Wokeism, the idea that America is a systemically racist country and that your identity is defined by your race, your gender and your sexual orientation is no longer about challenging the system.

Wokeism is the system.

Blame the radical academics, blame the college administrators, blame the woke graduates, but these aren't the people who took wokeism mainstream.

That dubious distinction belongs to an unexpected source, big business.

That's right. The largest companies in America, the standard bearers of American capitalism have injected this virus into the arteries of commerce.

Our story begins in 2008 following the mortgage crisis that led to the near collapse of the entire banking system.

Bankers got paid a lot of money when times were good, but got a bailout from taxpayers when times went bad.

No wonder Americans were skeptical of capitalism and for good reason, because it was really just crony capitalism.

The old left wanted to punish the banks in the usual way. Seize their money and redistribute it to the poor.

But the new woke left added a new twist.

The real problem, they said, wasn't just poverty or economic injustice. It was a 300 year history of white patriarchy.

Ironically, this new idea, you know what is critical race theory, presented Wall Street with a way to get out of their PR disaster, a way to go from being the bad guys to poof becoming the good guys.

All they had to do was to admit that their eyes had been opened. In other words, they woke up.

You want us to fix global warming? No problem. You want us to get on board with the transgender movement? Sure we'll do that too.

Solve systemic racism? Sounds great. As long as you don't talk about systemic financial risk.

They were happy to add token minorities to their boards. They were happy to post a black square on their corporate Instagram.

They were happy to preach about climate change after flying on private jets to fancy ski towns, but they didn't do it for free.

As long as the banks said the right things, they would be left in peace to make their billions.

And Abercadabra, like a rabbit out of a hat, woke ink was born.

Things went pretty smoothly until the 2016 election. The man who won wasn't supposed to win.

And this time, the blame fell not so much on Wall Street, but on Silicon Valley.

But they had Wall Street's playbook and they followed it to AT.

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