America’s Great Awakening seems to be progressing at a relentless pace.

Last week, Boeing became the latest major company to abandon its so-called DEI department, a group of corporate bureaucrats who performed the unnecessary and illegal function of diversity, equity, and inclusion in hiring.

This is a sophisticated way of imposing racial and gender quotas in the workplace, as opposed to merit, which, in the case of Boeing, nearly bankrupted the company.

Boeing’s decision followed similar moves by John DeereHarley Davidson and Jack Daniels.

Wall Street firms, I’m told, are also scrubbing their corporate policies of anything that appears to resemble preferences after a SCOTUS ruling that struck down affirmative action in college admissions. university, which can be used as fodder for lawsuits over hiring preferences.

BlackRock abandons investments in environmental social governance it forced oil companies to invest in inefficient wind turbines because its customers hate them and it caused gas prices to rise.

Kamala Harris – once queen of wokeness, all-time BLM enthusiast politician – chose to run a presidential campaign not on resentment but on joy.

The question for me is not why. This is something I fully covered in my book: “Go Woke Go Broke; The inside story of corporate America’s radicalization.

Americans are not awake. The bigger issue is whether we are witnessing a moment or true dismantling of woke in the public sphere.

I guess it’s the first.

Yes, I keep getting emails from Yale leadership liberal and sometimes woke Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld about how all these ex-CEOs he knows are supporting the woke Kamala Harris over the Donald Trump very awake in Tuesday’s elections.

Notice that they are all “old hands,” not people like Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, Tim Cook, and many others in the industry who choose neutrality for fear of consumer backlash.

Call it what it is: stupid!

Sorry, Professor, America hates everything woke – whether it’s a half-naked trans activist giggling in a bubble bath selling Bud Lite, or working-class employees forced to admitting their “white privilege” during mandatory corporate diversity training. performed by Ivy League elitists.

They don’t want to have to pay more for gas because BlackRock thinks it’s a good idea to charge extra for ESG portfolios.

Sonnenfeld, as I wrote in my book, led a CEO effort to publicly denounce a 2021 election law in Georgia — culminating in a two-page ad in the New York Times, no less — as discriminatory. which they said created obstacles to a fair election. Yet black voter turnout subsequently increased.

Yes, woke is also stupid.

But that doesn’t mean he’s dead. The tools of awakening will remain in the vast administrative state if Kamala Harris, the current vice-president of Joe Biden and now the Democratic candidate, is able to ignore his far-left progressivism and become president.

Remember his support for all things DEI and his demands that “we” as a country “need to stay awake.” As if everyone should be awake.

You can chalk this up to some simpleton’s word salad, but if that simpleton is elected, it will likely be funneled as policy through the various agencies that regulate American business – the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission , etc. more directly than under Joe Biden, who once boasted that during his presidency, DEI “starts at the top with the vice president.”

I fear that wokeness, especially in a business context, is not dead. She is still hidden within a party which claims to represent half of the voters and which could, next Tuesday, retain control of the White House.

Solid journalist

Journalism was once a profession that Americans trusted, even revered. In fact, we loved going to the movies to see ink-stained wretches plying their trade and doing good.

One of my favorites is a so-called film noir released theatrically in 1948, “Call Northside 777.” It starred Jimmy Stewart as dogged journalist PJ McNeal, who pursued a story and proved the innocence of a man imprisoned for murder.

Last week, a journalist named Ellie Terrett channeled her inner PJ McNeal. His relentless reporting for Fox Business on innocent crypto executive Tigran Gambaryan exposed the miscarriage of justice surrounding his arrest and galvanized public support for his release from a notorious Nigerian prison.

Full disclosure: Ellie is my TV producer at Fox, but she’s become one of the best at unearthing scoops in the booming crypto industry.

One of those scoops involved Gambaryan, an executive at cryptocurrency exchange Binance who was jailed on trumped-up charges of money laundering and tax evasion shortly after arriving in the country.

His reporting sparked a lobbying campaign for Gambaryan’s release from crypto bigwigs, law enforcement officials and apparently the Biden administration.

Gambaryan was released last week and reunited with family and friends after eight months of incarceration.

“I appreciate Fox News and other media outlets for covering my story and keeping my name alive,” he said after being released.

PJ McNeal would be proud of Ellie.