What comes now to the Kingdom of Woke in the wake of Twitter’s sale to Elon Musk?
As one who has long viewed Twitter as the cesspool of intelligent thought, it is hard to ignore his assessment that the social media platform came to promote a “wokeness (that) is divisive, exclusionary and hateful. It basically gives mean people a shield to be cruel, armored in false virtue.”
Others obviously see things differently.
“….Outspoken progressives see a white nationalist-sympathizing, tax-dodging, anti-union, anti-free speech, ‘dystopian neo-colonialist’ plutocrat tainted by his family’s background in apartheid South Africa, where Musk was born in 1971.”
All of which is perfectly woke. Instead of debating whether Musk can clean up the Twitter cesspool, better to attack his character with the aid of various strawpeople or what were once called strawmen.
And lo be the heretics who question the wisdom. Vicious attacks are certain to be lashed upon both their character and their compassion because it is not the tribe’s role to question the chief’s thoughts but to instead follow them blindly.
Yes, this is crazy.
The right has Q-Anon born of a bizarre belief the government is controlled by a gang of pedophiles, and the left has woke driven by the beliefs the sins of the mothers and fathers, and of the grandfathers and grandmothers, should be visited upon their daughters and sons, and that the inherently imperfect world should be made perfect for certain minorities without regard for fairness to all.
Admittedly, woke can be sometimes hard to sort out as to specifics because like most other religions, it is based not in reason or logic, but on the dictates of its anointed high priests.
Thus while young, black men kill each other at a rate three- to four times higher than that of young American males in general, woke is focused on defunding police forces created to try to protect the citizenry in general, including young, black men. And yes, individual law enforcement officers have and still do in some cases abuse their power as many who have power abuse it.
Power and abuse of power sort of go hand in hand.
Discriminatory policing is part of the problem facing black America, too, but only part as social epidemiologist Sharon Jones-Eversley from Towson University and colleagues observed in a 2020 paper in the Journal of Black Studies that examined “Premature Deaths of Young Black Males in the United States.”
“The mass suicide-homicide killings, premature deaths, and death disparities among
young black males, ages 15 to 24, in the United States is not a paranoid propaganda,” they wrote. “It is undeniably a disturbing public health crisis that requires an urgent national response to reverse and ultimately eradicate the premature death of young black males.”
Scholars have been saying this for decades now, but instead of focusing on the social and economic issues driving the problem, the woke-us (as in focus) is on getting rid of cops – good or bad. And yes, there are bad cops, but there are bigger problems in the black community than just bad cops.
In America, whites murder whites and blacks murder blacks, but the latter die at a sadly disproportionate rate.
“Of the murder victims for whom race was known, 54.7 percent were black or African American,” according to the FBI, although blacks make up only about 14 percent of the U.S. population.
And this wasn’t because cops were randomly and wantonly killing blacks.
In all of Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago and 133 other municipalities, the website Mapping Police Violence reports law enforcement officers killed 13 people of all races in 2021 or about 1/50th the number of blacks killed in Chicago alone.
The disconnect between reality and what some want to believe is classic woke. Woke is about righteous opinions, not gray and complicated facts.
Listen to….
And though the world of woke is near opposite the world of science, the pandemic had the woke chanting “listen to the scientists” as if science was some sort of error-free, black-and-white business and scientists a class of people somehow without human flaws and thus above reproach.
Anyone who knows anything about science knows that is nonsense. Science is more about questions than about answers, and it is inhabited by very opinionated people. The good and the bad as a result of this is that science is always evolving and thus some or much of what we know today is likely to be discovered wrong tomorrow in ways big or small.
In a society governed by science, scientists would have had a big, messy debate about how to confront the new SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 instead of allowing those preoccupied with the belief that saving even one life for even one day trumped everything.
We are only beginning to see the consequences of that focus. Some mental health professionals are expressing fears that the negative, psychological impacts of lockdowns, distancing, masking and plain, old fear “could last a generation,” as CNBC put it.
There were those warning of this and trying to create a more targeted approach to pandemic responses from the start.
Dr. David Katz, the founding director of Yale University’s Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center and a past president of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, early on suggested the country accept the age-related dangers of COVID-19 and respond accordingly by protecting the most vulnerable Americans and letting everyone else go back to work.
