When I first read Professor Jacobson on the dangers of the anti-American left’s long march through our institutions, I experienced one of those “aha!” moments when everything suddenly made sense. This was, of course, way back when LI was still a one-man operation, and ObamaCare hadn’t even been passed yet. But I remembered the professor’s dire warning.
In the intervening years, we’ve witnessed the ideological capture of every meaningful American institution from the federal government to academia to science to journalism to Hollywood to every profession from the medical profession to teaching and to the courts.
In recent years, this long leftist march through our institutions started to look not just daunting but insurmountable. We were (are?) being set up for a social credit system where state-approved thinking is rewarded and wrongthink penalized. Think about all the ESG crap we’ve covered here at LI, along with the attacks on advertisers by the left that sought to shut down and cancel everything from Rush to My Pillow.
And now they are using the powers of the federal government and several state governments to persecute a political “enemy.” In America! And the media, all the institutions, are cheering it along. It’s a national disgrace that will reverberate for untold years.
But a funny thing happened on the left’s long march through American institutions, the institutions they infiltrated became degraded. And as a direct result of this degradation (a combination of Democrat America Last policies and blatant abuse of average Americans’ institutional trust), trust in the media, the feds (including the FBI and even the military), academia, science, and “experts” degraded to such a degree that the power is shifting. Has shifted.
One big indicator of this power shift is that big companies, the “brands,” have had enough. For them, this whole fundamental transformation thing didn’t work. They aren’t creating public opinion with their woke crazy, they are just angering their potential customer, people who will actually spend money—or not—on their “brand.”
Super woke Vox opined on this change in public sentiment (archive link).
The world is picking sides — on abortion and Gaza and Trump’s trials. And from brand-land? By and large, the sound of silence.That’s because, despite prior pretense, advertising follows, not leads; it needs markets, not morality. That silence, therefore, says much about our sociopolitical moment: As culture warriors find themselves on the defensive, brands, wary from the backlash against Bud Light’s use of a trans influencer, no longer show interest in advancing their causes.Indeed, today’s primary “cause” — and, arguably, election issue — is lower on the hierarchy of needs: cost of living. That makes for a more practical, less symbolic battleground for commercial content.In 2024, whatever else might happen, the revolution will not be advertised.
So when the economy was humming under Trump, the Big Brand left had the luxury to turn off customers and push random socio-cultural causes, but when Biden policies crushed the economy, no one cares about lala progressive crap and just want a good product for a good price.
And Big Brands are responding accordingly; they aren’t and never were revolutionaries or “allies,” they are, their own actions reveal, fair-weather revolutionaries, faux “allies.” Willing to trash their customer base while painting the town in LGBwhatever rainbows and taking a knee to BLM . . . until they were losing bank.
Vox continues:
Previously, we thought, “If I’m going to buy paper towels, are they useful? Are they inexpensive?” one marketing executive explained to me. By 2020, “societal issues [had] become brand attributes … in terms of product purchases.” The question became: How “woke” are your paper towels?If the ads of the 2010s felt like they were talking back to Trump, you’re not mistaken. Like other domains of cultural production — journalism, the popular arts, academia — brand-land leans left. For many such news topics invoked commercially — race, guns, the environment — creative professionals couldn’t conceive of there being “two sides” to the story.And the sheer variety of issues that brands subsequently embraced could crowd K Street. Levi’s and Delta demanded gun control. Nike amplified Colin Kaepernick’s Black Lives Matter kneel, as did some $50 billion in corporate pledges toward racial equality.. . . . That activism aimed to be endearingly authentic: true to the brand “self,” as silly as such anthropomorphism is. But it sometimes landed tangential and random. Burger King championed net neutrality; a frozen-meat brand soliloquized about the perils of disinformation on social media; on January 6, Axe body spray declared its faith in the “peaceful transition of power.”. . . . The personal has, of course, long been political, but during the 45th presidency, the civic became commercial as never before. Then, just as quickly as it had stormed the barricades, Madison Avenue abandoned them.
That Democrat the “personal is political” mantra is at the root of many of today’s political, social, and cultural ills because America is not built on the personal nor on the political, much less both combined in some Franken-creation of identity politics and whining about perceived personal blah blah.
More from Vox:
Again, commercial communication follows, not leads. Advertising’s activist retreat mirrors a reversal in public sentiment, perhaps a post-pandemic fatigue. One poll finds just 20 percent of Americans are now interested in corporations taking a stand on political issues or current events, and fewer than 30 percent want to hear brands opine on international conflict.Curiously, among the least supported issues (for brand engagement, at least) are many that defined the commercial battlegrounds of the Trump years: police reform, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and abortion.
Happily, America was having none of that divisive, destructive, anti-American (really, unAmerican) assault on our great nation. The Democrats can march through all the institutions they want, but America is still standing strong in every one of our souls, in our bones, and we can celebrate a win when the Big Brands say, naw, we’re out. This revolution thing isn’t working, so we’re just done with it.
Vox struggles with the fact that Democrats had the luxury of whining endlessly and petitioning Big Brands to bend the knee because–and only because–Trump had made America great again.
Perhaps there’s another type of issue that’s more pressing to Americans right now, one that retail companies can uniquely speak to because, historically, that was their primary messaging domain: How much are we paying and for what? After all, rising prices are arguably the defining political issue of the Biden era. That doesn’t allow for sexy, flashy branding — or even the moral, culture war invocations of the Trump years — but it’s top of mind when you have to pay 15 bucks for a sandwich or salad at lunch.
Under Biden, even Democrats can’t find a footing because people are truly suffering under his horrifically bad polices that harm Americans, particularly those in the middle and lower economic spheres.
Ultimately, Vox acknowledges that woke isn’t selling.
Under Trump, brands had appointed themselves vessels for progress, most especially on matters of cultural identity like race, sex, and immigration. In the years since, corporations have backpedaled to more of that “Switzerland” neutrality, reflecting a broader retreat from DEI ambitions across both law and norms.Circa 2020, one chief strategy officer told me, “[Consumers] think and believe and expect brands to be able to make the change in the world that the government institutions cannot.”Such hope was always deluded. To place faith in a corporate symbol for political ideology mistakes the foremost fiduciary allegiance of a company to the marketplace. Shareholders never cared if Levi’s could stop school shootings or Budweiser could help achieve immigration reform. Commercialism treats politics as trendy: de rigueur today, cringe tomorrow.Whether a marketplace for anti-Trump fervor reopens this fall — as expressed through soda or deodorant or frozen meat products — remains an open question. Activism ain’t selling like it used to.
Every American who resisted this assault on our country, our culture, our very selves and our families deserves a round of applause.
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