Over the past few years, the term “woke” has been among the most bandied-about words in the English language.  For those of us in our alleged golden years, we have always assumed woke is the past tense or past participle of wake (the state of being awake after sleeping).  However, the current usage belies that assumption.  In checking with the ever-reliable Urban Dictionary, the present-day meaning of woke is: “The act of being very pretentious about how much you care about a social issue.”  In light of the mindset of many leftists and liberals, “very pretentious” pretty much says it all. 

The genesis of this pretentious mindset is the insatiable need by many to find meaning and relevance in their apparently vacuous and cosseted lives.  This is particularly true among many born between 1960 and 2000. 

Some years ago, I watched an excerpt of a panel discussion with a number of middle-aged professors at a prestigious Ivy League university.  These academics were regaling the naïve and worshipful audience, overwhelmingly female, about the necessity of viewing the LGTBQ movement as this generation’s national civil rights battle (equivalent to the abolishing of slavery).  The tirades against a racist and imbecilic patriarchy marinated in white privilege were incessant.  These Leftists claimed that this privilege and imbecility required the immediate acceleration of the transformation of the United States into a socialist nirvana through any means that would ostracize, intimidate, and muzzle all who disagreed that these were “civil rights” worthy of national imposition.

The adoring and reverential expressions on the faces of the young women and the few men in the audience were priceless.  It was as if they had suddenly discovered meaning and purpose in their apparently meaningless and sheltered lives.  They no doubt thought that the prospect of being swept up in a grand crusade of promoting all manner of “civil rights” in a heartless, capitalistic society would bring relevance to their lives.  What they did not fathom was that they were being manipulated in order to bring about a socialist one-party oligarchy by playing on the nation’s history of civil rights movements.

What immediately came to mind was that this bizarre line of thinking and naïve reaction was being repeated on virtually every college campus and faculty lounge throughout the country.  While I did at least find out what the acronym LGTBQ stood for, the conversation did prompt some thoughts on how in the hell we got to this point in the nation’s history.

It was thanks to the Judeo-Christian underpinning in the founding of this nation, that every generation of American society since the nation’s founding up to the 1960’s has been swept up in one of three indispensable national movements -- the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage and the elimination of systemic or government sanctioned racism.  The ultimate success of these movements also had their basis in Christian dogma and practice. 

Because of the 195 years it took to achieve overall success, national civil rights crusades have become embedded in the nation’s DNA.  By 1970, and for the first time in American history, there were no outstanding institutionalized civil rights issues to rectify.  This has left two-plus generations of evolving agnostic narcissists without an overriding national cause to rally around. 

Not understanding the Judeo-Christian basis of previous movements, many self-styled elites and liberals, having turned their backs on God and organized religion, are obliviously falling prey to espousing new and hither to unheard of “rights” as a substitute religion.  However, virtually all of these “rights” have been made up by the radical left out of whole cloth.  Additionally, these same radicals, not letting an opportunity to exploit gullibility go to waste, recast previously resolved issues, such as so-called “systemic racism” as insoluble.

Apparently, the most compelling argument made by the true believers in Marxism/socialism is that the United States, based on its founding, is an irredeemable nation that must be transformed.  And that irredeemability is centered on racism and a denial of a myriad of unassailable “civil rights.”  The recruiting of the naïve, agnostic and ill-educated who wish to be swept up in a supposed grand crusade of promoting these manufactured rights has become comparatively effortless.

So, here are the “rights” now defined as equivalent to the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and the elimination of institutionalized racism and, if not enacted, the rationale for the unquestioned necessity of instituting a one-party socialist oligarchy:

1. Many are choosing to be identified and defined by what they do in their bedroom.  By doing so a new civil right is triggered that includes government sanctioned preferential treatment and legal preferred status except for those with the wrong political affiliation and race as per item (D) below.
2. This nation and its government, in order to ensure gender equity, must ratify that there are categorically no differences between men and women.  Accordingly, this dogma asserts that biological men can get pregnant and birth a child and a biological woman can create sperm and impregnate another biological woman.  However, as there are more than two sexes,  preference and recognition must be given to those who do not identify as conventional male or female.
3. What for centuries has been considered to be a treatable mental illness, transgenderism, (or gender dysphoria), must be now recast as not only normal behavior, but a government protected civil right safeguarded by law.  But only after people choose what sex they are, per item (B) above.
4. All white people are privileged citizens due to their skin color, even those living in squalor in Appalachia or the inner cities.  Because of their inbred racism, these societal reprobates must defer to the other races to ensure the elimination of their racist proclivities.  Government sanctioned racism against the right people is, therefore, the equivalent of an immutable civil right.
5. The basis of the founding of the nation -- the pursuit of equality or equal opportunity -- must be replaced by a new civil right: the guarantee of equity or equal outcomes.  Therefore, it is an obligation of government to be certain that Joe Smith of Anytown, USA will be as wealthy and accomplished as Bill Gates, LeBron James or Oprah Winfrey.  Except those that fall under item (D) above.
6. Government, in order to protect the civil rights of the people, must be empowered to declare what is “hateful and/or fallacious speech” by those with the wrong political leanings and to banish those purveyors from the public square.  Thus, creating a right for the people to not hear what is deemed to be intolerable.
7. The common thread in all these enumerated “rights”: an omnipotent central government creates and enforces them.

That this litany of so-called “rights” even exists or is seriously being equated to the essential civil rights movements of the past beggars the imagination.  In fact, the list almost seems to be a series of one-liners from any stand-up comic routine in Las Vegas not too many years ago.  There are no words in the English language that can properly convey the ludicrousness of these proclamations and the imbecility of those who espouse them. 

So, I am content to wallow in my state of “unwokedness” (if that is a word) along with my fellow deplorables.  Safe in the knowledge that the vast majority of my fellow citizens are not self-absorbed loons who will forever wallow in a perpetual state of aimless adolescence and credulousness. 

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