When you look at woke companies it is not uncommon to see people like James Baker, the recently “exited” top lawyer at Twitter (who had to “exit” the FBI after being identified as the show runner for the Russia collusion hoax). Within every woke organization where there is a high profile Parag Agrawal, Yoel Roth or a Vijaya Gadde, there is a James Baker lurking under the surface.
In government, you have people like Peter Stzrok and Andy McCabe at the FBI, people whom we would never have known about if it had not been for President Trump’s willingness to fight back against the onslaught of fakery he faced – but government is filled with petty little tyrants spread across the bureaucracy. Faceless bureaucrats who never draw attention unless circumstances become extreme fill the ranks – another prime example is Anthony Fauci, someone who would never have garnered so much of the limelight without the panic generated about the coronavirus pandemic.
After action analysis of the pandemic response revealed Saint Anthony of Fauci was very highly paid and revered member of the Deep State. Tony had his stubby little fingers in a lot of important and dangerous pies that we didn’t know about.
A characteristic shared by all these people is that they are generally unexceptional. Comfortable to toil underneath the radar, often in roles that never get attention, they often lived out entire careers with absolutely no notice.
Even in Congress, we see some of the dimmest bulbs sitting in positions of power that is far out of balance with their capability and intellect and when the spotlight shines on them and strips away their anonymity, we come to understand that many of these people wield power far in excess of their job title.
It’s not unusual that middle level bureaucrats, middle management in companies, obscure members of societies, and even certain companies within an economy wield power far more influential than their apparent importance.
It’s because these people and organizations are gatekeepers.
Gatekeepers control the flow of things – whether it is information, finances, resources, or simply attention – these are people who decide who gets what and when. Often, they are NOT the top executives, managers, or holders of high office, most clandestinely labor out of sight and out of mind – until some even brings them to the fore.
If you have ever watched any of the Thor movies, think of these people as the Heimdall’s of civilization, controlling access between the realms.
Elite universities turn out thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of these people each year, belching them out into the world of work.
These are people with truckloads of ambition but lack the connections or academic record to make the cut with the prestigious firms and organizations, so they are absorbed into the middle levels of the private and public sector. What they lack in intellect, they more than make up in ambition, and with an axe to grind for not going in the first round of the draft, they glide like a viper through these organizational streets (with all due apologies to Steely Dan), seeking positions of influence and control that ARE withing their grasp.
And they usually settle into gatekeeper roles, sitting at the controls of information, money, or some other critical resource necessary to the organization. Often the CEO has less real power than the staff accountant who signs the checks or the HR manager who controls the hiring process.
In any organization, there are two kinds of power – there is ceremonial power and there is real power.
Ceremonial power often comes with a fancy title – I have known many with people with a “C” level title who had little but ceremonial power because someone else – a board member, a major investor, a banker, or a subordinate within the organization - held the real power. Real power is when things can’t happen without your agreement or influence or you sit in a position, an intersection (a valve, so to speak) where your actions or inactions are critical to the execution of the organization’s plans.
The lower levels in an organization, often where the real power lives, come with far less visibility and risk. One can spend an entire career under the radar. It has also been interesting to me that those with real power shun the spotlight and as they do, they have far more freedom to move around and do things. There are far fewer eyes on a VP of Manufacturing than there are the COO or CEO.
My point is this – when applied to everyday politics and government, the left as captured most, if not all, of the real power positions by burrowing into the bureaucracy and settling into powerful positions, positions that nobody really thinks about. These include appointed or non-elected positions as county or city managers, appointed department heads at local and state levels or even seats on school boards. Until the past few years, I’m pretty sure that not a lot of attention was paid to who was elected to local and state school boards, held District Attorney positions, sat on planning commissions or even who was the County Clerk.
The old saying that knowledge is power is true, but the CONTROL of knowledge is even more powerful.
That’s where woke companies and organizations come in.
Often these are unspectacular, sometimes borderline useless entities that simply have found a way to sit astride pipelines of “stuff” wanted, needed, or desired by a society. They always seem to find ways to install valves in that pipeline that only they control - and it is through the control of those valves that they derive their power.
These “woke” entities have successfully found ways to control the entire narrative and direction of our society. From public schools to Wall Street investment firms, they control the flow of society, the economy, and politics.
These entities are often so camouflaged and hidden they aren’t’ immediately apparent absent some crisis. It isn’t that unusual for very smart people like Elon Musk not to see these ticks burrowed in their own organizations. That a slimy character like James Baker, especially with his history and pedigree, was a gatekeeper at Twitter might seem obvious to us, but it wasn’t obvious to Elon.
I have turned around underperforming companies for around two decades, so I learned how to look for who was exercising the real power, and unsurprisingly, it was rarely the people at the top. The point being that taking out the people at the top may not have the impact one would expect because those positions may only hold ceremonial power, to effect real change, you must find the gatekeepers.
If I remember correctly...the Obama admin converted a huge number of ES ( political government) jobs to SES in order to give them "merit system" protections. Once in the protection system they are almost impossible to replace.
What you describe is exactly what the Afrikaners did after losing the war with the British.
Not many years passed before South Africa was back in the hands of the Africaners without fireing a shot.