As I have previously observed, one of the chief tactics of woke capital, woke education, and other forms of progressive social radicalism is bundling. Rather than simply use persuasion to sell their ideas to people who want them, progressives (1) find some institution — a business, a school or university, a newspaper or TV station, a church, a sports league, a professional organization, a union, etc. — that has a pre-existing base of supporters and constituents, and (2) seize enough control over that institution that people who want the desired product have to also buy the politics, or at least tolerate it.
The strength of this modus operandi allows progressives to amass more resources and extend their reach beyond what they could hope to achieve by selling their ideas by themselves in the marketplace of ideas. Willing exchanges are not their thing. Therefore, progressives seek out those corners of our society that are least accountable to elections or market forces and use them as a force multiplier.
The plunging sales of Bud Light and frantic corporate backpedaling by parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev is a reminder of the limits of this strategy. Bud Light forgot that it’s not Disney, it’s not Harvard, and it’s not even Google or the New York Times. It sells a product for which there are many perfectly adequate (indeed, in many cases, superior) alternatives that don’t visibly hate their customers. Even among mass-market American light beers, there’s Miller Lite, Coors Light, Michelob Light, Natural Light, and even the sister brand Busch Light, to say nothing of imports such as Corona Light, Amstel Light, or craft beers. Beer customers have their brand loyalties and personal balance of taste and cost, but they have a lot of choices. Corporate America should note that what works for companies without meaningful competitors doesn’t work for everyone.