RUTHFULLY YOURS

In recent weeks, we’ve seen a number of pundits, columns, and articles predict the imminent demise of the odious and anti-American “woke” movement. As Shakespeare once said, ” ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.” But if woke is indeed passing on, it sure is taking its time.

What do we mean by “woke”? It’s the extreme-left mindset encouraged by the “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” movement, the ugly offspring of Marxism and critical race theory. Its intent is all-inclusive, covering the entirety of culture, social interactions, and commerce. Indeed, the movement’s ultimate goal is to plant a permanent flag of ideological conquest in your brain so you’ll be frightened to transgress even a little bit of the thought boundaries they’ve set for you.

It’s working.

From once-sensible cops in Britain tearing down posters of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas, to Hollywood’s awful woke remakes of classic entertainment, to drag queens parading in children’s classrooms and events, to our own woke military, “woke” now seems culturally pervasive, almost inescapable.

It’s a sick, inhumane, and ultra-Orwellian mindset that is being served daily to our children via the forced feeding tube of public education, which is now run not by local boards but by ultra-woke teachers’ unions and allied radicals. Hollywood and social media, with their pervasive censorship cultures, double down on the thought control.

The woke indoctrination may begin in elementary school, but it continues and intensifies at the college level. Young Americans have never been so disenchanted with their country, its culture, and its shimmering promise of a better life and liberty than they are today. All thanks to the woke movement, now firmly in control of higher education.

But in case you’re wondering, this is an old script, nothing new at all. Former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin reportedly put it this way: “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”

We’re pretty sure it’s real because we found it in “Inspiring Quotes.” Hey, nothing is more inspiring than your children being brainwashed by a communist tyrant, right? The far-left wokesters clearly learned from Lenin. And, just like communism, woke seeks to become a secular religion, replacing all the old ones.

But is this bane finally passing on? Some think so, with many Americans seeing the antisemitic hate displayed by the left following Hamas’ massacre of 1,400 people in Israel. We hope the revelation of so much antisemitic hate is a turning point, as TV host Megyn Kelly believes:

The only good news to come out of this mess in the Middle East is that domestically, we’re witnessing the collapse of wokism. It’s happening, in real time, all around us.

The woke Left has been exposed in spectacular fashion as a complete and total fraud. The very people who harassed us for years about our speech by demanding jobs be taken, SAT scores be thrown out, businesses be shut down for virtually any imagined offense that allegedly dehumanized a minority, have all gone silent on the open threats and attacks on Jews.”

Historian Richard Samuelson, in a commentary in “Why The Woke Support Hamas,” drilled down on the history of the movement. In a nutshell, wokesters see justice as collective, not individual. Justice is for races and “marginal” and deprived groups in society, not for “oppressors” (i.e. successful groups) of Americans such as whites, Jews and, now, Asians.

He writes, “(T)urning to the Hamas slaughter of Jews in Israel, the idea that Palestinians can be moral monsters is in and of itself an idea at war with the woke view of progress. The reason Jews ceased to be treated as minorities – that is to say, as people who can be on the wrong side of discrimination and oppression – is because Jews are doing so well in the post-Holocaust world. (A parallel process is happening to Asian Americans today.)”

So will the left’s blatant antisemitism and unconcealed hatred for America be the final straws that break woke’s back? Is the far left even capable of such self-reflection?

We certainly hope so. But woke is a hardy weed, and we’ve seen this before.

Going back to 2021, from both left and right, we’ve seen such headlines as: This Is How Wokeness Ends (New York Times), Why Wokeness Will Fail (The New York Times), Woke Is Dying — Long Live the New Center (Compact Mag), Is this the beginning of the end of the ‘woke’ movement? (Al Jazeera), Wokeism Has Peaked (Bloomberg), The end of woke is nigh (UnHerd), Is ‘woke’ dead? (The Spectator), and too many others to enumerate here.

And yet, woke survives. Go to any college campus and see. Woke remains the reigning philosophy, not the Enlightenment and Judeo-Christian beliefs that long nourished our thriving Western Civilization, now deep in crisis.

In short, it’s an anti-Constitution philosophical and political secession movement, just as the Civil War was, before morphing from cold war to hot war, with 620,000 killed and 1.1 million wounded or maimed.

So we’ll hold off on the “Obituary for Woke” for now. Suffice to say, we’d love nothing more than to see younger people across the world embrace freedom, liberty, and the rule of law rather than racial identity, oppression of thought, and top-down economic control. But, as of now, it hasn’t happened. Woke may be on life support, but it ain’t dead yet.