The Fear and Loathing of Full-Strength Wokeness

We have witnessed the expression and the many tentacles of its thought process creep into the public lexicon over these last years. It started as an annoying extension of political correctness, and it metastasized into an ever more present exercise in virtue-signaling upon the election of Donald Trump. But now, it has expanded into a central factor in decisions made by everyone from the Democrat-run federal government to an all-in leftist media and compliant private sector.

Being “woke.” It’s the full-strength brand of political correctness which takes intolerance and ornamental displays of false virtue to a whole new level.

[ln-radio align=”right”] Wokeness is not like a political system in which a party wants certain things but can only get some of them because of those pesky voters. This is a belief system of a small minority which has metastasized seamlessly to the broader public. With the elite media doing its bidding, no compromise is necessary, so wokeness is increasingly being imposed upon normal, unwitting people who just want to judge other people by the actual content of their character but can no longer see their way clear to do so. They exist in a world of woke where every single word is evaluated for its potential racist, white supremacist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic implications.

While many people will buy into the generalized notion of sensitivity to matters of race, gender, national origin, sexual preference and all the other demographic factors that seem to inform every decision on the left these days, it is vital to dig well beneath the surface to understand the breadth and depth of full-on wokeness.

To do so, we offer up the wisdom of one Gad Saad, psychologist and author of the grimly named book The Parasitic Mind, and his unsanitized top-20 list of beliefs – with comments added – now being imposed on the citizenry by fully woke people:

1. It is now racist for a white person to translate the work of a black person.
2. It is now homophobic for a straight actor to play a gay character.
3. It is now racist for a white therapist to treat a black client – because, of course, the cross-cultural dissonance would make it impossible for any white person to evaluate a person of color free from their own unacknowledged bias.
4. It is now racist to have advanced high school programs – because that means some people would be hurt and demoralized by not being selected for the advanced classes.
5. It is now transphobic for biological females to reject having to compete against trans women, i.e., biological males – even though they must compete in an environment the equivalent of starting every at-bat in baseball with two strikes against them – and have not even a faint hope of achieving a comparable level of physical strength.
6. It is now Islamophobic to criticize any tenets of Islam – no matter how extreme or threatening.
7. It is now science denialism to question the ongoing COVID lockdowns – just shut up and follow orders.
8. It is now science denialism to question any tenets stemming from climate change alarmists – the debate is over, it’s settled science, shut up and listen.
9. It is now epistemological bigotry to support the scientific method as the means by which you adjudicate the scientific hypothesis – in plain language, that means ignore the science, though I did think that’s what the woke folk say that conservatives do.
10. It is now racist to promote the ethos of individual dignity over collectivist identity politics – you are no longer an individual, but either an oppressor or victim of oppression.
11. It is now racist to criticize a noble person of color, be it a famous athlete or celebrity – because of course you couldn’t possibly begin to understand the depth of the struggle if you’re white and therefore should just – here we go again – shut up.
12. It is now transphobic to posit that only women menstruate – again with that pesky science.
13. It is now racist to publicly proclaim your support for “wrongthink” black individuals such as Thomas Sowell or Larry Elder – they’re not real black people because they’re not woke.
14. It is now misogynist or misogynistic to note that women greatly outnumber men in universities – oh, those unyielding statistics.
15. It is now sexist to publish scientific research that yields sex differences that are contrary to accepted politically correct orthodoxy – of course, we can’t have men and women being different.
16. It is now racist to point to FBI murder statistics broken down by interracial markers of victim and perpetrator – because we can’t trigger the woke folk with facts showing black on white crime dramatically higher than white on black crime.
17. It is now racist to openly support national borders – because who are we to decide who gets to live among us?
18. It is now racist to seek to curb immigration from countries that espouse values that are deeply hateful and anti-liberty.
19. It is now racist to request that job offers be based on the merits of an individual’s dossier, rather than on the use of immutable traits – i.e., your color and gender.

And we save the best for last, the one which proves once and for all the full-on depravity of the woke belief system:

20. It is now racist to argue that mathematics yields right and wrong answers – because that might damage our self-esteem, already so devastated from either the guilt of our whiteness or the victimhood of our non-whiteness. Nothing could better exemplify the toxic, fact-free culture of wokeness.

Mr. Saad claims America is “descending into the abyss of ultimate lunacy.” Care to argue with him?

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Read more from Tim Donner.