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Promoted from the diaries by streiff. Promotion does not imply endorsement.
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If you had a good history teacher in either middle or high school, you learned about the Great Awakening.  Today, we are undergoing the Great Awokening, except that instead of fire-breathing preachers of the past, today’s evangelicals are PhD-toting scolds.  Instead of a righteous angry God, today the Twitter mob is to be feared.  A failure to repent will get you outcast, but with the right amount of contrition, perhaps you can rejoin society.

But like days gone by, being woke only serves to distinguish one class of people from the other.  Today, it serves to distinguish the white elite from the white masses.  In this new status system, the woke are morally righteous and deserving of status while the “unawoke” are moral retards worthy of derision.  The famous preachers of the Great Awakening honestly believed in the urgency of their message and their faith.  They obtained status from their sermons and books.  So it is today with the spokespeople of wokeness.

The basic tenets of Wokeness are held with sacred fervor.  Unlike science or any empirical endeavor, debate is out of the question.  Instead, if YOU question them, you are to be banned from society, or Twitter.  You are the heretic worthy of banishment from the city.  As a perfect example, see the response you get when you question the hypothesis that “diversity is strength.”

We can see it in their reactions to certain beliefs of the woke.  For example, (1) the woke believe that all groups are basically the same.  If you contest that belief, you are sexist or racist.  (2) The woke believe that sexism and racism are ubiquitous and if you question that belief, you are yourself a bigot.  (3) Bigotry is always the cause of any differences and if you look for alternate causes, then you are part of the problem.  (4) Sexual, racial and ethnic diversity are always good and if you disagree, then see (2)- you are a bigot.

The Woke dogma creates a narrative about the nobility of perceived victimized groups.  They are innocent victims of the oppressive white patriarchy.  If you are white, then you are born with the original sin of privilege.  However, if you repent, acknowledge your privilege and profess the platitudes, you can be saved by the everlasting grace of being woke (see: Beta O’Rourke, Eric Swalwell, etc.).

Being woke involves not some higher mission, but the attainment of status.  One way to achieve that status is to speak the jargon.  Thus, they have imported the language from the bearded bards of academia and the lesbian professors of gender studies.  They use words like “hegemonic,” “queerophobe,” “phallocentric,” and (my favorite) “intersectionalism.”  Even regular words are often transformed into epithets.  Is it acceptable to call a black person “black?”  How about “Mexican-American?”  Can I say “homosexual relationship?”

Like the preachers of the Great Awakening, it is easier to castigate the sinner than persuade the nonbeliever.  It is why the norms change so quickly and without notice.  It is why those who fail the purity tests are denigrated.  It is why the woke expend more energy signaling their virtue than actually doing things.  And ultimately, it is why they do not try convince, preferring to bludgeon.

Accusing others of violating the faith of the woke is a strong signal of one’s righteousness.  The more ridiculous the accusation, the stronger the righteousness.  This helps explain why even the most trivial of imagined offenses and slights are called out as the intolerable manifestations of racism, sexism, and that mean, oppressive patriarchy.  The culture and the language is filled with triggers that offend the allegedly victimized groups.  We all know that “go to back to where you came from” really means “Go back to Africa,” right?

Atop the woke hierarchy are the media and academic talking heads who defend the doctrines of being woke.  They praise the faithful and denigrate the dissenters.  They have the power of damnation and salvation.  Their approval can make a career, or destroy one.  But, those on the top are usually rather unhappy people, probably because they are liberal.  They start to wonder why they are on top and are they really better than those not on the top.  This rancor and instability builds up a lot of guilt within them.  But, there is an outlet for that guilt- wearing it on your sleeve like a badge of courage.

Because being woke is something that is exclusively a white phenomena- being a white, straight, male makes you the ultimate oppressor- and that badge of courage is white guilt.  Just look at those two Democratic candidates: O’Rourke and Swalwell.  Both are lily white (despite the “Beto” moniker) and both have professed their guilt for being white.  The ultimate virtue signal is, of course, slavery reparations.  Reparations are supposedly a means of atonement for slavery where people having nothing to do with slavery make payments to people having nothing to do with slavery.  It is the ultimate virtue signal with a monetary price tag.

But, think about the other examples of white guilt.  Should Adele apologize to Beyonce for winning a Grammy award?  Should the Academy Awards have a de facto quota of black nominees simply in response to a hashtag?  Is Kyle Korver really an NBA star simply because of the color of his skin, as Kyle Korver himself has asserted?  Is every example of a white excelling at some task- whether reaching the NBA, winning a Grammy award, or becoming a CEO- strictly a function of the amount of melanin in their skin?

Achievement properly gained deserves no apology and certainly no guilt despite the color of one’s skin.  Yet, it occurs and the only reason it occurs is to achieve that status of being woke.  We have moved away from a society that rewards merit to one that rewards skin color.  But, it is never enough for the woke.