Tag: woke culture

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ideological culture

Cosmic or Merely Comic?

Jussie Smollett, woke, victim, progressivism

A number of important criminal trials are bunching up together at the moment. The Rittenhouse acquittal came first, but the Coffee and Arbery verdicts, along with it, also qualified as major milestones. Looming over our heads is perhaps the headiest of all, the Ghislaine Maxwell honey pot case. But for the wildest comedy, there’s Jussie Smollett’s.

The story is such a travesty it is hard not to laugh — especially if you have heard comedian Dave Chappelle’s bit about “the French actor, Juicy Smolliet.”

Eddie Scarry, writing in The Federalist, provides a less humorous take: “Smollett wasn’t engaging in a hoax. He was perpetuating a scam and that scam has a name. It’s called ‘social justice.’”

Scarry makes a case for Smollett’s rationality: “It’s not like Smollett is a demonstrable sociopath who told an aimless lie about being attacked by Trump supporters in 2019 for the sake of it.” When he hired two Nigerians to fake a racist, homophobic attack on him, he did so with a purpose: to parlay rampant “woke” sentiment to gain fame and fortune. “This is what our entire culture is teaching now — that the quickest way to advance is to claim victimhood on account of race, sex, or sexual identity — ideally, some combination of all three.”

While the scam element is obvious in Smollett’s greed, social justice itself is not a scam. It is an ideology of constant revolution, always to re-​make the world over to correct for cosmic injustices.

And it’s more: Social justice is open-​source psychological warfare. It doesn’t need centralized control — though it has some, in the form of the insider elitists — because its strength comes from the distributed acceptance and performances of its hapless criminal pushers.

Thankfully, comic criminality may undermine its allure.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture

Query Theory and “Microaggression”

microaggression, woke

“Microaggression” is the alleged sin of committing a verbal slip that the alleged victim, eager to be offended, aggressively interprets in the most invidious possible way. It’s one of many faddish notions used to rationalize the squelching of speech and to abrogate basic rights.

In October 2018, Kieran Bhattacharya, a medical student at the University of Virginia, attended a discussion on “microaggression.” He asked questions like: “Is it a requirement, to be a victim of microaggression, that you are a member of a marginalized group?”

Beverly Adams, an assistant dean, told him no, it isn’t, and the two argued about it for a bit.

Afterward, an organizer of the event, Nora Kern, filed a complaint against Bhattacharya that led to demands that he get counseling, and, ultimately, to his suspension. His protest was taken as proof that the complaint and demands made against him were justified.

Bhattacharya has sued the school for retaliating against him. His crime, so to speak, was nothing more than asking the wrong questions — or asking them wrongly. 

Even if he had asked them heatedly (which he denies), so what?

A district court says Bhattacharya has a point and is allowing his lawsuit to proceed: “Bhattacharya sufficiently alleges that Defendants retaliated against him. Indeed, they . . . suspended him from UVA Medical School, required him to undergo counseling and obtain ‘medical clearance’ as a prerequisite for remaining enrolled, and prevented him from appealing his suspension.”

Some kind of aggression is happening here, and it’s pretty macro.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo by Chen Dama

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ideological culture media and media people

A Little Maher Common Sense

woke, Democrat

I’m not the biggest fan of Democrat comedian-​pundit Bill Maher. But when he’s right, he’s right.

Mr. Maher once said the sun rises in the east. I concur. He also says that Democrats shouldn’t be so off-​puttingly wackadoodle and tyrannical. Correct.

According to Maher, “Democrats are the party of every hypersensitive, social justice warrior, woke bulls — t. The party that disappears people or tries to make them apologize for ridiculous things. [Democrats] think silence is violence, and looting is not. [And we’re the party of] replacing ‘Let’s not see color’ with ‘Let’s see it always and everywhere.’”

In his indictment, the HBO jester argues “the crux of the problem” is that “Democrats too often don’t come across as having common sense to a huge swath of people.” 

Right again!

“It would be so easy to win elections,” he deduces, “if we would just drop this s**t!”

Maher notes a New York Times post-​election report that congressional “Democrats wept, cursed and traded blame” over the election results on a recent conference call. Rep. James Clyburn (D‑SC) warned that “we’re not going to win” in Georgia if Democrats are talking “Medicare for all or defunding police or socialized medicine.”

“Democratic rhetoric needs to be dialed back,” Maher quotes Rep. Connor Lamb (D‑Pa.). “It needs to be rooted in common sense.”

“I feel like I’m being asked to be quiet,” responded squad-​member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D‑Mich.). 

Tlaib is half right. The solution to this problem for Democrats is to abandon their anti-​common-​sense positions. Not to hide them. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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