Wreck-It Trump

By Abe Greenwald

Thursday, February 13, 2025

 

Disney, after going all in on social justice, is pulling back from identity politics and getting in line with the latest cultural paradigm: sanity. At the Washington Post, Rachel Pannett reports that the company “is reducing content warnings that caution viewers about racial stereotypes on some of its classic films, including ‘Dumbo’ and ‘Peter Pan,’ as part of a wider revamp of its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs as it adjusts to the new Trump era.”

 

They first instituted the content warnings in 2020—the year the country went into a Covid cocoon and emerged as a freshman seminar in critical race theory. Five years is a good run for national lunacy, but it’s coming to an end. In December, Disney removed a transgender storyline from a slated cartoon series. And the company is now swapping out its DEI program for a “talent strategy.” Which, I guess, means that hires will be determined merit. 

 

This apparently unheard-of approach to running a business has company employees in a fit. At Deadline, Dominic Patten quotes one of them: “What’s next? Where do we go from here? What do we stand for now, keeping MAGA happy?” Nope, you stand for Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and all the other delightful creations that the company was built on. Disney is an entertainment operation, and it’s back in its lane.

 

What’s happening is the de-politicization of nonpolitical life. Even though Donald Trump’s presidency has propelled us into fresh hyperpolitical terrain, political concerns are increasingly confined to politics itself. That is, our attention is focused on laws, policies, rulings, nominations, and so on—not the politics of work, leisure, sports, and entertainment. 

 

There’s nothing particularly MAGA about this. It’s simply a return to how things were and should be again. 

 

The 21st-century culture war was always asymmetrical, with the left assaulting the right (along with everybody else) and the right fighting a defensive campaign to keep things from changing. It wasn’t the right that said you must use certain pronouns, post trigger warnings, cancel shows, attend DEI training, respect invented identities, and apologize for your privilege. To be sure, conservatives have their own agenda for change (some of it transformative). But the demands of triage meant first driving back the cultural invaders of the left.

 

Mainstream Democrats not only joined the fight on the leftists’ side; they determined that it was the fight of their time. Not inflation, not the porous border, not crime, not our failing education system, not the advance of America’s enemies abroad—but radical reality-altering social theory. As real-world problems kept mounting, the Democrats were off declaring new holidays for the assorted “unseen.” And that was never going to cut it. How long were Americans going to buy wokeness when they couldn’t buy groceries?

 

Now the invading army is packing up its social-justice gear and retreating—from the football field, the campus, the movie screen, the advertising campaign, the medical clinic, the boardroom, and elsewhere. 

 

In December, Disney paid $15 million to Donald Trump in a defamation settlement, and the FCC is investigating possible violations of equal-employment opportunity in DEI hiring at media companies. But it’s not Trump alone who’s shifting the cultural landscape. The popularity of his anti-radical agenda, rather, is an indication that the private sector needs to rewind. You can be sure that Disney—and the newly de-radicalized NFL, for that matter—wouldn’t think of killing off its social-justice activism if it didn’t know that consumers were done with it.  

 

Will it last? Not a shot. Nothing lasts but the fight itself. Radicals will come back at some future date declaring war under a new and exotic banner. Democrats and corporations will come on board once again. But the culture is now fortifying its borders and making the work of future marauders that much harder. And a less political culture is a more pleasant one. So enjoy it while it lasts. 

 

Hey, conservatives, you just won the Disney war! What’s next?