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AmericanKulak
2021 May 10, 2:15pm
AmericanKulak
2021 May 10, 2:15pm
An Epidemic of Cynicism
Most non-woke don’t always know which words in a given day are dangerous, so they listen more than speak. If referring to a high-crime area, the correct terminology is “an underserved” or “marginalized” area to virtue signal the fault is society’s, not any individual’s. If they hear there is an epidemic of “white” anti-Asian crimes, they assume there is not, in the sense the qualifier “white” signals “nonwhite” perpetrators. If they read the latest post that someone wants to gas whites, Auschwitz-style, or promises to avoid whites when the quarantine ends, or compares them to an infestation that destroy the human and natural world, they shrug a sort of nonchalance, “Hmmm, he must be a professor, a journalist, a lawyer or some sort of privileged elite or one of the wealthy—and all that much unhappier and angrier for it.”
The public translates the woke ethos into the vocabulary of reality—like segregation, racism, hatred, and derangement. Jaded, they decipher rather than read the news: if a suspect is not described and not pictured, they assume he is intersectional; if he is, he is not. A story appears if the victim and the victimizer fit narratives; ignored if they do not. Half the country has become like wary Poles and Hungarians circa 1956, with the D.C. bureaucracy now a politburo of sorts.
The most law-abiding of Americans now, rightly or wrongly, seem terrified of the law—the FBI of James Comey vintage, John Brennan’s legacy at the CIA, the same old IRS of Lois Lerner, the Justice Department once branded by Eric Holder, and the predictable court order of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Enlisted men fear their inquisitional officers, and why not if they listen to what they hear from the active and retired military in 2020?
Most non-woke don’t always know which words in a given day are dangerous, so they listen more than speak. If referring to a high-crime area, the correct terminology is “an underserved” or “marginalized” area to virtue signal the fault is society’s, not any individual’s. If they hear there is an epidemic of “white” anti-Asian crimes, they assume there is not, in the sense the qualifier “white” signals “nonwhite” perpetrators. If they read the latest post that someone wants to gas whites, Auschwitz-style, or promises to avoid whites when the quarantine ends, or compares them to an infestation that destroy the human and natural world, they shrug a sort of nonchalance, “Hmmm, he must be a professor, a journalist, a lawyer or some sort of privileged elite or one of the wealthy—and all that much unhappier and angrier for it.”
The public translates the woke ethos into the vocabulary of reality—like segregation, racism, hatred, and derangement. Jaded, they decipher rather than read the news: if a suspect is not described and not pictured, they assume he is intersectional; if he is, he is not. A story appears if the victim and the victimizer fit narratives; ignored if they do not. Half the country has become like wary Poles and Hungarians circa 1956, with the D.C. bureaucracy now a politburo of sorts.
The most law-abiding of Americans now, rightly or wrongly, seem terrified of the law—the FBI of James Comey vintage, John Brennan’s legacy at the CIA, the same old IRS of Lois Lerner, the Justice Department once branded by Eric Holder, and the predictable court order of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Enlisted men fear their inquisitional officers, and why not if they listen to what they hear from the active and retired military in 2020?
2
Patrick
2021 May 10, 8:30pm
Patrick
2021 May 10, 8:30pm
Great essay.
MisdemeanorRebellionNoCoupForYou says
Lol, "intersectional".
That means BLACK.
https://patrick.net/post/1339144/2021-05-10-all-woke-media-suppress-image-of-black-
MisdemeanorRebellionNoCoupForYou says
they decipher rather than read the news: if a suspect is not described and not pictured, they assume he is intersectional
Lol, "intersectional".
That means BLACK.
https://patrick.net/post/1339144/2021-05-10-all-woke-media-suppress-image-of-black-
It is largely the well-off professionals, the “privileged” and the rich—CEOs, news anchors, actors, star athletes, college presidents, foundation heads, corporate board retired military brass, Wall Street grandees—who usually do the woke remonstrating (or fund it) to the supposedly non-privileged but guilty un-woke.
So how does half a nation of proverbial Winston Smiths react to this revolutionary panopticon? The targeted seek escapes. They craft a mental refuge from the progressive lynch mob outside the Western jail. And half the country is also doing that already.
Does the propaganda of NPR and PBS news and editorialization cancel out their good programming of art and culture, such as they are, that is not propagandistic? Sadly, yes. People will tune both out. They’ve had one too many sermons from one too many condescending, nasal-toned grandee.
Do they put up anymore with network news? No, half the country has no idea who is currently the NBC, ABC, or CBS evening news anchor. Do they care about the New York Times or Washington Post? Nope. For a large number of Americans, being an editor at those places is not prestigious but an embarrassment. Is the nerdy Silicon Valley billionaire their model of can-do entrepreneurism? No, again. To half the country, they appear either like Charles Manson or those peach-faced adolescents who are really 40 or 50.
Movies? Tens of millions have not gone to a theater in years. Many never will again. They find watching revived 1960s comic book heroes, dressed up as narcissistic social justice warriors, boring and pathetic—a “see Spot run” primer script, a Kindergarten experience, despite the pyrotechnics and surrealism of computer-created special effects that poorly hide the lack of ideas.
Sports? Ditto. The NBA is an ancient memory. The NFL Superbowl half-time show has become politicized soft-porn and easily tuned out. The last rampart of Major League Baseball is breached. Multimillionaires too, baseball players cannot put up with three minutes of reverence, despite their $5 million-a-year salaries (about $30,000-a-game per season), for the flag and National Anthem.
Ask anyone to distinguish a Grammy from a Tony from an Emmy from an Oscar, and you encounter, “Who gives a f–k?” about these strange runes.
Does anyone but some captive students and a few faculty read the periodic communiques of terrified university deans, provosts, or presidents?
Is there a sort of Turbo-Tax formula that churns them out, “We will not tolerate systemic racism . . . ,” “We confess that our past was . . . ,” “We will immediately hire the following . . .,” “We will take steps to make amends by . . .” These are the psychodramatic versions of the 1930s-era Soviet show trials, when terrified provincial officials testified to all sorts of counterrevolutionary thought crimes in hopes of saving either themselves or their families. Do most Americans know the name of a single university president? Do they care if they don’t?
What is saving the country, for now, is not the third of Americans who have bachelor’s degrees, given the university has become a woke deductive, anti-empirical, anti-Enlightenment institution. For now, the more practical two-thirds of the population who did not graduate, and either never experienced the academic mind or got out quickly after they did, are our rear guard at Thermopylae. I concede, with the sadness of a former believer in higher education, that an entire institution has failed its pledge to the Enlightenment and we are back 2,700 years to Hesiod’s warning that with material progress comes moral regress.
https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/09/tuning-out-wokeism/