Dear God, Have We Finally Hit Peak 'Woke'?
The failures of Black Lives Matter Chicago, Ibram X. Kendi, gender-switching doctors and impotent Scottish transactivists suggest common sense may be at the gates. Finally.
I can’t say there’s any good that can have come out of Hamas’s indefensible intentional slaughter of Israeli civilians on October 7th, but a by-product may be the beginning of the end for wokeness.
The authoritarian political ideology from which genuine social justice and plain common sense departed several years ago appears to have jumped the public acceptability shark.
The hard left’s uncritical applause for terrorist perpetrator Hamas, under the guise of ‘supporting’ the Palestinians, leaves many of us on the right and left shaking our heads like wet dogs.
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE???
Whether it’s just-below-the-surface anti-Semitism that has always lurked darkly in the hearts of virtue-signalling leftists, or just a dimwitted allegiance to the essential tenet of what passes for Critical Race Theory - dark good, white bad - the ‘woke’ left, which always assumes ‘marginalized’ people are victimized angels, looks deeply deranged to those of us who haven’t filed for moral bankruptcy.
I guess the woke left is having its ‘there are many good people on both sides’ moment.
Hamas groupies should ask themselves, “Would I approve if these actions were taken against ‘oppressors’ and ‘land-stealers’ I like more?”
Like, say, if the aggrieved were America’s Indigenous?
What if a band of well-armed, well-trained Indigenous terrorists wasted a New Mexico town, swarming in on hang gliders to gun down New Mexicans running through the desert - let’s bear in mind that white people are only 36% of New Mexico’s diversity - and mowed down everyone white, black and brown running from the Albuquerque, say, annual balloon festival? That the ground troops moved in and brutally raped New Mexican women and girls so hard they broke their pelvises? Burnt families alive in their homes, slaughtered without mercy everyone from babies to grandmothers, tortured others and kidnapped a few to be tortured, raped, or murdered for later?
Think about it, wokies.
What I’ve noticed, just within the last week to ten days, is that with or without Hamas, encouraging signs indicate ‘peak woke’ may be declining like Donald Trump’s net worth.
Here are a few indicators I’ve observed recently that a frightening siege of common sense may be amassing outside the Wokeness Wall.
Wokeness is cancellable, especially for being a terrorist-loving butthead
Finally, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: When it’s possible to cancel far left deplorables without having to be on the far left one’s self.
Turns out over-privileged, entitled, money-grubbing little college campus shits scurry like cockroaches when one of them loses a plum law firm job offer because, well, she publicly supported violence and terrorism.
Even more ironically, their First Example is a more-marginalized-than thou black female ‘non-binary’.
In a sign of how weird the world’s gotten, none other than a hedge fund billionaire emerged as the hero to offer chemoscare-apy to treat Stage 4 metastasized wokeness.
Bill Ackman discovered an open letter signed by over thirty student groups at Harvard blaming Israelis for Hamas’s mass slaughter.
He quickly accrued a mob of his own, a dozen CEOs who asked Harvard to release the names of all signatories of all the groups, and the names quickly circulated among Ackman’s powerful buddies. Subject line: Let’s make sure we never offer any of them a job!
Then the law firm who had extended a job offer to the non-binary human rescinded it—who the hell wants a terrorist lover working for them?—and the woke woke up to the other side of the cancel culture bully cannon.
The signatories scampered to remove their names from the letter, their commitment to the Palestinians extending only as far as the looming prospect of living with their parents until senility, saddled with crippling student debt.
It’s called ‘accountability’, children. And remember: In accordance with your own values, you must never, ever be forgiven. No matter how much you apologize, grovel and cry on TikTok, no matter what you do or accomplish after this, the only thing that should ever define you is your youthful, ill-considered applause for mass slaughter and rape culture.
The BBC calls a man in a dress accused of raping a woman ‘a man in a dress’
To be fair, Kay Georges, né Andrew Miller, gave the Beeb permission to refer to him in their news reporting as he/him for ‘simplicity’s sake’, which goes to show you how committed he was to the whole ‘I’m a chick’ thing in the first place. The Beeb reports Miller is accused of abducting and repeatedly sexually assaulting a teenage girl while dressed as a woman after he offered to give her a lift. It would have been more laudable had the Beeb had the balls to take a stand for hard science and truth-telling without permission, which is supposed to be their job, but hey, it’s a start. We should encourage, oh fuck it, high-pressure journalists to tell the truth about rapists appropriating womanhood: If it has a penis and shoves it into an unconsenting orifice, it’s a him/he-man.
Calling a man a man? Further evidence peak woke is crumbling.