Only time will tell whether the cure was indeed worse than the disease. The jury is still out on this subject although Sweden, which was vilified by almost everyone (including Trump), for its less onerous approach to viral control is looking better and better.
In terms of excess deaths from March 2020 to March of 2021, Sweden ranked 59th in the world in a data set compiled by The Economist. Excess deaths, the number of deaths over what would normally be expected in any given year, is the best way to tabulate the consequences of the pandemic because the data can capture deaths not just from Covid-19 but from other pandemic fallout such as suicides and drug overdoses.
The U.S. saw far more deaths per capita than Sweden, putting it 28th on the list. Two of the countries that cracked down the heaviest at the start of the pandemic – Italy and Spain – in hopes of eliminating the SARS-CoV-2 were 31 and 37 respectively. And Israel, which has generally been given high marks for its handling of the pandemic, was 63rd – only slightly better than Sweden.
A small group of countries did manage to make it through the first years of the pandemic with fewer deaths than would be expected. They were mainly island nations – Iceland, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia and Cuba.
And the count of the number of pandemic-related deaths and mental-health disorders is far from over. They may come out winners or not. There is no obvious, straight-line connection between pandemic policies and pandemic success.
China, cheered for its early and seemingly successful response to the virus, now has a mess on its hands.
“Residents in the southern city – which recorded 1,600 new cases and 52 deaths on Tuesday – have become increasingly frustrated with the authorities’ inability to meet their basic needs during the shutdown.
“Videos on social media showed people leaning out of Shanghai windows to beat pots and pans in anger, or play ‘Do you hear the people sing?,’ a protest anthem from the musical ‘Les Miserables’, on flutes and trumpets.”
China’s official death count remains low, but given that China, a totalitarian country governed by overseers who sometimes care more about their international image than their people, is doing the counting, it’s only reasonable to wonder about the official tally.
“Prof Ferguson…said that the ‘effective policy’ in China – locking down entire communities in their homes – opened his eyes. ‘It’s a communist one-party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… and then Italy did it. And we realized we could. If China had not done it, the year would have been very different.’”
Ridley went on to note the “Beijing-style agitprop used by the UK government with SAGE advising that: ‘The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.’ The fear campaign began.”
A widely published author, the founder of the Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal more than a decade ago and a member of the British Academy of Medical Sciences, Ridley was writing primarily about the situation in the UK where he lives, but it wasn’t much different in the U.S.
Perfectly Trumpish behavior
Their tool was a woke-heavy, “progressive,” U.S. media even more invested in the “if it saves even one life” dogma than the medical community. This was a media committed to the prime directive of the progressive movement:
“We know better than any of you do.”
Granted, there was good done as well, most notably in helping secure women the right to vote and breaking up trusts to restore a competitive marketplace beneficial to consumers, but as with most movements of righteousness, plenty of bad slipped in with the good.
You can invariably find both in anything if you look hard enough.
Hell, there are those who can see positives in The Inquisition. Journalist Cullen Murphy a decade ago, when he was still editor of Vanity Fair magazine, credited The Inquisition with establishing the foundation on which the modern world was built.
That Catholic Church led assault on heretics, he argued, revolutionized record-keeping and policing and in the process established the tools required to hold large governments together. But in an NPR interview, he also warned that those tools make it all too easy for a society to regress to the dark side of that dark period in human history.
Here is what NPR reported him warning then:
“In order for an inquisition to succeed, he says, there must be an individual or a group of people who believe they are in the right and want everyone else to toe the line.
‘”But that moral certainty isn’t enough,’ Murphy says. There must also be a bureaucracy and methods of surveillance to sustain the persecution.
“‘All of those things are much more advanced right now by an order of magnitude than they were centuries ago,’ Murphy says. ‘Nowadays [surveillance] is done almost automatically – every time you hit the keyboard on your computer or every time you walk by a camera on the street.'”
Twitter, adopted early and then taken over by progressives who thought nothing of banning a former president of the United States because they didn’t like what he was saying, became its own little surveillance network for the woke while at the same time Trump derangement syndrome helped to hugely boost the number of those who “believe they are in the right and want everyone else to toe the line.”
