The Time to Defeat the Leftist Monolith is Now
The Left's domination of culture needs to come to an end. It starts by talking.
The left’s ideology (or rather, the religion of woke secular humanism, or wokeism as referred to in this piece) has dominated culture for the better part of 10 years. But even before that, it was ascendant even in the early 2000’s when I was in college at one of those “elite” havens of “progressive” thought.
We’ll refer to this ideology as wokeism from here on for convenience, but it should be understood as the broad version that encompasses almost all of the left’s current dominant ideology.
Donald Trump’s victory in 2024 provides a clear signal that a majority of Americans are sick of wokeism. As such, it presents a unique opportunity to start to shift the dominant culture to a better alternative.
Sadly, it may be too late to save ardent leftists from the damage that wokeism has done to their brains. As the early responses to Trump’s re-election show, there appears to be limited desire or interest in learning about the alternative perspectives that led to a sweeping Trump victory.
I’ve seen family members, friends, and colleagues opine on social media about the tragedy of “half the country just giving in to hate.”
Even if you are reading this thousands of miles away, I hope that you can literally feel my eyes rolling from here.
Instead of wondering why Trump grew share across almost every demographic in every state, the majority of true believers seem content to blame Latinos for being racist, men for being sexist, rural voters for being stupid, and white women for being brainwashed by the patriarchy.
That’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for them.
I have helped several people close to me rescue themselves from wokeism, but it runs deep in those who have had it embedded in their subconscious. Outside of family members, it’s really difficult.
Culture Moves On
But fortunately in this case, culture has it’s own momentum that tends to leave the old waves behind as new waves ascend. This will feel tough for those left riding the old wave, but presents incredible opportunity for those of us looking for a new wave.
While new waves are generally a “young man’s game”, any of us can play a part, and we absolutely should so long as we believe we have a durable culture or value to promote.
As can be seen in the exit polls, the 18-29 demographic was the most conservative we’ve seen in 20 years. The kids, as they say, are alright. This demographic is the most diverse in American history, but critically they are still seeing through the nonsense that identity politics and wokeism offer.
So the kids will drive this, I’m sure. But those of us who have been around a while owe it to them to lend some of our accrued wisdom and, along the way, hopefully bring along the individuals from our generation whose minds haven’t yet been fully calcified.
It’s Time to Speak
That, in a nutshell, is why I have committed to speaking up even more than I have, both against wokeism and also for key values that I believe need to be a part of the next dominant culture.
Dating back to my earliest public writing in 2007, I’ve certainly not been silent on the harms of wokeism. But I have also self-censored a lot both in public writing and around friends, family members, and colleagues at various times.
And look, sometimes self-censorship is the right answer. No one likes the guy who brings politics into everything. None of us (including me) want to be that guy.
But there are so many times that, given its status as the dominant culture, woke shibboleths are espoused and I leave it alone by staying silent or nodding along slightly to avoid conflict.
And perhaps that’s the right answer when one culture is so dominant.
Now though? It is the time for change.
While any dominant culture can fade to irrelevance on its own, the process can and should be quickened when possible.
We can do that by calling out the nonsense. Saying “no” not just at the ballot box, but also when people inject vague platitudes or woke nonsense into everyday life. More than that, we can advocate for a new culture: a return to merit, responsibility, and consequences.
If there’s anything that should be banished to the outskirts of human consciousness as soon as possible, it’s the modern “liberal” culture. Let’s do it.
Breaking Down the Walls
Sadly, the wokeist bundle can’t quite be undone within any single blog. Like any ideology, it has a complex wrap of ideas and beliefs.
Talk to people who have been “red pilled” and you’ll know it isn’t one single event that causes them to see wokeism for what it is. Most commonly, it is a series of events that gradually increase the cognitive dissonance in their own mind as they have to make excuses for things that they know are wrong yet they are told to believe. Then, one day, something comes along and finally shatters the illusion.
The most salient example of this recently comes from the interaction between VP-elect J.D. Vance and some journalist who doesn’t merit being named here:
Watch it for yourself, but the journalist said that cases of Venezuelan gangs taking over apartment complexes were “limited to a handful of apartment complexes.”
There’s not many more perfect examples of wokeist philosophy. As “Diversity is our strength” is one of the structural shibboleths of wokeism, any true adherent must dismiss any criticism, valid or otherwise, in the same way that a Catholic would dismiss criticism of God or the Pope.
J.D. Vance, knowing this from his time at Yale Law and beyond, provided a masterful response that I am sure was an illusion-shattering moment for many:
“Martha, do you hear yourself?” asked Vance, 40, seemingly taken aback by the reporter’s objection. “Only ‘a handful of apartment complexes’ in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris’ open border?”
“Americans are so fed up with what’s going on,” Vance went on, “and they have every right to be and I really find this exchange, Martha, sort of interesting, because you seem to be more focused [on] nitpicking everything that Donald Trump has said rather than acknowledging that apartment complexes in the United States of America are being taken over by violent gangs.”
What Comes Next?
My goal is to use this blog to do two things:
Provide more and more of these illusion-shattering cases that can be read or used to drive up the cognitive dissonance in wokeism-infused minds so that we can be unburdened by what has been.
Provide actual prescriptive, positive visions for what can and should be done as we build the next dominant culture, rather than just critiquing the past, so that we can imagine what can be.
We’ve seen countless examples throughout history of maladaptive cultures ruining countries. That is why we owe it to ourselves both to defeat wokeism, but also to ensure we do replace it with something much better.