Speaking of men in dresses, transactivists fail to shut down a feminist event in Glasgow or to terrify J.K. Rowling
The FiLia group, part of a larger Scottish feminist organization, scheduled a women’s conference at the Glasgow Platform, which, being as pussy as any other venue that deplatforms women’s conferences at the last minute when hopelessly male-looking guys in dresses stomp their feet and threaten to rape and murder everyone in the United Kingdom if the conference isn’t cancelled, backed down like frightened little girls. At least until FiLia lawyers cited a recent favorable decision for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association against a different Scottish venue who canceled the Billyboys.
The result? The conference went on as planned and J.K. Rowling showed up to look bored while she listened to the usual rape, bodily harm and death threats we’ve come to associate with ‘the most marginalized people ever’ and later spoke at the conference.
Washington University makes it hard for aspiring boy/girl wannabes because, I dunno, the threat of detransitioning lawsuits on the horizon?
Scientifically deficient ‘gender-affirming care’ is in the cross-hairs of Republican politicians and circling lawyers in what is shaping up to be one mother of a medical scandal in North America.
St. Louis’s Washington University gender clinic announced in September it’s discontinuing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for everyone, not because they realized they don’t have enough data to determine whether these treatments are safe on otherwise healthy children, but because of the ‘unacceptable’ threat of legal liability.
Here’s where the rubber hits the road for ‘gender-affirming care’ doctors and hospitals: Missouri’s new emergency rule makes it harder for medical professionals to prescribe life-altering treatments willy-nilly for both minors and adults, and returns the transitioning process to the much lengthier and considered path that worked beautifully for decades before 2015.
Otherwise, script-happy docs could find themselves on the business end of the existing Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, designed to prevent and prosecute fraudulent business practices.
It’s about damn time. And a little Republican Attorney General shall lead them.
Ibram X. Kendi goes down when he can’t explain where the money went
Hey Dr. Kendi, have you erased racism yet?
No? Well how about $43 million?
The author of How To Be An Antiracist, Stamped From The Beginning and Antiracist Baby, who could find white supremacy in a basket of kittens, can’t ‘splain what happened to all the money lobbed at him by corporates with catapults to fight racism.
Boston University is investigating Kendi’s Center for Anti-Racism Research which just laid off over half their staff, and it’s not like no one ever saw this coming. Many at BU raised concerns whether the extent of Kendi’s anti-racism research was producing anything other than fuck-all. Instead, he delivered, while on an ‘extended leave of absence,’ and all of which earned him money, a graphic novel detailing racist ideas, a podcast called Be Antiracist and an embarrassing five-episode TV show for ESPN that went viral when black Olympian athlete Gwendolyn Berry, interviewed by Kendi, remarked that “Athletes are literally the new slaves,” and compared sports contracts to ‘the new slave chains’. Fortunately for her, this iteration of slavery is more voluntary than the last, so she is free to throw off her chains, give the finger to The Man and get an honest job at Wal-Mart.
None of the above was in the Center’s stated objectives.
Kendi finally found his way back to the Center without explaining where he left to or leaving anyone in charge since it seems he’s allergic to delegating authority. It’s important to note he isn’t accused of stealing the money; just squandering the fuck out of it.
What makes this story particularly galling is finding out podcast host and writer Coleman Hughes, famously common sense-y about fighting racism, was invited by TEDx to give a talk on the need for more conscious color-blindness, and which looked suspiciously downranked by TEDx when a small group of woke staffers allergic to ideas that require them to entertain an alternative view, complained it was ‘racist’ and ‘dangerous’.
TEDx: “Ideas Worth Downranking’. Meanwhile, throw more money at the guy who claims you’re a racist if you say you’re not racist. Just don’t ask where it goes.
Update, 12/07/23: An audit of Kendi’s Center found no mismanagement or misappropriation of funds. So it’s up to his donors to decide whether he can be trusted to do A with the funds when he said he’d do B. Hey, it’s their money!
Black Lives Matter Chicago told by X to STFU for demonstrating Israeli lives don’t matter
After the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, the civil rights group formed to protest the killings of a few dozen black men a year tweeted an image of a hang glider as their knee-jerk response to omni-victimized dark people slaughtering 1,300 whiter-skinned people primarily belonging to a religion long unpopular with many Americans, including black Americans.
When the shit hit the terrorist fanboys, they quickly walked it back:
What a wussy ‘We’re not, strictly speaking, sorry for that image,’ response, and while they could be talking about the grieving mothers and rescued babies from one side or the other, I’m going to take a Scientific Wild-Ass Guess and suggest they’re still really only thinking of the side that cheered and danced for Hamas until the IDF and Israeli civilian settler thugs reminded them of Part II of violent terrorist attacks.
I wonder how tolerant Black Lives Matter Chicago would be if the #BlueLivesMatter set tweeted an image of a knee and ‘BACK THE BLUE’.
That is all that is it!
You guys should go grab a coffee together
American hard-right conservatives severed their last tenuous ties to common sense and reality when they voted for, and continue to support, Donald Trump. His bottom-feeding fan base still support him, and threaten violence against anyone daring to hold him accountable for anything.
