The tide is turning against the woke-liberal blob that misrules us By Glenn H. Reynolds
https://nypost.com/2021/06/17/tide-turning-against-the-woke-liberal-blob-that-misrules-us/
For the past year, liberals unleashed on the nation an avalanche of ideological nonsense, coupled with brutal pressure to conform. Those who bucked the party line found themselves canceled and unpersoned and had their opinions subjected to mockery and claims of delusion and “anti-science” prejudices.
Until now. Because the tide is turning. And sometimes the break from the party line comes from surprising places.
Late-night comics are usually reliable parroters of the message of the day. So it says something that last week, Bill Maher launched an impassioned critique of “woke” culture, while this week, Jon Stewart went on Stephen Colbert’s show to say in no uncertain terms that it looks like the Wuhan coronavirus came from … the Wuhan lab.
Using a term from Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, Maher accused liberals of “progressophobia” — “a brain disorder that strikes liberals and makes them incapable of recognizing progress.”
That is, they’re unwilling to admit that things have gotten better. To hear them talk about race, you’d think we were still in the era of Selma and Bull Connor. (My dad marched with Freedom Riders and at Selma; trust me, things have changed.) To hear them talk about women’s rights, you’d think it was still 1958. And gay activists, despite “Pride Month” being celebrated by pretty much every corporation, are still somehow stuck in the pre-Stonewall era.
Maher’s right.
The HBO satirist also slammed President Joe Biden’s free-college plan, characterizing higher education as “a racket,” which it is. “I know free college is a left-wing thing, but is it really liberal for someone who doesn’t go to college and makes less money to pay for people who do go and make more? Especially since colleges have turned into giant luxury daycare centers with overpaid baby-sitters anxious to indulge every student whim?”
Stewart went further. To Colbert’s horror, he targeted the Wuhan virus’ likely origins in the Wuhan virology lab. Observed Stewart: “I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science. Science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic … which was more than likely caused by science.”
He noted the coincidence: “‘Oh my God, there’s a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China! What do we do?’ ‘Oh, you know who we could ask? The Wuhan Novel Respiratory Coronavirus Lab.’”
And he mocked the Chinese response: “And then they ask those scientists, ‘So wait a minute, you work at the Wuhan Respiratory Coronavirus Lab. How did this happen?’ And they’re like, ‘Hmmm, a pangolin kissed a turtle? … Maybe a bat flew into the cloaca of a turkey, and then it sneezed into my chili, and now we all have coronavirus!’”
All of this makes sense, and there have been people trying to point it out for more than a year. But until a few weeks ago, those people were mostly called kooks and silenced by Big Tech oligarchs. But now the truth is leaking out on Colbert’s show, one of the cathedrals of the woke.
It isn’t just late-night comics who are pushing back. It’s also local politicians and ordinary people. After a year of bullying, they’ve had enough.
The death of George Floyd has been used to push a vast array of unrelated racial policies, including the defunding of police and the teaching of left-wing critical race theory that blames every ill in society — even violence by blacks against other minorities — on “white supremacy.”
In Baltimore, defunding police has led to an outright tax revolt among businesses, which see no reason to pay good money to a city that doesn’t consider them worthy of protection. Businesses in the historic Fells Point district have written the city, demanding the return of basic services like law enforcement and trash pickup before they pay any more taxes.
Meanwhile, at famed Thomas Jefferson High in Fairfax County, Va., a slate of parents opposed to critical race theory won election to the board. One of those candidates, Harry Jackson, the first black man elected to the board, denounced how CRT is “teaching that white people are inherently racist.” Yes.
Fight the power. It’s easier than you think.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.
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