The Patriot Post® · Lockheed Martin and the Woke Industrial Complex

It’s perhaps just a sad sign of the times that a company called White Men as Full Diversity Partners (WMFDP) is not some satirical sendup by the Babylon Bee but rather an actual American business with dozens of employees — headquartered, just as antifa is, in the scenic cesspool of Portland, Oregon.

And if so, it’s an even sadder sign of the times that Lockheed Martin, our nation’s largest defense contractor, was suckered into spending good money with WMFDP. Indeed, as City Journal’s Christopher Rufo reports, Lockheed Martin sent its white male executives to what was labeled as a “white men’s caucus” — “a three-day diversity-training program aimed at deconstructing their ‘white male culture’ and encouraging them to atone for their ‘white male privilege.’”

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of this comically named outfit. Last year, Rufo reported on its white male training program for employees of the somewhat consequential Sandia National Laboratories, whose mission is to provide engineering and science support for our nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. As Rufo writes, “That began a series of reports leading to President Trump’s Executive Order 13950, banning racial stereotyping, scapegoating, and discrimination in federal diversity programs. The Trump ban, however, was temporary; President Biden rescinded the order on his first day in office.” Thanks, Joe.

The Lockheed Martin program begins, as Rufo reports, with some Freudian free association, where corporate trainers rattle off terms related to “white men” — terms such as “founding fathers,” “guns,” “old,” “angry,” “racist,” “Aryan Nation,” and the like. You know — the run-of-the-mill things we usually associate with white men. Then the consultants ply the participants with promises of improving the Lockheed Martin brand and the reputation of the company’s white men, and they introduce a little fear by assuring them that a full-on embrace of wokeness might keep them from being replaced by a “full diversity partner.”

Finally, the execs are told to reflect on a series of “I’m tired” statements — “tired of you making more money than me,” “tired of black boys being murdered,” “tired of Black Lives Matter being disparaged,” and “tired of hearing how we need a wall on our southern border but not our northern one.” Nothing like a little infusion of white guilt dressed up as empathy training.

We wonder, though: Wouldn’t Lockheed Martin — and the Department of Defense — have been better served by convening a three-day summit of its entire leadership team (not just the white guys) to, say, tackle the colossal cost overruns of its $1.7 trillion F-35 II Lightning fighter program? (Asking for a taxpayer.)

Last week, we reported on Space Force Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lohmeier, who was relieved of his command for having spoken out against Critical Race Theory and other Marxist indoctrination taking place throughout the U.S. military. And in February, we analyzed the Pentagon’s plan to investigate extremism in the ranks, by which military brass essentially meant “Trump voters.” Our military has been set dangerously adrift, and the saboteurs are the ardent leftists in Joe Biden’s White House and Pentagon. And with Rufo’s revelation about Lockheed Martin, we now know that the woke virus has jumped from the DOD to our nation’s defense contractors.

Why does all this matter? Because the more time our warfighters and their defense contractors spend listening to “diversity and inclusion” consultants and navel-gazing about how concepts such as hard work, rugged individualism, and striving for success are “the roots of white male culture” and are thus “devastating” to women and minorities, the less time they spend training for war and building better war-fighting gear.

Our military’s core mission is to deter or win wars and ensure our nation’s security. To this point, that mission has served us pretty well. But any activity that distracts or deviates from it only serves our nation’s enemies.