They’ve even invented a new, more humane form of torture: The non-violent molesting ‘like you’ve never imagined’:
“We are now antifa….We’re gonna, we’re not like the left, we’re not violent [!!!] but we’re gonna follow your ass…you’re gonna be fucking molested like you’ve never imagined. And again, non-violently.”
The American left could always crow: “We don’t believe sex is real, we do believe economy-sized white supremacy can be purchased at the Bulk Barn for all your systemic oppression baking needs, and we expend way too much energy on pronouns, but at least we’re not violent.”
Excusing violence in others is one step closer to embracing it one’s self, and with the wokies’ new-found terrorist love in the guise of ‘supporting the Palestinians’, they’ve now sunk to the same moral level as their Confed’rut-lovin’ adversaries.
If there’s nothing else that screams the left has hit peak woke, it’s hating Jews as much as the right hates Muslims.
It’s no longer hard to imagine left-wing ‘woke’ extremists could, in fact, instigate Nazi-era pogroms, eagerly joined by members of a particular religion famous for its historical hatred of Judaism long pre-dating the creation of Israel.
There’s so much that’s gone wrong with the left; one must wonder where it all went, if you’ll pardon the expression, tits-up. Perhaps it disintegrated along with the poor mental health of young women and girls hailing from progressive-thinking families whose parents couldn’t say no, or the unemployed kids on social media devising endless, evermore divisive labels to suit every quirk, mood or ugly thought that flittered through their fevered over-educated brains.
Other suspects include universities who sought to retain spoiled children who’d never been challenged by critical thought before and weren’t about to start now, who therefore decided they were customers rather than students, and the customer is always right.
Let’s not forget those who treat ‘intersectionality’ as a bottomless grievance well, and who feign endless victimhood while bullying others into submission; while others squat under the bodhi tree aspiring to ‘marginalization’ rather than spiritual enlightenment. The anti-Buddhas.
I know the Israelis aren’t pure-hearted themselves. They’ve inflicted many heinous crimes against the Palestinians for generations. They HAVE stolen their land. They HAVEN’T made as good-faith efforts as they could to bring lasting peace. They HAVE inflicted many atrocities and human rights abuses against them. I don’t believe they’re willing to make the sacrifices to accomplish that, nor will the Palestinians. It’s all for nothing for both of them. The Palestinians hail from a violent culture and religion. To pull an anti-Trump, “There are bad people on both sides.”
But when you jump on the social media terrorist train to blame families for their own slaughter and proclaim your allegiance to a filthy, specifically genocidal terrorist group and cheer their heinous brutalities against civilians, however you feel about their righteous cause, you have jumped the shark. You have met the enemy and he is you. Shake hands with your compatriots in MAGAland and Canada’s emerging right-wing extremists, the Freedom Convoy. Maybe you guys should all go grab a coffee.
Yeah, there are some real Nazis in those groups. Look in the mirror, ‘progressives’; you’ll find plenty there, too.
When I’m not scrubbing my eyeballs with bleach to remove the images of overprivileged college students inciting violence (hate speech!) against the side that doesn’t actually state intentional genocide in its charter, I help women and others reclaim their power on my website Grow Some Labia.
You continue to amaze me with your “Let ‘‘em have it” attitude. Nobody can escape your censure unless they adhere to genuine humanist and common sense values. You might look extreme to some, but one day, if we all wake up to something resembling reality, we will be considering ideas like yours. Then the true discussion can begin.
I stumbled upon your blog from Freddie deBoer's subscriber writing post. I know this is probably a waste of time but I wish you would be a little more open minded about trans people. For most of us it's really very simple: we want to be addressed and treated as the gender we identify with, the same as cis people are most of the time addressed and treated as the gender they identify with. We pursue medical treatment in order to shape our bodies into a form we like better and live more happy lives. In doing so, the only people we might hurt are ourselves. We might hurt close friends and family who may have expected we live as our assigned gender for the rest of our lives, but just as you wouldn't force a loved one to pursue a career or remain in a relationship they were unhappy with and made them depressed, you wouldn't force a loved one to live as a gender they are unhappy with. And in the vast majority of the time, that works. Yes, there *are* people who regret transitioning. But they are a very small minority and it should be noted that some fraction of people detransition because of transphobia: because they feel ostracized or marginalized or fetishized and to them it's worth it to suffer gender dysphoria than to feel as if you are constantly under attack. Personally, I am much much happier since transitioning. I feel like I am able to have real emotions, to have real friendships, real relationships, and I feel so much more confident. I used to have pretty bad social anxiety (and worse things) but that almost completely disappeared after transitioning. So I'm just asking to have a little empathy: we're just people trying to feel better in our own bodies and in the world, trying our best.