Michael Brown packed a bunch of his personal grievances, unsurprisingly led by his hatred of transgender people — which, of course, he packaged as “wokeism” — into his Jan. 12 WorldNetDaily column:
For many years, I have been predicting a cultural pushback against the radical left, knowing that, at a certain point, people would say, “Enough is enough.”
I have documented this in particular when it comes to transgender activism, with people as diverse as Joe Rogan, Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, J. K. Rowling, and Martina Navratilova helping to lead the way.
The Bud Light and Target boycotts have now become cautionary tales, reminding us that your average American does not share these extremist ideas.
That’s why many of these same Americans became outraged during COVID when, for the first time, they became aware of some of the dangerous indoctrination their children were experiencing at school. They too began to speak up and speak out, adding more fuel to the fire of this growing cultural revolution.
That’s why it was no surprise to see a headline in November 2023 announcing that, “Miss Universe judge reveals bankruptcy likely due to ‘outrage’ over transgender organizer.”
If you’re going to feature “transwomen” in a Miss Universe event, you can expect to see some backlash. And that’s why, despite the mega-success of the movie “Barbie,” we frequently hear that, from a business perspective, if you go woke you go broke.
Brown then dipped into his minor proclivity for racism:
Yet the cultural backlash is broader than this, being ideological as well as economic (although, as a result of failing ideologies, there will be an economic backlash as well).
Think of the exposing of DEI on our university campuses and in big business.
If you cannot hire the most qualified person for a job and must instead fill a quota, how can you survive, let alone thrive?
Why does Brown assume that any non-white person has a job solely because someone “filled a quota” and not because they’re qualified? Why does he assume that only white people are qualified to work? Nevertheless, he continued to belabor the point:
In a battle on X between billionaires Mark Cuban and Elon Musk, Cuban wrote (in a lengthy post), “DEI does not mean you dont [sic] hire on merit. Of course you hire based on merit
“Diversity – means you expand the possible pool of candidates as widely as you can. Once you have identified the candidates, you HIRE THE PERSON YOU BELIEVE IS THE BEST. …
“Even choosing the best basketball player is very much a guess. Which is why the best players weren’t always the first pick in the draft and some go undrafted.
“The reality is that most positions hired in a company don’t have a quantitative metric you can use to hire someone.”
To this Musk responded, “Cool, so when should we expect to see a short white/Asian women [sic] on the Mavs?”
Point taken.
If one counts that as missing the point, sure. After citing some overdone rhetoric at colleges, Brown pushed his point further:
In the same way, more and more businesses are abandoning ESG, recognizing it does not make for good financial success. In the words of Robert Jenkins, head of global research at Lipper, a financial data provider, “ESG investing … entering the final quarter of 2023 continues to be a story of declining flows and assets under management.”
Or as stated more bluntly by Elon Musk, “I am increasingly convinced that corporate ESG is the Devil Incarnate.” (He posted this back in April 2022.) Even the massive investment firm Blackrock announced last year that they don’t say “ESG” anymore since it has become so weaponized by both sides.
The fact is, on many fronts, some of which we have not even touched on here, woke simply doesn’t work – in children’s and adult education; in business development; in raising families; in securing our borders; in reducing crime; in fighting terror; in maintain a modicum of cultural sanity.
And on and on it goes.
These radical leftist ideologies, many of them Marxist based, may look good on paper. But in real life they are an accident waiting to happen. Just give them time.
The fact that Brown must invoke such smears as “Marxist” and “devil incarnate” to attack ESG — which, again, is about not discriminating against non-white people — shows the hollowness and racist-adjacent intent of his argument.