“Infiltration, Subversion, Corruption, Institution.” Put ‘Em Together And…

                Infiltration, subversion, corruption. All interesting words. Add in “institution” and you’ve got a real toxic mix. Dangerous too. How so?

                Well, take the case of the American College of Surgeons (ACA.) Founded in 1912, it’s been a benign trade association of doctors who cut people open. Its purpose was simple and obvious: through networking, publishing educational articles, defining and advocating for best practices, it works to improve the craft of folks who cut people open. For over a hundred years it worked just fine, as a non-controversial, benign institution to better the profession. What’s “better?” Aha!

                Recently, the ACA sent its members an email with its Report of Recommendations by its Task Force on Racial Issues. The report recommended an “Office of Diversity” and a “Regental Committee,” along with ten other “Critical Enabling Habits.”  The ACS then created a “Diversity Pillar,” one of five pillars of the ACS, to be addressed by a Board of Governors Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives Workgroup and a Surgical Workforce Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Workgroup. (Source: William Harvey. What does woke heart surgery look like? – American Thinker)

                Dr. Harvey continues: “As a kind of secular religion, woke ideology dictates that a person (in this case, a surgeon or a patient) is considered not as an individual, but rather as a member of a group, a category, based on skin color or sex or both.  Woke ideologues reduce all persons in society, it seems, to the simple binary categories of white and non-white skin color, which are defined further as oppressor and victim groups, respectively.  A person as an individual becomes irrelevant.

                “The profession of surgery, in my opinion, needs to disregard this harmful ideology, preserve meritocracy, and maintain race and sex neutrality.  To the operating surgeon to the patient in need, individual merit is what matters.  Meritocracy is the enemy of woke ideology.”

                “Woke,” like “Equity,” is just Marxism, once again re-re-packaged: groups, not individuals; some groups are more equal than others. Here it comes again. But what’s even more disturbing is that Marxist secular religion now subverts the organization of surgeons. “Sure,” you say, “we expect this garbage from colleges. But in the real world, where real people do real stuff?” The answer is: woke ideology oozed off the campus long ago. Even the American College of Surgeons is enshrining this secular religion, in a field you’d expect the highest objective standards of performance to rule. Nope! Why?

                Actually, the Why is not as important as the How. We know Why: a bunch of Marxist zealots want to impose their fundamentalist faith on society–it’s an old story. But How? Right now, it’s by taking over comfortable, familiar institutions, and transforming them into instruments of their ideology. We used to call them “fronts.” How: a couple of old words, gone into disrepute but quite apt: infiltration and subversion. It’s the classic, traditional Marxist/leftist playbook.

                Let’s start with institutions. An institution is an organization of people. It exists to do something: fight wars, report news, educate the young, improve the practice of surgery. It may have a long and honorable history. People respect it for what it does, and it has what’s called “credibility.” You trust it. When CBS News said something, you believed it. That credibility is a precious asset.

                Let’s say you’re a faithful true believer of a religion or ideology, same thing. Advancing your faith is the most important thing in the world. What better instrument for your cause than a familiar institution with great credibility? That asset will be valuable in your holy cause! How to seize that asset?

                Infiltration. First one person joins the institution. Call him Adam: he joins and is the most helpful, hardworking guy. He cheerfully takes all the donkey work. Adam is invaluable, you say, he does all the jobs no one wants. Next, Adam brings in Betty. She’s another humble, hardworking dynamo. And then Charlene. The three of them seem to be everywhere, especially doing support work like making agendas, vetting personnel. They sit on committees on hiring and they never miss a policy meeting.

                Subversion. Before you know it, they’ve hired David and Ethel. In fact, everyone who gets hired or promoted is one of their guys. They have a majority on committees. To cross them is fatal. The institution has now been captured by a clique. It no longer exists to do whatever it was founded to do. The focus becomes something else: social justice. Diversity. Equity. Advancing an agenda. The institution is now a front for its new primary mission: the propagation of ideology.

                Corruption. The institution no longer focuses on its original mission. Its purpose has been fundamentally corrupted to serve a clique’s agenda. From all outward appearances, the institution still looks as it always did: safe, snug, boring, like the old reliable family friend you can trust. But now it’s pushing a different agenda, one you might not agree with if you actually thought about it. But it comes from the good old College of Surgeons, or reliable old CBS. So, you trust it. For a while.

                I say “corruption.” Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that all these corrupted institutions are breaking the law. Some are. In fact, the most familiar form of institutional corruption is an organization formed to do something that’s become an engine for generating bribes. Think of Dirty Chicago, or other crooked towns. Some nations have entire governments, bureaucracies, armies, police forces that run on bribes from top to bottom. That’s one kind of corruption.

                Another kind of corruption is the Switcheroo. The surgeon’s college no longer advances surgery, but social agendas. The newspaper no longer covers and prints pure news stories, but pushes an agenda through selective choice of stories and the writing of them. The entertainment companies seek to “educate.” Schools focus on “developing change agents.”

                It works, for a while. But here’s the sad truth: once an institution has been subverted and corrupted to a different mission and focus, it no longer does its original job very well. You can’t have it both ways. The army that’s become a bribe engine can’t win wars. Schools that indoctrinate, graduate illiterates. The police force that lives on payoffs can’t stop crime. Media that push agendas miss big stories. And a College of Surgeons that’s devoted to Equity and Diversity? See you on the table.

                The infiltrated, subverted, and corrupted institution is one that’s hollowed out. It can’t do its real job any more. Sooner or later, people will notice, and the magic feather of credibility slowly evaporates. A January 2023 Scripps organization poll has only 39% of Americans trusting the media. 2023 National News Literacy Week Explores Public Trust In News | Scripps If your local grocery store had that level of trust in its product, how long would it stay in business?

                A hollowed out institution is a sitting duck when reality comes along to bite. Crooked armies get killed when they face a real enemy. Agenda-driven media loses to competition. Increasingly ideologically intolerant colleges hemorrhage students. Agenda-pushing entertainment companies shed customers. And “repurposed” medical institutions? Substandard doctors are fat prey in an ocean filled with hungry sharks: trial lawyers. Explain “Equity and Diversity” on the stand. Under oath. To a jury. In front of a picture of dead Grandma.

                They say “get woke, go broke” for a reason. And there’s lots of different ways to go broke.