Super #SJW Man Chapter 12

MARSHALL B. RICH, III LIVES HAPPILY EVER AFTER…

Super #SJW Man: a Cancel-Culture Superhero!

[These Super #SJW Man posts are chapters from a book originally published in 2019. For the table of contents and introduction, click here. Previous Entry: Chapter 11, in which Super #SJW Man Goes back to Being Marshall B. Rich, III]

After Marshall B. Rich, III left behind his super-woke activism, everything mostly went according to plan for him. Thanks to his intellect, hard work, and the extra time he got as a purportedly disabled test-taker, he was able to get a sufficiently high score on the G.M.A.T. to get into Harvard’s M.B.A. program — well, that, plus his diversity statement about his life’s journey as a “queer” political activist, which wowed the admissions committee.

While at Harvard, he made contacts with big-time deal makers around the world. Even before he had graduated, he was able to join in a handful of very profitable ventures through his growing network.

In spite of his rigorous studies, he also continued to maintain an active role in managing his investments, and by the time he graduated, he had expanded his real-estate portfolio to include several housing projects and other Section Eight rental properties in low-income neighborhoods throughout the Southeastern United States. While these slums were horrible to live in, they nonetheless generated a significant cash flow, with which Marshall continued to expand his holdings.

After graduation, he moved to San Francisco and opened a hedge fund with one of his classmates. He bought an incredibly expensive house in the ritzy Pacific Heights neighborhood and drove a flashy new Audi, just like his dad. As a nod to the idealism of his youth, he put a Downtown Boys sticker on the bumper of his car.

Marshall proved to be a financial wizard, and he became extraordinarily wealthy as a result of Carl-Icahn-inspired hostile takeovers and shareholder activism. He ignored the unpleasant consequences of his business schemes: once-prosperous businesses left drowning in debt, requiring round after round of layoffs and cutbacks just to stay in business. This was all unfortunate collateral damage. Marshall was able to ignore it, because he and his hedge fund had already moved on to newer and better deals by the time these negative consequences appeared.

For Marshall, the ends justified the means. He might have left a trail of wreckage behind him in his quest to become a big-time billionaire, but by making a literal killing through his financial schemes (a literal “killing” because a large number of “deaths of despair” in flyover country could be attributed to the aftermath of his deals, which destroyed small-town economies), he was able to finance important liberal causes.

True, people would have called his business style “vulture capitalism” if he had been a Republican. However, Marshall managed to avoid this criticism by remaining fashionably left-wing. He hosted posh fund-raising galas for Democratic candidates, and in turn, he was able to call upon several big-time state and national politicians any time he needed to get something done.