Conservatives and "Woke" Hatred- Where Compassion, Kindness, And Inclusion Go To Die
In GOP World, being a selfish asshole is considered the pinnacle of humanity
A note on an upcoming project: Nothing is finalized yet, but on or about May 1st, I’m planning to start another Substack. I have a tentative working title (subject to change if someone has a decent idea) but nothing that’s set in stone. I always have more than enough material for North Stars & Cowboy Bars, so another Subtack sounded like it could be fun. Stay tuned….
Jack
He's a moron being an asshole. You don't shoot people for being assholes, or the human race would be extinct.
LS Hawker, The Drowning Game
I don’t know about you, but I LOVE listening to Right-wingers drone on about “woke.” The fun part comes when you challenge them to define the word. What does “woke” mean? For so many, they’ve become so conditioned to believing that “woke” is terrible that they don’t have a clear idea of what the word means.
They know that “woke” is “bad,” but beyond that, they’re spouting the party line. So they’ll drone on endlessly about “wokeness,” “wokeism,” or even the “woke mob” (see above), all while having no idea about what any of it means.
Honestly, it’s not all that difficult. If you want to break it down, “woke” takes less than ten seconds to explain:
So, let’s review, shall we? “Woke,” at its most basic, is about
empathy,
compassion,
a commitment to addressing and dismantling injustices,
and making the world a better place for everyone.
That’s it. Nothing evil. Nothing about One World Government. Nothing about George Soros financing a Liberal takeover of public restrooms so biological men transgender women can sexually assault our precious snowflakes. And not a thing about the Left-wing desire to give Antifa and militant atheist feminists prominent places in the Biden Administration.
Nonetheless, “wokeness” remains the #1 bogeyman for Republicans. Why? Who knows? Maybe because “wokeness” sounds scary and evil to Fox New addicts who don’t know any better.
Republicans and rightwing pundits won't shut up about the supposed scourge of "wokeness," but they've never bothered to actually define what "woke" means. This reached a new level of absurdity over the weekend when they started blaming the Silicon Valley Bank collapse on "wokeness." How?
Comic book writer Dan Slott tweeted Sunday, "The Far Right is starting to use 'woke' in the all purpose way that Smurfs say 'smurf.'" He asked that news show hosts don't just sit there and let politicians ramble on about an "enemy" it can't clearly identify.
Conservative columnist Bethany Mandel was a guest on The Hill's web series "Rising," where she planned to promote her new book, Stolen Youth, and rant about the terrible influence the Left has on innocent babies. Host Briahna Joy Gray, who's usually pretty supportive of bullshit, asked Mandel at one point what she meant by "woke." Mandel was seemingly not prepared for this GED portion of the interview.
To say that Ms. Mandel didn’t exactly ace the performative bullshit portion of the interview would be an understatement. She resembled nothing if not a deer caught in high beams when trying to define “woke.” Finally, after a very pregnant pause, she muttered something about going viral.
Gee, ya think??
When you hold forth on something like you know what you’re talking about and someone asks you to expand on it, it behooves you to understand what you’re expounding on.
Ms. Mandel’s problem was that she was holding forth and spreading copious amounts of bullshit about something she couldn’t define.
Not a good look, eh?
This is how a journalist who’s not even particularly good at her job can embarrass someone who has no idea what she’s talking about.
D’ya see? Journalism’s EASY!!
"We hope that parents of all political stripes will pick up the book," Mandel said. "This is sort of a woke reimagining that is very, very, very far-Left." This wasn't the first time she'd used the phrase "woke reimagining," so it was reasonable to wonder what the hell she was talking about.
"Only seven percent of Americans consider themselves very liberal," she said. (This is not entirely true.) "And probably fewer of them consider themselves to be woke." The "probably" there is how you know she's just making up shit, unless you consider "a majority" to be "fewer than seven percent." Conservatives thrive on a victim mentality, so they insist they are "outnumbered" while simultaneously claiming they represent the majority of "normal Americans."
So what constitutes “normal Americans?” I can’t presume to speak for Ms. Mandel, but in most cases, when a Conservative talks about “normal Americans,” they’re referring to White Conservative Christian heterosexuals. And, when you narrow the American population down that way, then, yes, I suspect they DO represent a “majority” of “normal Americans.”
If you find it offensive that Ms. Mandel would consider Americans who aren’t White, Conservative, Christian, and heterosexual to be “abnormal,” get in line. As an atheist, I’m proudly “abnormal,” but I reject her characterization. Especially since “she’s just making shit up.”
Yeah, Ms. Mandel’s White victim mentality is showing.
