If you jump on a grenade to save others, you are a hero.

But if you pull the pin on a grenade and jump on top of it to prove how virtuous you are, you are an idiot committing suicide.

From all the evidence I can see, companies and institutions that have gone completely woke fit into the latter category: they pull the pin on a grenade and throw themselves on it, expecting us all to be impressed by their bravery.

Stunning and brave. The new markers of virtue.

The world of woke is, ironically, binary: you are either an oppressor or you are oppressed. Since people in positions of economic, political, or cultural power who happen not to be lucky enough to be melanin-enriched or sexually deviant in some flamboyant way are thrown into the oppressor class automatically, they desperately look for a way to escape the binary and for some reason, they have alighted on the genius strategy of committing institutional suicide.

Colloquially we describe this as “get woke, go broke.”

Now we all know this isn’t an iron law – fate is fickle. An institution or a company can embrace wokeness for a long time and appear to thrive – getting awards from the Human Rights Campaign, high ESG scores, and basking in the glow of feeling virtuous.

Target comes to mind. So does Bud Light, come to think of it.

But it turns out that this simply generates a false confidence – cozying up to the woke gods seems to pay dividends, until precisely the moment when it doesn’t. Because the more rewarded a person or institution is for going woke, the more woke they become. And what simply annoys people suddenly becomes a mortal insult and one that nobody saw coming. It’s like the straw that breaks the camel’s back – all that weight accumulated until suddenly something snapped.

The backlash can be swift and the pain intense because, after all, the people who made you so successful are in the “oppressor” class by woke logic. Insult us enough, and we get fed up.

That irony was made perfectly clear in Anheuser-Busch’s acceptance of the award for “Creative Marketer of the Year” in a Cannes ceremony this weekend. The award was announced before the Dylan Mulvaney controversy erupted but given out at a ceremony over the weekend. I wrote about it in an earlier piece today.

Anheuser-Busch InBev, was here at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity—a lavish annual gathering in the south of France, often called the Oscars of the ad industry—collecting one of the event’s highest honors: Creative Marketer of the Year.

Everything was going great for InBev, until suddenly it wasn’t going well at all. It lit billions of dollars on fire because it wanted to be loved by a tiny fraction of the Earth’s population, and chose to insult its own customers to get the adulation.

Bud Light, which until 5 minutes ago was the best-selling beer in America, will never recover. Yet, Anheuser-Busch still accepted its award, so it has that going for it. Which is nice.

Target did the same thing to itself selling its “tuck” bathing suits. For years, they pushed “Pride” on Americans and we just shrugged. It took that to mean that everybody approved, when, in fact, we simply didn’t care that much. So it kept on pushing to the point where it made clear it was on board with transing the kids – the same company that so conspicuously touts its ties with education! – and people freaked.

Again. Suicide. Target completely misread the room. It still is, in a way, by claiming that conservatives are pushing bomb threats at its stores, when, in fact, the people doing the threatening are LGBTQ+ activists.

All these companies have put themselves into a no-win situation. By not sticking up for Dylan Mulvaney, Bud Light has ticked off the Rainbow crowd, and by not apologizing, they continue to offend their customer base. Target has been rewarded, as I said, with bomb threats from the alphabet folks.

The bar cited Anheuser-Busch’s “move to stop its marketing campaign celebrating actress, comedian, and content creator Dylan Mulvaney’s first year as a woman.” https://t.co/dqXGAFKhPI

— Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) June 19, 2023

It’s not just companies and politicians who have trod down this path; it’s Hollywood and the news media as well, who relentlessly push their propaganda on us hoping that just yelling louder at us will somehow change our minds, not make us angrier.

It’s not working. Disney’s latest movies are flops, and nobody trusts the MSM anymore, including many Democrats who know they are being gaslighted. Even when people agree with the ideology they resent being lied to. And they should.

The craziest 1% of our society is running the asylum, and it has to stop. We here at HotAir are doing our part to stop it, and we need your help to do so. You already know that most of what you hear is a distortion of reality, and I can’t promise you we always get it right. We don’t because nobody can.

But we will never gaslight you, and we will do our level best every day to call them as we see them.

We rely on you to do the important work that we do, and we periodically ask you to join our VIP program. You can join the HotAir VIP, of course, but I strongly suggest you spring for the entire Townhall Gold Membership. It gives you VIP access to every Townhall property, including Townhall, Twitchy, RedState, PJ Media, Bearing Arms, and HotAir. It’s a great deal, especially when you use the code WITCHHUNT to get 50% off!