Roger L. Simon has some thoughts on how “woke” idiocy may be leading us to Something Bad Happening. Excerpt:
“Woke” gains adherents much in the manner of “est”—the cult-like Erhard Seminars Training—that I attended in the 1970s at the behest of a movie producer interested in making a film about it. (It never happened.)
If you’re too in, you’re out.
For est, several hundred people sat in a large conference room listening to the “training” for hours under instructions not to get up, even to go to the bathroom, until they raised their hands signaling they “got it” (i.e., effectively joined the cult). Nature’s calling being what it is, most eventually did.
Although operationally similar, “woke” is exponentially more perilous than the now-defunct est training. Our position in society, our livelihoods, and our children’s educations and futures are being held over our heads, not our mere use of a restroom.
An iron-fisted, ideologically extreme minority has our country under its thumb—play along or face ex-communication. This is stronger than anything in our history and almost identical to what we see and have seen in totalitarian countries.
It’s a psychosis approaching mass hallucination. In Franco’s Spain, they shouted, “Viva la muerte!” (“Long live death!”) Here we are asked to proclaim just as loudly “Black Lives Matter,” to display signs saying as much on our lawns, although we never thought otherwise and always thought (naively, we are told) that all lives mattered.
I wouldn’t say “woke” is cult-like, so much it is clearly a cult in and of itself, lacking only a single charismatic leader to make it fit the classic definition. But here’s the crux of Mr. Simon’s piece:
A rebellion against “woke” is brewing, particularly in red states, some of which are banning or have already banned critical race theory in their schools, among other pushbacks. (Kudos to Rep. Mark Green, Republican of Tennessee and Iraq War veteran, for introducing legislation to block critical race theory training at U.S. military academies.)
But will that be enough against a federal government that lives and breathes this evil ideology and that is essentially governed by a homegrown politburo—the thought that Biden acts by himself is ludicrous—determined to impose it?
As this imposition increases, the “contradictions,” as the Marxists would say, are heightened.
What the extremist ideology of “woke” actually provokes is talk of—and not just talk—secession and even civil war.
A few short months ago, in these very virtual pages, I was dismissive of the very notion of secession or civil conflict. I still reckon the odds to be low – but not as low as they were a year ago.
Frankly, I still think it likely that the whole “woke” nonsense won’t last. Most of the tenets of this almost-cult are just too antithetical to common sense, and the political types who are paying it lip service are likely to abandon it when it starts costing them elections, and that’s already happening. Fringe movements like this don’t last without support from the powerful, or at least a portion of them.
However: Right now they’re getting that support. And if things don’t change, if some semblance of sanity doesn’t return… Well, it might be that I’ve been wrong about those odds. I don’t think I am – I hope I’m not – but the next two to four years, I think, will tell the tale.
