Tractor Supply is as American a company as companies get. With 2,250 stores nationwide, and tens of thousands of employees, the 85-year-old company is something of a cross between a farm and ranch equipment store, Home Depot and WalMart, with something, including clothing, for everyone, their livestock and their pets. Well, to be accurate, they don’t sell much clothing for pets or livestock.

So what could possibly have possessed the executives of a company that every day interacts with Normal Americans, that serves Flyover Country--the heartland of America-- to go woke? Didn’t reviewing all those invoices for fertilizer, agricultural products and feed, Carhart clothing and all manner of tools give them a clue about their customers and what matters to them? Are those that haunt Tractor Supply’s executive suites the type that hobnob with the self-imagined elite? Do they covet the atmosphere of wine and cheese tastings and the heady company of the wokest of the woke? Are they desperate to be the new winners of the Bud Light Stock Drop Challenge?

Actually, it’s ridiculously easy for companies to go woke and more or less get away with it, so long as they’re careful to keep it quiet, as Tractor Supply apparently has for some time. Until, that is, Robby Starbuck figured out what was going on and informed the public.

Graphic: Screenshot

Tractor Supply responded, faster and far more sincerely than Bud Light did:

Graphic: Screenshot

As one might imagine, the woke left is shocked and stunned:

Human Rights Campaign said it has worked with Tractor Supply for years to create inclusive policies and slammed the company for pandering to “far right extremists.”

“Tractor Supply Co is turning its back on their own neighbors with this shortsighted decision. LGBTQ+ people live in every Zip code in this country, including rural communities,” Eric Bloem, vice president of corporate advocacy, told the Post. “We are shoppers, farmers, veterans and agriculture students.”

I wonder what percentage of Tractor Supply customers are LGBTQ+ farmers and agriculture students? Somehow I doubt the potential loss of that demographic is going to have any effect on Tractor Supply’s bottom line. Riley Gaines suggests there was motive for Tractor Supply’s reversal other than recognition of the values of their customers:   

Graphic: X screenshot

A loss of two billion—I haven’t been able to confirm this through other sources—might tend to make the executive suite sit up and take notice of fiscal reality rather than woke virtue signaling. Perhaps the imminent threat of losing billions had a sobering effect? Or perhaps they suddenly realized “get woke, go broke” is a thing?

Most likely is Tractor Supply’s customers immediately, and fervently, made their disgust and future intentions known. Those sorts of folks tend to be polite and calm, but when pushed, direct and determined. They’re not the kind to swear to shop elsewhere and then fail to follow through, and the executives might have been just smart enough to understand that.

Now comes the hard and boring work of keeping an eye on Tractor Supply’s executive suite. Have the people who so willingly abandoned their customers truly seen the error of their ways? Are they now determined to serve their customers and stockholders rather than spend time and money appeasing people who think their customers and stockholders a lower form of life, smelly, WalMart shopping, toothless, pickup-driving, haters and Deplorables? Are their promises of reform and getting back to business a smokescreen to temporarily take the heat off until they can get back to appeasing a tiny portion of a single percent of the population?

I suspect Tractor Supply’s customers are up to the task. I also suspect Tractor Supply’s executives have gotten at least a hint that they only get one chance to behave like responsible adults with those kinds of Americans. They’d be wise not to blow it, unless, of course, they’re longing for that sweet Bud Light prize.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.