Righties and lefties are each disgusted by this for different reasons. For the right, it’s evidence of the creeping woke-ification of everything. For the left, it’s proof that even the most un-progressive institutions are willing and able to cynically co-opt progressive rhetoric to serve their own aims.
Personally I find it delightful. How can anyone not enjoy America’s most cartoonishly sinister government agency running ads with cringy woke-speak like this?
“I am a woman of color. I am a mom. I am a cis-gendered Millennial who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder,” the CIA official said. “I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise. I am a walking declaration, a woman whose inflection does not rise at the end of her sentences, suggesting that a question has been asked.”
It’s so hard to take seriously that I’m about 50/50 on whether it’s a legit recruitment spot or a psy op designed to discredit American progressivism.
I love the ad because it operates on the assumption that, for all their complaints about U.S. foreign policy, lefties don’t actually care about droning Yemeni weddings, just their own narcissistic identity bullsh*t. And that may be (largely) right! It never even attempts to explain what a CIA employee does or what types of jobs are available; offhand I can’t tell you what position the woman in the ad holds. If ever there were an agency that you would think might recruit based on the actual job’s duties — excitement! adventure! high-stakes cloak-and-dagger with bad guys! — this is it. But those details are so incidental here as to be not worth mentioning.
Instead, surreally, the ad is all about pride in one’s identity. Sure, you hated enhanced interrogation as a counterterror tool — but have you considered how it might help CIA employees achieve self-actualization?
More of this, please. Most American television isn’t as entertaining as the idea of a woke CIA is.
