In the late 1980s and 1990s, it was known as political correctness. Personalities such as Rush Limbaugh took it on mercilessly on his show, yet the movement continued to grow and develop to the sad place we find ourselves today: where jobs and careers are lost over what would seem the most ridiculous reasons a few years ago. We are more familiar with this phenomenon today as wokeism. Let’s see how it is satirically approached by the Babylon Bee.
NATIONALITY Being woke is all about diversity. We love people of ALL nationalities and want the whole world to just be a big melting pot of all cultures, creeds, and nations.
Except, of course, Americans. America is a disgusting place filled with white nationalists who could learn a thing or two from more advanced socialist countries like Venezuela or the Soviet Union.
So if you’re a white Christian American male, you’ve got a real problem, because your entire existence is basically a plague upon the earth. You need to spend all your days online apologizing to people from superior countries for the place you’re ashamed to call home. The nice thing is you don’t actually have to put your money where your mouth is and move to Canada. You can just constantly threaten to leave the country and say things like “UGH, I’M SORRY FOR MY FELLOW AMERICANS” and “I’M TOTALLY MOVING TO CANADA THE NEXT TIME A REPUBLICAN WINS THE PRESIDENCY!!!” But you can keep reaping the benefits of American prosperity while never leaving for a country that’s not doing as well.
Babylon Bee. The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness (p. 20). Salem Books. Kindle Edition.
Another thought-provoking take on wokeism is voiced by Michael Rectenwald, Chief Academic Officer, American Scholars. In a December 2021 piece for Imprimis, he wrote the following. (Note that before referring to the Great Reset, he referred to the contextual information and basis to support his argument--less so that it was an inevitable outcome, but more that there were indeed powerful individuals who wished to make it so by taking advantage of every calamity available to them.)
...Other developments that advance the Great Reset agenda have included unfettered immigration, travel restrictions for otherwise legal border crossing, the Federal Reserve’s unrestrained printing of money and the subsequent inflation, increased taxation, increased dependence on the state, broken supply chains, the restrictions and job losses due to vaccine mandates, and the prospect of personal carbon allowances.
Such policies reflect the “fairness” aspect of the Great Reset—fairness requires lowering the economic status of people in wealthier nations like the U.S. relative to that of people in poorer regions of the world. One of the functions of woke ideology is to make the majority in developed countries feel guilty about their wealth, which the elites aim to reset downwards—except, one notices, for the elites themselves, who need to be rich in order to fly in their private jets to Davos each year.
I thought this was a particularly good time to quickly raise this issue as there have been several excellent talks lately that I wanted to share with my growing audience. Together, perhaps we can put an end to the censorship and cowardice betrayed by wokeism if we learn to stand our ground and better articulate our positions--with respect and courtesy.
Language and brief image warning for the above, but the message of this Bill Maher monologue is a timely one.
