A popular topic among conservatives in the 21st century is to talk about how so many of our institutions have been ideologically captured. From entertainment to education to corporate C-suites (and, of course, government), it is scary to contemplate how many institutions have gone completely 'woke'.
Of course, these days many people are aware of this, at least those who are engaged politically. What many people may not be aware of -- and I include myself in this -- is just how pervasive this poison ideology is across so many professions, not just the known suspects. And, just as scary, how fast it all happened.
This is where Kevin Bass comes in. Bass is not famous. Or at least, he wasn't before December 2022. It was around that time that Bass, a medical/doctoral student and researcher, committed the unforgivable sin of ... admitting he was wrong about government actions taken during COVID.
Bass posted this viral tweet, in which he apologized for being wrong about lockdowns, mandates, and all of it.
I was wrong about lockdowns and mandates. I was wrong and the reason I was wrong was my tribalism, my emotions, and my distorted understanding of human nature and of the virus. It doesn't matter much, but I wanted to apologize for being wrong.
— Kevin Bass PhD MS (@kevinnbass) December 13, 2022
This tweet (which is still the pinned tweet on his profile) and his replies earned him a lot of respect among conservative and independent X accounts, but it enraged the left. Then, Bass committed the ultimate heresy. He wrote an op-ed for Newsweek, It's Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About COVID and It Cost Lives. He even went on Tucker Carlson's then-Fox News show to talk about it
As you can imagine, leftists went for his scalp after that. As always with the left, when you can't argue against the message, attack the messenger.
But after a while, Bass' life calmed down a bit. He retreated to writing medical research papers on his Substack, he did write several more Substack research articles that showed how wrong the medical and government institutions were about COVID measures as well, but nothing that would cause the firestorm that his Newsweek article did.
Then just last week, Bass posted what was, in my opinion anyway, a fantastic video infographic he created about the insidious influence of leftist ideology in America over the past 20 years. It is, quite frankly, shocking to see.
Changes in political ideology by occupation, 2000-2020
— Kevin Bass PhD MS (@kevinnbass) January 5, 2024
The march through the institutions in 13 seconds
Left side of graphs is left-leaning
Right side, right-leaning
Top half of occupations is professional class
Bottom half, blue collar
Pause at 2020 pic.twitter.com/Aek9nWvUnJ
Watching the full video from start to finish is the best way to appreciate how quickly leftist politics took over America. But I would like to pause the video at a few key moments in time to review the results.
First, let's let Bass explain how he gathered the data for his analysis:
It's data from political donors and how they decide to use their money to donate. It's not self-reported. For doctors, donor doctors represent ~12% of doctors by 2020. For journalists it's also pretty high.
— Kevin Bass PhD MS (@kevinnbass) January 5, 2024
Money, as they say, talks. Bass did not rely on how people identified politically themselves in a survey or a poll. He used the data of where and to whom they sent their hard-earned dollars.
Obviously, as he admits, not everyone in every profession is a political donor. But those who are provide a pretty good representative sample.
I'll start at the beginning of the video, the year 2000:
Some things in here will not be a surprise. College professors and teachers already leaned far left. They always have. Conversely, the oil and gas industry leaned pretty hard right. Also not a surprise. But look at the entertainment industry. Pretty significant representation from the right, even outweighing the left.
Across many other professions, notice that there is a good balance there as well. And note the journalist and corporate executives charts in the top two rows. There is a lot more representation across the spectrum than I would have imagined.
Now, let's skip forward a few years to 2008, the beginning of 'hope and change' in America.
'Hope and change' doesn't seem to have brought a lot of healing and unity to America. The entertainment industry has become much more polarized (despite the success of their champion, Barack Obama), though there is still some representation from conservatives. In fact, polarization seems to be happening among multiple professions, including police officers, accountants, tech, journalists, doctors, engineers, and even professions like carpenters, landscapers, and mechanics.
Firefighters, to their great credit, seem to be staying out of the fray entirely ... for now.
How about halfway through Obama's two terms? How are things going in 2012?
Yikes. Representation from conservatives has all but disappeared from journalism and entertainment. It is completely gone from college professors and teachers. Even nurses, who were as balanced as they come in 2000, have shifted far left. Spikes on the left have started to appear in energy and even farming.
But the middle is completely gone across many professions (God bless those firefighters though).
And then came Donald Trump.
Bear in mind, Trump was not yet president in 2016, but this does represent, in part, political donations in the 2016 presidential election.
You have to go down to the fourth row now to see any representation from the right. And not only have conservatives disappeared from those top three rows (yes, even in the energy sector), but the middle has completely disappeared as well. The left was beginning to take control of nearly every profession.
I will grant that Donald Trump is and always has been a polarizing figure, ever since he walked down that escalator. This graph certainly reflects some of that, but this is bigger than one man (and these do not just represent political donations in the presidential campaign). Moreover, this shows how successful the left had become in completely demonizing the right. Then you can add in the dawn of 'Black Lives Matter' in 2014, one of the most divisive organizations in American political history.
And dammit, they finally even started getting to the firefighters as well.
By the end of Trump's first term, it was all over but the shouting for many professions, though conservatives -- perhaps sick of how they all kept getting attacked for four years ad nauseum, were fighting back in some areas.
In white-collar professions, particularly the law, education, health care, entertainment, and corporate America, conservatives have been completely wiped out. While polarization is still stark across every profession, conservatives were now firmly ensconced as the party of working, blue-collar America.
Someone should have told this to Bud Light.
Meanwhile, the top three rows were full-throated in embracing everything from DEI and CRT to gender ideology and globalism. The left owned all of it, exclusively.
Bass' analysis stops at 2020, but we are hopeful that some of the pushback seen in the bottom three rows in 2020 has grown over the last four years. Not all of them, for sure, but some. Maybe even some of the top areas like energy, accounting, and engineering where 2020 showed slight conservative upticks.
The influence of leftist political ideology dates back far beyond 2000, this is known. But even if we start as recently as 2000, when America was far more balanced, the speed at which it has taken over all of the top institutions in America is both fascinating and terrifying.
It may take generations to reverse this destructive influence of the left. But I do think it is starting. And if there is hope in this infographic from Kevin Bass, it is in those bottom rows, which in turn could foster a pushback in the top ones.
But I fear the American middle may be lost forever.
