Wokeism Is Killing Our Culture
Victor Davis Hanson, in his op-ed piece in the Toronto Sun says,
America realizing wokeness will kill civilization.
As he says, in the piece, "Wokeness was envisioned as a new reboot of the coalition of the oppressed."
He's right. As with many movements in history, so many of these movements are started in the name of righting a wrong. But they're so often movements rooted in hate and perceived injustices as a result of unfairness.
I've written about this elsewhere - about how our culture has been going down the toilet. I've seen the wheels coming off for a long time now. One of the symptoms is that this wokeism is killing our culture.
In fact, there is another recent article I've written about a biology professor who purportedly got fired merely for suggesting that gender is a matter of chromosomes rather than a matter of personal choice.
It's much about perceived "victimhood."
Those purportedly victimized by traditional America would find “intersectional” solidarity in their victimhood owing to the supposed sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia and other alleged American sins, past and present.
The so-called white male heterosexual victimizing class was collectively to be held responsible for their sinful triad of white “rage,” “supremacy” and “privilege.”
Class doesn't matter anymore. Sometimes. Ironic how LeBron James and Oprah Winfrey can take up the cause of the woke and yet they get to keep their millions, I suppose because "they care."
The new transgender canon mandated three sexes. Sex is socially rather than biologically determined. And there is a large, oppressed and transgender population, which presents the next great civil rights struggle for America.
Historical wokeism lodged a list of grievances against the supposedly flawed American past. Indicting the dead required statues to be toppled. Names had to be changed. Histories were to be rewritten. Even the foundational date of America was to be reconsidered and altered.
Yet, the rainbow fabric of woke is now fraying — for a variety of reasons.
There seems to be hope on the horizon - that people are coming to their breaking point over it all.
Part of it seems to be from shock after people see what has come up after the lockdowns:
For one thing, woke took off after the perfect storm of the COVID-19 pandemic, the devastating lockdowns, the 120 days of violent rioting and looting following the death of George Floyd, and years of endemic Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Most of those catalysts are waning. Temporarily unhinged Americans are slowly reviving.
Millions of the comatose are waking up to normality – and don’t recognize their own country.
Hey. Cogny here. If you drop in your best email, I will send you my "almost weekly" updates. Stay informed. I promise not to spam you.
Part of it is because woke is retrogressive, reactionary, and anti-civilizational.
Decriminalizing the legal code, defunding the police, failing to apply norms to the homeless population and destroying meritocracy have all hollowed out our major cities.
San Francisco was a far cleaner, safer and kinder city 20, 40 or 80 years ago than it is today.
A woke FBI, Pentagon or airline industry becomes a matter of life and death.
Three, in modern America, class is now a far more accurate metric of oppression than race or gender.
This is classic. Obama was "teflon man," in part, because no one on the left or major parts of the right wanted to be seen as dumping on the "first historical black president," (although he's almost not really the first one. But technically he is, but I shouldn't digress too much).
But whether Obama is the first or not, it's pretty obvious no one wanted to critique him, much because they didn't seem to want to tarnish the first "black presidency." And now, out of that history, come some telling ironies.
The multi-millionaire, and prep-school and Ivy-League educated former president Barack Obama may castigate the unwoke Senator Tim Scott, R-S.C., for his absence of victimhood. But from which of his three enclaves does Obama do so – the Kalorama mansion, the Martha’s Vineyard estate, or the restricted-access beachfront retreat in Hawaii?
In fact, it seems guys like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have long ago turned black grievance into an industry.
(I can get away with saying that. I even have black friends who tell me so.)
Enter your text here...
Hanson continues:
Religions also trump race. Hispanic-American Catholics and Middle-Eastern-American Muslims have more in common with so-called white Christians than they do with an atheist, or agnostic woke elite who pushes the lie that the anti-religion Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are a mere charity group.
Muslim-American communities in Michigan do not want children seeing drag queen shows or the Pride flag flying with equal status to the American flag. The Catholic Hispanic community of Los Angeles has little tolerance for lurid anti-Christian motifs that preview a Los Angeles Dodgers game.
Ironically, part of our hope comes from the fact that "the woke" eat their own.
Wokeism is cannibalistic.
Even the children of woke architects with perfect SAT scores and 4.0 grade point averages are being rejected on the basis of their race at their coveted Ivy League schools.
Neither the mansions of Beverly Hills nor the estates of Presidio Heights qualify as sanctuaries from violent criminals, who are now exempted by the anointed from legal consequences.
The wokest of Hollywood celebs will soon lose movie roles and be disqualified for film awards on the basis of their race.
Even the most left-wing of movie directors do not want to be ordered by Soviet-style commissars to hire their crews, actors and writers on the basis of race.
Are we in trouble because of wokeism?
Maybe. As Hanson says,
The United States may have sponsored gender studies programs, flown Pride flags, and bragged of George Floyd murals in Kabul. But meanwhile, its military suffered the most humiliating defeat in a half-century, as it skedaddled from Afghanistan, leaving behind billions of dollars in deadly arms for terrorists.
Our elite work to ban plentiful natural gas, subsidize transgender activism abroad, and lecture on sexual identities in the military. China’s elite builds dozens of coal and nuclear plants, and doubles the size of its navy, while preparing to absorb Taiwan.
Is there hope in the fact that America is waking up to the idea that wokeism is killing our culture? Is it too late?
Hanson thinks America is waking up.
Americans are rejecting wokeism because they finally are realizing that if they do not, they will not have a civilization left.
Is it too late?
Cogny Mann response here.
Is it too late? I don't know. With me, in many cases, "hope springs eternal."
But history is replete with samples of kingdoms that come crashing down after a hundred or two hundred years or so. Canada became a conferation about 150 years ago. The USA has been around a lot longer than that.
But it doesn't take long. I saw this come up in a Facebook feed a little while ago.
I don't know that a society survives just because some people in the society scream and yell enough about what other people in the society are screaming and yelling about.
I think a society can only survive and prosper because of things like Asbury.
I think the Asbury revival in Wilmore Kentucky and the many others like it that are springing up all over the place (stadiums in Canada and the US are filling up with kids who are hungry for more) are the reason we can be hopeful.
I believe there is yet hope for our culture to survive this and to see the tables turn. But it won't happen because we legislate it away by slim majorities. It will only happen as we see a groundswell of revival that has our society AS A WHOLE want to embrace these changes back to conservative values.
If that happens (and only if that happens) we may well see our society survive for our children and grandchildren.
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. (2 Chr. 7:14).
But don't minimize it. We are in the death-throws of our culture with the fight of our lives. And we will ONLY survive this if survival becomes secondary to the desire to see God show up for HIS sake and not merely our own.
Cogny Mann