I don’t know how much of this stems from America’s latent hatred of business. Hollywood never portrayed a businessman as anything but the villain and maybe the impression stuck.
Or it could be socialism’s fear and loathing of capitalism. At any rate, it’s as ingrained as TV commercials that show the husband as a boob with a smarter wife. We come to resemble how we are portrayed.
And yet, there’s hope. To this day, Michael Douglas gets a majority of fans thinking Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” was a breath of fresh air. It irritates him.
I think there may be more of a fear of corporations as entities than there is of capitalism itself amongst many independents.
It's not hatred for business; it's hatred for dishonestly gaming the system to get rich by taking wealth from others, as opposed to building it. Look at David Packard by comparison. NOBODY criticizes him for how he went about building HP. Similarly, James J. Hill is lionized as a hero for the way he built Great Northern Railway, while Cornelius Vanderbilt is properly reviled as a crony capitalist. There are those who create and build and those who simply manipulate, grab, and accumulate.
So, look at Trump's record in business and what you'll see is a grandstanding crook who didn't make it as big as he claims. Hardly someone to emulate, much less elevate.