

    @ ^ raven : I hadn’t heard of them either :

    Tractor Supply Company (also known as TSCO or TSC), founded in 1938, is an American chain that sells products for home improvement, agriculture, lawn and garden maintenance, livestock, equine and pet care. It caters to recreational farmers and ranchers, pet owners, and landowners. The company has 2,000 stores and is headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee.

    … (snip).. CEO Hal Lawton wrote an op-ed in The Tennessean on October 20, 2021, titled “Why businesses should follow Tractor Supply’s push for diversity, inclusion, and climate change prevention”.[25] The future carbon reduction and DEI goals outlined in the Op-Ed were subsequently eliminated on June 27, 2024… (snip).. The company said that the changes were made to better represent the values of its customers who it alleges were upset by its previous policy stances.

    Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractor_Supply_Company

    I wonder if they have actual evidence of those upset customers and whether that’s true or something / one else behind this?

  9. coffeepott says

    surprised to learn they had anything decent to say about them, prior to today! i associate them with opening in small towns and crushing local farm/hardware stores, so i’d been avoiding giving them business for years already.
    fuckin assholes.

  10. drew says

    Liberal virtue-signaling to mostly conservative farmers doesn’t seem like it was the best way to generate business.

    I’d hope they’ve already decided against using Baphomet as a logo.

  11. Dennis K says

    @4 birgerjohansson — Let’s go ahead and quote it:

    You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.

  12. Ridana says

    @7 StevoR wrote:

    I wonder if they have actual evidence of those upset customers and whether that’s true or something / one else behind this?

    “Following an online campaign from far-right ponytailed twerp Robby Starbuck — who, along with his followers, was very upset that the store was too nice to LGBTQ+ people and the environment — Tractor Supply Company put out a notice last week announcing its plans to start trying to be worse.” They’re apparently incensed by their Senior VP’s relationship to Obama, who was her law professor, and her tenure at that bastion of woke bias, CNN.
    https://www.wonkette.com/p/free-money-tractor-supply-co-welcomes

  13. profpedant says

    Beau of the Fifth Column had a video in which he was reading from comments on the Tractor Supply Company website. The ones that were expressing support for their new anti-woke policy over and over talked about how they would buy their next tractor from Tractor Supply Company….but the Tractor Supply Company doesn’t sell tractors (unless you count lawnmowers). The ones saying they were not going to shop at Tractor Supply Company because of their new anti-woke policy referenced products that Tractor Supply Company does sell, and which they would now buy elsewhere. Unfortunately it seems to have been taken down.

  15. John Morales says

    profpedant, your comment is spot-on, but might carry more weight were the enterprise not so sizeable.

    cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractor_Supply_Company
    ↓
    Revenue Increase US$14.6 billion (2023)
    Operating income
    Increase US$1.48 billion (2023)
    Net income
    Increase US$1.11 billion (2023)
    Total assets Increase US$9.19 billion (2023)
    Total equity Increase US$2.15 billion (2023)
    Number of employees
    50,000 (2023)