Good morning. With Christmas weekend upon us and an overcrowded calendar, I am going to take a shortcut today and simply link two items I recently read that brilliantly capture a couple of the cultural malignancies of this era: Wokeness and the Transgender Social Contagion.
1) Bari Weiss Defines and Battles Wokeness
When Ms. Weiss is discussed, many people on the right like to point out that she is not a traditional God-and-guns conservative. Maybe not, but she is a gay, Jewish liberal who has been mugged by reality, and who bravely left an elite position at the NY Times to do battle against the woke insanity. Being a defector from the left, she is a target of the woke mob’s fury, so I admire her bravery and the success she is having.
In this piece calling for the end of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”
, she has given the best summation I have read of what wokeness is, which includes all its pseudonyms and tentacles such as “Social Justice,” “Anti-Racism,” “Progressivism,” “Critical Race Theory,” etc.
“Bari Weiss: End DEI” [The Free Press – 11/09/2023]
What I saw was a worldview that replaced basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad). It replaced lots of things. Color blindness with race obsession. Ideas with identity. Debate with denunciation. Persuasion with public shaming. The rule of law with the fury of the mob.
People were to be given authority in this new order not in recognition of their gifts, hard work, accomplishments, or contributions to society, but in inverse proportion to the disadvantages their group had suffered, as defined by radical ideologues.
During the 2022 elections, one of the media’s favorite gotcha questions for Republican candidates was to define “wokeness” if the candidate was campaigning against the woke agenda. Ms. Weiss nailed the definition of wokeness with that description.
There’s plenty more at the link, which I’d encourage you to read. Near her conclusion she states:
It is time to end DEI for good. No more standing by as people are encouraged to segregate themselves. No more forced declarations that you will prioritize identity over excellence. No more compelled speech. No more going along with little lies for the sake of being polite.
“No more going along with little lies for the sake of being polite.” This is so critical, and it doesn’t just apply to wokeness. We could have stopped the climate cult’s suicidal agenda a long time ago if we had stopped politely respecting their intentions to “save” the environment.
Ms. Weiss is speaking on behalf of her fellow Jews with this final quote, but it applies to everyone:
We will persist, one way or another. But DEI is undermining America, and that for which it stands—including the principles that have made it a place of unparalleled opportunity, safety, and freedom for so many. Fighting it is the least we owe this country.
2) The Transgender Social Contagion
This was written by Mia Carpenter of Environmental Progress (Michael Shellenberger’s right-of-center policy outfit) pointing out the similarity between the transgender social contagion and others like it over the past 50 years.
Karen Carpenter's tragic battle triggered a social contagion of anorexia; Princess Diana's public struggle with bulimia had the same effect.
The book Sybil kicked off the multiple personality disorder epidemic in the 80s. Running parallel to that was the Satanic Panic, set off by the book Michelle Remembers. As a result, thousands of lives were destroyed.
As cutting started to appear in movies and TV shows, the number of teens self-harming increased, and when TikTok influencers with Tourette's launched to fame, adolescent girls began experiencing TikTok tics.
Mental illnesses are inextricably entwined with the cultural fads and whims of the era in which they arise. Our celebration of the likes of Jazz Jennings and Ellen Page captures the minds of young people, plants the dangerous idea that the discomfort and anguish of puberty can be miraculously solved with drugs and surgeries, sending many down the same devastating path to destruction.
Children and adolescents no more need trans role models than they do anorexic or bulimic role models. Every time we celebrate a celebrity coming out as trans, we sacrifice countless young people to the horror of this medical atrocity.
Amen, and this line is so true: Children and adolescents no more need trans role models than they do anorexic or bulimic role models.
[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]