“Most politicians seek approval. But Trump lives for the adoration. He doesn’t even try to hide it, boasting incessantly about his crowds, his standing ovations, his TV ratings, his poll numbers, his primary victories. The latter are most prized because they offer empirical evidence of how loved and admired he is.”
My only disagreement with Krauthammer’s assessment is minor; he underestimates the chaos that can be caused by powerful people suffering from narcissistic personality disorder.
His narcissism only got worse as president, and so too wokism. For every action, there is a reaction. And this country has been caught in a sociopolitical chain reaction that can be traced back at least to the point where former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the failed Republican candidate for vice-president, went rogue.
In a nuclear sense, she split the atom. Trump took it to the molecular stage. And the explosion has only been growing ever since.
Tolerance and compromise have paid the price.
I now know one former journalist who appears to believe that anyone with political views different from his own is a Nazi. This would be funny if it was funny, given that he’s one of the few normal people I’ve ever met with a personality that would make it possible to have worked in a Nazi death camp.
Not because he is inherently bad, but because he is, as one former reporter described him, “the most self-involved person I’ve ever met,” and a master at rationalization. A death camp job promising money and power would easily tempt him, and he would just as easily be able to justify it with the belief that “these people are destined to die anyway and with me in the job, I can ensure they don’t suffer for long.”
People are twisted animals.
Social media in general, and Twitter in particular, brings out the worst in a lot of them. I doubt Musk can fix it, but it’s hard to believe he can make it any worse. And it is kind of interesting to watch the woke sweating the possibility that Musk might, as they say, “cancel” them the way they have so aggressively tried to cancel anyone with views of which they disapprove.
Categories: Commentary, Media, Politics
Brilliant article! Indeed we must each look both (all) ways for solutions but instead remain mired.
I find the continued Trump bashing tiresome. He wasn’t elected because he was a nice guy. We tried that – multiple times – Bush 41, Bush 43, Romney – and it didn’t work. He was elected because he fights. There is the old line attributed to Orwell and Kipling that people sleep well at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. Trump was and is a rough man. I really don’t care how ugly you find him. We all knew that from the beginning. A more interesting question would be to figure out how and why he is so popular. My guess is because he fights. Now that Trump has been supposedly vanquished but the problem of the swamp and the UniParty remains, what do you think follows next? Hint: It’s not gonna be sweetness and light. Cheers –
True .
Trump made himself out to look dumb at times I believe. But then looks can be deceiving. I am from the UK. I was deceived. Then I realised I was wrong.
Of course conning the enemy into crowing about their success in 2020 presidential election makes them cocky and proud. And pride comes before the fall. And the mid terms are in the fall. The criminal elites are not that bright really.
Good summary of our current sad state of affairs
What ensures Twitter will survive the evolution of technology? Many previous social platforms have turned into dinosaurs. Humans will eventually learn to depend on self-owned platforms.
Guess it will be interesting to see if he earns his money back or if its a billionaire and his money soon parted.
What makes you think self ownership of platforms is in near future?
Ah yes, Democrats rush to create a corrupt “Ministry of Truth” run by psychopaths because one billionaire bought the Democrats heavily censored Twitter? Yet, no word on billionaire Jeff Bezo’s leftist rag – The Washington ComPost and all its Covid/Election lies? No word on the other Democrat censoring Facebook billionaire who censored and illegally influenced the 2021 election?
Oh, speaking of elections, wait until the Mid-Terms and 2024. You haven’t seen anything yet from these Democrats.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/05/rinos-democrats-just-stole-future-elections-deep-red-alaska-republican-party-not-lift-finger-stop/
I think that gateway pundit article is a bit off .
I do find it odd that any Americans would stand with a party with such racist roots . Democrats fought for slavery.
How can they align themselves with socialists and communists? Two ills that have consistently murdered untold millions. The zealotry of wokism is not to far removed from hitleresque speaches that called on sacrifice unto death for expansion of ideology and identity.
Communism speaks for itself in the murderous regimes of Stalin lenin mao ect .
Now here we have inner city strife . Countless murders under democrats management. Our african American people used as a political pawn for decades now . Originally when our republican president freed them from the clutches of southern democrats the african Americans turned to the republican party . Then gradually as democrats lured them for their vote with bits and pieces of civil rights legislation they once again became under the control of their former masters as a voting bloc.
