Strictly business

Regarding Trump backs Saudis over CIA” (Front page, Wednesday): The story noted President Donald Trump’s practice of treating everything as a business transaction, including his support of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the face of CIA analyses placing the prince at the center of the Jamal Khashoggi murder: What will be the result if business considerations are allowed (pun intended) to trump morality, ethics, and facts? This question is neither rhetorical nor hypothetical; history gives us the answer multiple times. Three cases will suffice here.

• Economic advantage was a primary motivating force for slavery in America. Thomas Jefferson (among others) lamented the “peculiar institution,” but plantation owners found themselves locked into a situation where those who did not use slave labor could not compete with those who did.

• The post-Reconstruction period of de facto slavery (peonage, convict leasing; roughly 1877-1966), during which young black men were arrested on trumped-up charges, convicted in kangaroo courts and sentenced to hard labor — for the financial benefit of those who were willing to let business considerations override ethics, morality, and justice.

• Finally, all those German industrialists who accepted slave labor at the behest of the Nazi government. A fine business decision — the government got its war materiel more cheaply, and the industrialists made more money on it.

The lesson should be clear, but apparently it is not. We have not learned from history — many are now actively denying it—and now seem condemned to repeat it.