Mindless Enforcers: From the Battlefield to the Board Room

In World War I, there were officers and others behind the trenches who “took care of” soldiers who decided that maybe going over the top to a certain grisly death was not in their best interest.  

In World War II, the Soviet army was full of political and other enforcement officers that had a similar job – go forward or go down.

The Soviets, of course, took things a bit further actively hunting for soldiers who joked about Stalin’s acne problem and executing them, no matter how they performed on the battlefield.

The Soviets, of course, took things a bit further still when, at the end of the war, soldiers returning to Great Motherland from a prisoner of war camp were routinely sent off to the gulag just in case they picked up any nasty ideological bug.

And throughout the Soviet (the Nazis, too) regime, political officers were embedded at every level of society, in every workplace, in every government agency – watch “Citizen X” to see how that impacted the hunt for a serial killer  – to make absolutely sure that the literal party line was being followed.  

From crime to industrial policy to housing to everything else, the party said A, reality said B, and if you valued your life you said A, too.

Ring a bell?

Like the political officers of the past, the diversity, equity, and inclusion troops oozing forth from every human resources department perform the same function.

Do not think A or you will lose your job; think B and no matter your job performance you will be feted and promoted.

Because, as in totalitarian states, whether or not a person functions properly does not matter as long as they say the right thing and are only noticeable when they are proclaiming the truth of the falsehood of the day.

The DEI enforcers are the back stop for the received reality – whatever that may happen to be, no matter how often it changes.  They evaluate, they spy, they fire, they destroy, they invade and they all feel righteous joy as they do so.

They are told they are a better, newer, more modern sort of person which both inflates their ego and the putative importance of their mission but – more importantly – allows them to look at others as if they were inherently lesser people and therefore any punishment or ostracization imposed upon them is justified.

It does not even appear that the DEI people really care about “converting” people to their way, to make them see their truth.  They only want to make sure that the world sees the punishment so others will not publicly stray from the anointed path.

The current word police, thought police, gender police, color police, woke police, progressive police are no different than the the Soviet political lieutenants who shot anyone who stepped out of line.

They are people who, if they ever asked themselves “what would I do in Nazi Germany,” confidently proclaim they would be part of the resistance when in fact they would have the exact same job they have now and the only difference would be the Hugo Boss-designed uniform.

They have the nomenclature down – members of the California Teachers Association (the union) literally call each other “comrade,” they create “cadres” of teachers willing to carry the Holy message directly into the school.

Here’s just one example of literally thousands (from last year’s union convention):

“Diversify History:  Add Queer Ourstories” which will impart the tools needed to teach “(T)he selected Queer historic peoples and/or cultural productions are presented, contextualized in CA Social Science standards, and FAIR Act, with particular emphasis on teachers of 4th grade students and onwards. Participants will engage on the basics of queer identities, discuss important historical figures and their place in the classroom, and finalize with sharing strategies and talking points on how to deal with potential negative reactions to creating an inclusive curriculum.”

And woe betide the individual who bucks the system – parents humiliated, people fired, school districts sued,  and lives taken into one’s own hands when walking in any city neighborhood.  

A question arises “but to what end?”

The Nazis wanted to take over Europe, kill Jews and lots of other people, and be able to stick around for a 1,000 years.

The Soviets wanted a hegemonic version of global communism (sorry, Mr. Trotsky) which would in theory create a workers paradise.

But what do Danielle, deputy assistant secretary for inclusion or Nancy, senior vice president for sustainable equity, really want to do?  In other words, what is the endgame for the nattering chattering lathering class beyond they themselves having a well-paying job that is impossible to evaluate and equally as impossible to eliminate?

First, obviously, there is the issue of power. But how transitory will that be?  

Progressive woke ideologies and practices only “work “when they go unnoticed – once the public finds out there is political pushback.

That could be part of the overarching strategy – like in a contract negotiation for a new job, start at one billion a year and work down from there.  

The woke are shooting for the moon and when they may not quite get it they still get something in the name of progress and compromise and empathy – basically that was the whole concept behind the long march through the institutions: baby step, big step, pushed back, baby step from the new starting point, big step, push back to yet another new starting line, etc.

Beyond the idea of power, it is very unclear if there is an overarching message of anything beyond destruction of whatever exists right at the very moment and getting and keeping a good job.

Both of those goals are, in fact, very minor in the grand scheme of things.  No political or cultural or societal construct can survive forever if it is a purely destructive force without offering a coherent – no matter how evil – replacement theory.

As today’s political enforcers roam the halls of business, board rooms, newsrooms, schools, and government agencies they do so with the same mindset as the Soviet officers had when executing soldiers.

They don’t think that, they would deny that, they would be infuriated by the notion but they would be unable to tell you what the actual point of it all is, as their ideology is merely a grab bag of phrases and feelings and entitlements poorly grafted onto a wobbly Marxist framework that no one can quite boil down – that’s why there are so many definitions of “woke.”

If they weren’t so destructive, they would be almost pitiable – Ms. Smith-Jones-Lee is demanding  you take the word “fieldwork” out of memo but in the end has no idea why she is doing it beyond the fact that “it’s her job.” 

And, again, that’s how they would have acted in Nazi Germany, in the Soviet Union, and in any number of tyrannies past and present – they would be that person.

Actually, we don’t even have to wonder if that’s true – we saw the same people doing the same thing for the same non-reason that resulted in the whirlwind of destruction that was the covid pandemic response.

If you ever yelled at someone to put a mask on, if you ever uninvited a holiday guest because the chose not to get the vaccine, if you ever hoped hospitals would turn away the unvaccinated, if you ended a friendship over covid, if you ever said “follow the science,” if you ever said vaccine cards should be need to eat in a restaurant, if you ever dismissed concerns over the efficacy and safety of the shots as “conspiracy theories,” if you reported your neighbor for violating a lockdown, if you ever wanted your co-workers fired over their “status,” if you ever said the lab leak idea was impossible because scientists say so, if you ever thought of yourself as a “Cuomosexual,” if you ever, even for  moment, thought remote learning worked as well being in school, if you hated Trump because he wasn’t “tough enough” on the pandemic, if you ever praised Biden for demonizing the unvaccinated, if you ever ever ever thought it was good and proper to censor, demonetize, shun, and destroy anyone who said anything different then the accepted wisdom then you are that person.

Signing lists of enemies, creating speech codes, removing – either temporarily or permanently – swaths of people from polite society, and doing any of the other banal bureaucratic task evil needs to survive is what you would have done then because you’ve already done it now.

And now, with DEI, HR, NGO, PR, any dotGOV, any dotEDU, etc. it’s a career option you can pursue.

It even comes with a nice party membership card, though – sorry – no uniform.

Yet.