They have been lured into a destitute destructive path of reliance on the government who does little to improve the situation long term. Lured by food for a day while ignoring the biblical knowledge that its best to teach a man how to feed themselves so they have self reliance and food for a lifetime. Our great current leaders like Ben Carson , candice Owens and oddly Kanye are trying to show the path back to success but we need a unified effort to create job opportunities manufacturing, farming, education reform or whatever it takes to change the vicious cycle of inner city destitution. Trump under stood the need for steady work to create productive lives and families. Yes he wasn’t a Martin Luther king of national repair but he had the understanding of what needed done in an elementary way . Versus mr. I Did That .. a watered down Joeseph stalin in deed. . Who has turned the state against its ideological citizen goes , who wants a ministry of truth , who wants to flood our borders beyond what we can responsiblely absorb , who encourages foreign wars with billions of dollars and has tried to demonize our parents for wanting to raise ethical children. He sicces the fbi on mothers ! His party is the party of vote counting and woke hypocrites who make little positive improvement in their supporters lives but jockey for the votes like bob baffert drugging his race horses. It’s beyond me how anyone can support a party with such a tainted proven destructive history.
Tulsi gabbard and joe manchin are the rare leaders in their party who appear to understand the dangers of excessive woke ideology.
DPR – Simple, Democrats rewrite their history, remove statues, and shove it down the gullible throats.
“How can they align themselves with socialists and communists? “
The Nazis would approve of Xiden’s “Disinformation Governance Board” aka “Ministry of Truth”. It is much more alarming that anything Musk can come up with.
The Nazis approve of it indeed. This is because many of them came to the USA after the war. Many were invited I believe. They started work again to undermine the States and the world as a whole they have done quite well, but their game is up and they won’t win.
It is much more alarming in the sense that we see the tip of an enormous iceberg of corruption and decide. Unless you look under the water and look around as I eventually did in 2020 at the age of 60 years. Better late than never I say.
As a recovering progressive, I can remember wondering why people could not see things the way I did. It all seemed so clear. The problem was and is that no one opinion, no matter how many or how few voice it, is necessarily the right one. And when I see the digital kings invoke their “misinformation” rules and now the President of the US or whoever is really running the country now, setting up a “misinformation board” run by a purveyor of spin, I see something that is truly detrimental to free speech and democracy. And a government that is afraid of others’ opinions bans those sites that present the other side, thus limiting the full discussion as is now being done by the Biden Administration again. This is not democracy but a fastrack to tyranny. Yet there seems to be little outcry. We call it woke now, but in the end, it seems to be where all attempts to govern by the rule of law and informed public discourse have ended. Yes, I hope Musk is able to reform Twitter, but the odds are not in his favor. The public has become too complacent. Tyranny cannot be far off.
Shelia,
As a recovering republican since the invasion of Iraq,your comments resonate with me.I feel your pain with regards to the “misinformation board”.Now what does Elon do, what does twitter look like, its pretty much a yawn to me.
To much “woke,CRT,anti abortion,take my guns away”,chatter from a dying party.Not that theres not good elements of ideals, just to much idealism.the Republican Party used to stand for something, now they just stand against.Howes that whole immigration reform/replace Obama care doing these past years,hot button topics that Republicans have been saying they’d fix from day one of various admins along the way. Social Security anyone?
Very involved article.
Imo following constitutional intent and revisiting judicial mistakes that led to the myth that companies have rights that can trump human self evident creator given rights is the first step. Attend to the foundation. Then make legislation that clarifies buisnesses cant step on those rights. This reduces the premise of wokeness and its mistaken justification. Getting government to follow its creation intent would be helpful imo . Then a total removal of money from politicians except their salaries might get us back on track . I think musk is just stepping in the pile and smearing it around wheras his honorable efforts would be better served by addressing foundational instead of playing a rigged game of whachamole that is destined to waste his valuable time and end in failure. One rich guy against the world is like a dandylion fighting the wind. Letting his detractors argue against him just hardens their stance and builds their capacity.
Nice article. Action, reaction. Wokism, a political backlash of historic dimensions.
Great article, shared!