Looking at our culture today, I can tell you that it looks and feels wildly different than it did five, even 10 years ago. The left's grip on the culture was so tight that I didn't know if it could ever truly be loosened without something drastic happening.
Sure enough, something drastic did happen. In fact, multiple drastic things happened, and soon, what we know as woke culture went from being the mainstream ideological thought to something we all would rather pretend we weren't sporting during our teenage years. Corporations are backing away from it. Even celebrities who once shouted their love of it from the rooftops have gone awfully quiet, if not timidly denying it.
I think the death of woke culture is nigh, and I can say that for sure because of four people, in particular.
1. Charlie Kirk
This one is obvious. Charlie was a cultural hurricane of his own, changing hearts and minds wherever he went. What's more, he was changing the hearts and minds of the youth, a group that the right had continuously failed to speak to in a way that truly affected them.
Charlie's message hit many young people at the right time, too. Especially when it came to young men. Mainstream culture had rejected them, abused them, dismissed them, and denounced them. Our gynocentric culture has left many high, dry, and feeling unwanted or even hated. Many young men were looking for an ideological home where they wouldn't feel the sting of pop-ideological hate, and Charlie was there, pointing toward Christ and saying, "This way."
There are a lot of things that caused young men to drift right en masse, but Charlie was definitely one of them.
And they murdered him for it.
However, his murder wasn't his end. His memorial was a cultural moment in our nation's history, and while it was a celebration of Charlie's life, it was equally, if not more so, a celebration of Christ. Everyone watched it, and it was clear that so many were affected by it that Charlie's message overcame barriers that typically keep messages like his hidden.
Read: Democrats Are Culturally Paying the Piper After Charlie Kirk's Death
The name of Charlie's organization, Turning Point USA, became somewhat prophetic. Something shifted heavily after his death, and I think the influence he had post-mortem still has yet to fully unveil itself.
Charlie might be gone from the mortal world, but his legacy is still haunting the halls of every university and every youth gathering.
2. J.K. Rowling
The United Kingdom's queen may have passed away, but they still have one remaining.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling became the unlikely international hero of women thanks to her fighting what was one of the cornerstones of woke culture: the transgender movement.
As you can see from online reports from accounts like Libs of TikTok, transgenderism is still attempting to infest various corners of Western culture, but these are the last gasps of a dying movement. While individuals and various groups continue to try to keep transgenderism afloat in places like schools and city councils, it's clear that the greater culture has turned against the movement it once tolerated.
Rowling is proof positive of this. For millennials, she is core to our generation's culture, having penned one of the most-read novels ever, and with many people still handing over time and money to celebrate the story in various ways. This has made Rowling a billionaire, and one who could've sat back and never said a word, but she didn't.
As women were being pushed out of their spaces, fired from jobs, and suffering under the boot of a transgender movement that was trying to erase them, Rowling planted her feet and used her platform and cultural importance to resist the surge. She was hated by many of her former fans. She was lambasted as evil by the press. People whose careers she made, such as actress Emma Watson, turned on her publicly. Yet, despite it all, Rowling never broke. She held firm and helped where she could.
No matter how hard woke culture pushed transgenderism on us all, Rowling stayed firm, and soon, it broke against her. Rowling's moral victories began piling up, and soon even the U.K. government had to side with her. The culture had to join Rowling, not the other way around, and soon even the people who once denounced her had to figuratively bend the knee.
Read: J.K. Rowling Is Proof the Transgender Movement Has Lost and Is Fading Away
We all won when transgenderism's grip on the greater culture began crumbling into dust, but in many ways, this is Rowling's victory, and one she shares with many other brave women. However, Rowling, being the cultural mainstay she is, showed the brightest light on the fall of the transgender movement.
3. Sydney Sweeney
Meanwhile, in America, a woman put on some jeans and sent a shockwave through the Western world so powerful that it irreparably damaged woke culture's hold on the corporate world.
Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle ad was a jolt to the greater culture. Up till then, it was considered taboo for a corporation to put a beautiful white woman on screen to sell products through the art of feminine seduction, but the moment Sweeney made a play on the word genes, something broke. Actually, a few things did.
Many leftist minds were shattered, and screeches of "Nazi propaganda" and "White supremacy" echoed through the internet. Social media was awash with outrage that someone, anyone, could possibly promote the idea that being white wasn't just a good thing, but also traditional beauty at at that. However, as this was happening, corporations were also breaking up with woke culture. Some, like Dunkin' Donuts, even followed American Eagle's lead and released their own ad, this one featuring an attractive white male.
As the left raged from message boards and CNN panels, Sweeney smiled and continued to be Sweeney. Her lack of reaction to the left's demands for apology, repentance, and denunciation went ignored. With every day, an apology wasn't given by her or American Eagle, the left's rage proved impotent. It was clear nobody cared about their claims and accusations of racism. In fact, the more they raged, the funnier they looked.
It still could've all fallen apart. All that had to happen was for Sweeney to say sorry or give some sort of mea culpa during an interview. Sure enough, during an interview with GQ, the interviewer effectively tried to "give her the chance" to speak on the accusations of white supremacy displayed during her ad. Sweeney, straight-faced, shut the interviewer down with something between grace and firmness.
"I think that when I have an issue I want to speak about, people will hear," she said.
And with that, the nail was in the coffin. Sweeney wasn't going to retreat. She wasn't going to apologize. Everyone who was mad can just be mad. It's not her problem, and with that, it stopped being our problem. It stopped being Corporate America's problem.
Read: Woman of the Year: Sydney Sweeney
Sweeney's simple ad was probably one of the most devastating blows to woke culture in recent memory.
4. Bill Maher
Bill Maher is unique in that he's played less of a part in the death of woke culture, but became one of its most obvious indicators.
The thing about Maher is that he's a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, bluer than a Smurf village and such a long-time voter of the party of the ass that he's acted like one on so many occasions that it's hard not to despise him. Yet, Maher's loyalties belong to a Democrat Party that doesn't exist anymore, and he's lamented its disappearance.
The thing is, Maher doesn't blame Republicans, or Trump, or Christianity for its death and weaknesses like many Democrats in the media or politicians do. He blames the Left. More accurately, he blames the radicals that have been allowed to infest the Left, and he's not shy about talking about it.
His recent conversation with actress Cheryl Hines, who is also the wife of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had both her and Maher commenting on the state of the Democrat Party and how "mean" it's become. It's now narrow-minded, socially isolating, and wildly incompetent. Maher hates what it is now, and many Democrats seem to agree with him.
Read: The Current Culture Democrats Have Created for Their Party Is Unsustainable
It's interesting to see a man who was once considered "the Left" watch as it runs so far in that direction that he now looks like he's in the middle. He's not the only celebrity who's had this happen to him, but he's the most notable.
Maher is not right-leaning, and I doubt he'll ever identify as a Republican, but that's what makes him significant. He's the remains of a party that wasn't afraid to speak to the other side and find commonality between them, even if there was ire there. His denunciations of the modern Democrat Party's woke infection are often quoted the most because he's the perfect example of Reagan's dilemma: "I didn't leave the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party left me."
This has made Maher something of a cultural rallying point for both people on the Left and the Right who wish for a time when the Democrat Party wasn't the psychotic mess it is today.
