Is It Beer Thirty Yet?

From sacrament to sacrilege

RADIO FAR SIDE

Few people stop to think just how vital beer is to the human race.

The Babylonians built temples to Ninkasi, the goddess of beer and brewing, and the Hammurabic Code had strict laws concerning the ingredients and process of brewing beer. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all took brewing very seriously and ancient breweries are discovered on a regular basis. Of course, most serious beer drinkers know about the German Reinheitsgebot.\

In my own Celtic and Anglic cultures, every home brewed their own. The best brews drew visitors, and eventually those homes became inns and public houses (pubs), and even town breweries.

One town brewery that became famous for its top-fermented lager was a sleepy Czech town called České Budějovice. Their top brew is called Budwar, or in Germany Budweiss.

Very long story short, this beer recipe and technique made its way to America, were it spawned a mega-corporation called Anheiser-Busch, which is owned by the holding company ABInBev, which itself manages over 400 brands worldwide. One of those brands unfortunately happens to be one of my favorites - Leffe Blonde - which I will never again purchase as long as ABInBev owns it.

All of this is by way of saying ABInBev has angered the Beer Goddess, and is paying a terrible price for it, as well they should. When your products have a long and storied history of purity, why would you EVER hire a fake woman to tout your swill?

The marketing genius behind the Bud Light fiasco has appropriately been “placed on leave,” which means she’s cleared out her office and was escorted to the door by security, and she is expected to tender her resignation in the coming week (one rarely gets fired at the VP level).\

You’d think with a name like Heinerscheid - meaning her lineage is from a small town in Luxembourg in the commune of Clervaux - this numbnut would have some idea about the sacred nature of beer and the importance of purity in marketing it.

This is what happens when you hire based on physical attributes, rather than merit and accomplishment.

To be fair, Heinerscheid did not make her decisions in a vacuum. We can be certain she was hired to tap into a market segment that everyone is courting, but which is a tiny demographic that clearly does not spend money on anything. Thus, the emerging axiom, “Get Woke, Go Broke”.

I’m just guessing based on my years in media and marketing, but Heinerscheid came in with her mandate from upper management and started searching for some woke bozo with a big number of subscribers, and went with it.

The mistake that Heinerscheid and so many other “marketeers” make is assuming that total number of followers represents real human beings that will buy products based on an “influencer” say-so. Most of those “followers” are bought-and-paid-for headcounts run by bots and created by the thousands by basement dwellers who sell the numbers to the highest bidder.

One thing we have all learned from this is that we normal, real humans have vast quantities of power. The system collapses when the revenues dry up. We are funding all this silliness, and then complaining when we get it. If the money spigot turns off, we will see it all vanish overnight - just the the USD6 billion in market cap that AB InBev saw in the wake of woke.

In the modern world of matryoschka-doll corporations, boycotting one brand may hurt a bit, but in the grand scheme of things, it is a pin prick to the Goliath. If you want to make your voice heard, you must cut off every brand of the parent company, and then go after the next higher level - the top 10 institutional shareholders of the target corporation.

In the link above, you can view some of the 400 brands that AB InBev manages. Another example is Unilever, which also manages hundreds of brands worldwide. I’m willing to bet you purchase at least one of their brands on a regular basis. If consumers wanted to boycott this corporation, they’d have quite a chore ahead of them. If folks stopped buying one brand alone, chances are they’d pick up a sister brand to replace it, and the corporation has lost nothing.

If consumers do not cut deep into the wallets of all the nested corporations that are hitting us with a tidal wave of social engineering, we will continue getting more of it, and it will get louder, more pervasive, and far more intrusive. These social engineers will never stop until we consumers cut their figurative carotid arteries. As a rule, when budgets get tight, mega-corps always start cutting in the marketing department.

I’m a beer snob, so I haven’t purchased any Bud products in decades because it’s chemical swill made from rice. However, I will now cease buying Leffe products, which saddens me, but I must be consistent. I will replace those purchases with Duvel products, which is a family-owned Belgian brewery and whose products are superior to Leffe, though a bit more work and cost to get. I will also increase my purchases of Bali Hai products, which is also family owned and made here in Jakarta.

Write to beer distributors in your area about carrying these high-quality products. Be sure to let them know you will not be buying ANY AB InBev products from now on.

If consumers boycott all of AB InBev’s products, it will hurt…bad. That will ripple up to their top instutional shareholders, like Dodge & Cox and Manulife. If large numbers of people contact their mutual fund managers and tell them to get out of AB InBev, or they will pull their investments, that will have an even larger effect.

Yes, it takes some effort. You have to research a little, shoot off a few email, and pay more attention to what you buy. You have to stop consuming products and become an active buyer of quality, even if it means cutting back on quantity. The alternative is that these mega-corps will continue using our money to engineer our culture and inundate us with weaponize wokeness.

Ask yourself, would you rather have 30 McDonald’s hamburgers, or a $30 grass-fed, chemical-, vaccine- and steroid-free T-bone? If you are in the latter category, then start showing it with every purchase - find family-owned suppliers, investigate the brand owners of the products you use, apply consistent boycotts all the way up the corporate food chain. Investigate your mutual funds, banks and insurance companies. If they invest in targeted corporations, then notify the fund managers of your desires and intentions.

We are in a culture war, and killing foot soldiers like Bud Light hurts, but has little effect on the overall battle. However, when you start wiping out battalions, cutting off supply lines and attacking the brass in their cushy headquarters, you start having a real and tangible effect on the outcome.

These are the tactics that a tiny demog4raphic group have used to take over our institutions. Fight fire with fire. We know that there are millions of normal, everyday folks for every one of the enemy. One small change in the battlefield will have far-reaching effects in the board rooms.

To continue the culture war metaphor, our ammunition is eyeballs and money. We cannot waste ammo. We must take careful aim and hit targets that have a ripple-up effect on the chain of command. Laying down suppressing fire is wasteful and counterproductive.

To join the battle requires one simple step - turn off the TeeVee. The rest will follow.

Source: Radio Far Side