🧩 BND Motif Index · M1222
Fair-weather friend
An ally, a corporation, a party, is said to stand with a group only while it pays, and to drop them the moment the wind changes: rainbow capitalism went away once, so power held through such friends is no power.
- 2claims filed under it
- 2left shows it came up on
- 1claim retold online
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (2 left-leaning, 0 center, 0 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- left-leaning
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
🗣️ In so many words
the words that carry it
💬 the tellers' own words: “if it can go away it means you don't have power right?” “institutions like corporations which will abandon us for any reason” “rainbow capitalism recently went away” “Trump is a transactional person. You can be his best friend for years and years... When your relevancy ceases to help him, you're done.”
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 1
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
- 2026-11-10 “Trump coddles enemies while simultaneously abandoning allies.” 2
Told on the right 0
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the right so far.
Retold online 1
claims many people posted in their own words
- 2026-10-13 “Rainbow capitalism is unreliable: it went away once, and corporations will abandon queer people for any reason, so power mediated through them is no power.”
M1222 · first seen 2026-10-25 · what this is · how the index works