Conservatives use "woke" as a catch-all for everything they don't like. They zero in on something absurd, like, say, a progressive prosecutor offering free puppies to pedophiles, and label that "woke." But they also include history courses that suggest slavery was bad or a bank's relatively banal diversity, equity, and inclusion statements. Please note that Democrats rarely if ever do this. Even the most liberal politician will go out of their way to make a distinction between Marjorie Taylor Greene's racist secession fantasies and boilerplate "conservative" policies, such as low marginal tax rates. The Right boasts no such intellectual honesty and shamelessly labels President Joe Biden's mainstream liberal policies as "woke."
Conservatives use “woke” as a catch-all…and because they’re lazy. It would be too much work to research an argument to refute Liberals on issues they disagree on, so they call them and their policies “woke.” Then, when you ask them to define “woke,” you get the thousand-yard stare.
(You were suppose to accept it, not ask about it. How dare you??)
When your ideology is predicated on intellectual dishonesty, laziness, and straight-up shamelessness, it’s what you do.
Or we could go with the working definition of “woke” that MAGA Republicans default to:
If you think about it for any length of time, the above tweet lays out a perfect definition of what drives the Far-Right. They hate that the Left is bent on providing equal rights and dignity to those who’ve not often had those things. They want to continue occupying the top of the pyramid and don’t want to be told they have to make room for those not like them.
The Far-Right believes that rights are like pie and that there’s only a finite amount to go around. So if minorities, women, and the poor are given more rights, White Conservative Christian heterosexuals assume they’ll ipso facto get less. But that’s not how it works. This pie will expand, and if more people are granted more rights, White Conservative Christian heterosexuals aren’t going to lose theirs.
[N]othing makes me want to pick up a book more than the author having a public brain fart while trying to explain its core concept. Hamlet was slightly more eloquent when explaining the premise of his book To Be Or Not To Be.
"It is the sort of understanding that we need to totally reimagine and reduce society in order to create hierarchies of oppression." Seriously, the lady was drowning. "Sorry, it is hard to explain in a 15-second sound bite."
As Dame Magazine's Kaitlin Byrd explained (in less than 15 seconds), "'Woke' is awareness of systemic inequalities. It is an understanding of the ways in which our society is organized to deny people rights and perpetuate injustice."
Mandel's flailing definition does reveal the conservative ideology that oppression and discrimination are just imaginary concepts whiners invented to make people feel sorry for them. However, in reality, most conservatives are also "woke." They just consider themselves the truly "oppressed" and "marginalized." Mandel's goofy-ass book argues that the Left is indoctrinating American youth through politics, education, mental health, and entertainment.
Predictably, New York Magazine writer Jonathan Chait defended Mandel after the resulting (and well-deserved) social media ridicule: "I find the pile on about this clip kind of gross. She may be wrong, but she's not an idiot. She just froze up on TV. It happens."
She didn't "freeze up." She literally couldn't define the entire point of the book she's shilling. Perhaps I'm just too damn "woke" but my sympathies aren't with the white lady running a truly gross smear campaign against educators. While trying to explain her simpleminded bigotry, Bethany Mandel might look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. She really is an idiot.
No one was piling on Ms. Mandel. She was asked a straightforward question- “Would you mind defining ‘woke?’“- and she screwed the pooch. She didn’t “freeze up.” She couldn’t answer the question. And she was exposed for not knowing what she was talking about. Period. End of story.
When Ms. Mandel argues in her book that “the Left is indoctrinating American youth through politics, education, mental health, and entertainment,” she’s making an argument that needs to be supported. Unfortunately, Mandel chose to do it by blaming “woke” values, but when pressed, couldn’t define “woke.”
So, is her argument bullshit? You tell me. If she can’t define the word at the center of her opinion, that sounds like a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing…or- shorter version- bullshit.
White victimhood- the concept being pushed by Ms. Mandel- claims that White Conservative Christian heterosexuals are “victimized” and “oppressed.” If you believe that a majority can be “victimized” and “oppressed” (I don’t), you still have to demonstrate how that majority’s quality of life is being adversely impacted. Falling back on “woke”- particularly when you can’t define it- is an egregiously poor and indefensible argument.
And no one asked Ms. Mandel to explain it “in a 15-second sound bite.” She had the opportunity to take all the time she needed to formulate a sound, well-constructed, and persuasive response…and couldn’t do it. And she couldn’t do it because she’d never considered what “woke” meant. Instead, she’d accepted the dominant narrative that it represents everything terrible and evil about Liberal ideology.
But she’d never specifically considered what makes Liberal ideology terrible and evil.
So what have we learned here? The biggest and most important takeaway is that when you write a book and attempt to discuss it, UNDERSTAND THE PREMISE UPON WHICH IT’S BASED. After all, you wrote the damned thing.
You can thank me later.
