To me, "woke" is the worldview that your lot in life is determined by oppression and privilege. In other words, your success is an accident of birth, not a result of your effort. Antiracism is the animating principle behind wokeness, which requires its parishioners to affirmatively try and dismantle power structures and rebuild them under the rubric of equity, which means equality of result, not equality of opportunity.
Ultimately it is a utopian fantasy, not too dissimilar to the Communists, Fascists and Progressives of yesteryear.
Another fine column. You totally nailed it. The intolerant left is puritanical to the extreme, and simultaneously calling out for ridicule desperately.
While "woke" might have started out as something positive, this is the definition today: "However, the term can also be used in a more negative way to criticize people who are seen as overly politically correct or who are accused of performative activism, where they only engage in social justice issues for the purpose of appearing virtuous or gaining social capital."
And, yes, it is very much a religion. When you have scientists *apologizing* for their findings because they "offend" people, you are dealing with a religion.
Lillia, good point about it starting positive and then becoming negative because that is like a double loss in that the people who initially were onboard with the intent, but then became vilified in its name, now themselves feel betrayed and resentful.
Good article Sasha, BUT...... You're probably too young to remember it, but the words "under God" were not part of the pledge until the 1950s. I was in grade school when they were added. I remember my teachers and parents being opposed to the addition of the words. Baptists, in particular, were opposed because we believe in separation of church and state. The words were added by President Dwight Eisenhower at the suggestion of a Scottish - NOT American - preacher he heard in a prominent church in New York. The pledge as recited now was penned by a Baptist preacher named Francis Bellamy who deliberately made no reference to God because of his deep belief in the separation of church and state. It did not become officially recognized by the US government until 1942 when Congress adopted it during the dark early days of World War II.
Sasha, I don't think it was so much that as it was that Ike was influenced by the Scottish Presbyterian preacher. I'd have to look it up, but I believe he heard the sermon at the Collegiate Church in New York City. Ike was a Presbyterian. The Presbyterian church was the Church of Scotland. One of my ancestors was Scottish and his father put him in a seminary to become a COS minister. He rebelled and fought with Bonnie Prince Charlie. After they were defeated, he moved to England and became a baker. He was with the Methodists for a time - he is mentioned in the history of John Wesley - but couldn't reconcile his beliefs with the Methodist emphasis on works and became a Baptist. His sons came to the US after he died and right after the revolution.
As far as "the Red Scare" goes, it was mainly in the press. It actually goes back to the 1920s and continued through the 30s and 40s.
Interesting. That year 1954 was pivotal. I think that was the year of the shootings in the Capitol. The height of and the end of McCarthyism, an end Eisenhower helped orchestrate. I think it might have something to do with it but maybe not.
I did not know that the Baptists strongly supported the separation of church and state. It certainly makes sense, because the Anabaptists, then the Baptists, all started as illegal in countries that had state religions. Thanks for offering this history!
Baptists in Virginia, in particular, were highly influential in the establishment of seperation of church and state. They were persecuted in Virginia and had been in New England until they finally won freedom in Massachusetts. A Baptist preacher named John Leland moved to Virginia from Massachusetts and led the fight. After the original Constitution was sent out and the First Congress was set to assemble, Leland initially opposed James Madison for the seat. They both lived in Orange County, VA. Madison paid Leland a visit. They talked under a large tree in Leland's yard. Madison promised Leland that if he would drop out and support him, he'd sponsor an amendment guaranteeing freedom of religion.
Speaking of persecution, I have German Anabaptist ancestors who immigrated initially to Pennsylvania because of persecution by Catholics and Lutherans. The family later migrated to Carolina, which later became South Carolina. Their name was Culp. My ancestor, who was born in Pennsylvania, was scalped and probably raped by renegade Cherokee. She was 27 and pregnant at the time. She lived into her sixties at least.
Historians ignore the role of Baptists in the freedom of religion fight. W.W. Sweet wrote two books about religion in Colonial America and in the early United States. He devoted one chapter to the role played by Baptists in gaining freedom of religion and establishing the policy of separation of church and state. In fact, the very term, "separation of church and state," came from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury, CT association of Baptists. It's not widely known but several states continued to have established churches for some time after the adoption of the Bill of Rights.
Thank you for this fascinating history! I am from Pennsylvania, and my maternal heritage is all German but the immigrant generations arrived 1830-1850, about a century after the Anabaptist colonists arrived. I have, however, been working for some years on a genealogy for a friend whose ancestors were founders and leaders of a German Anabaptist cult that came to Philadelphia 1720-1760. They started out as German Baptist Brethren then split amicably into a second group, the German Seventh Day Baptists. The leaders and their core group of disciples had been persecuted in the German states by being tortured and imprisoned for years doing hard labor in underground dungeons. They lived in South-Central Pennsylvania. In looking through their records I found that some of them refused to sign the loyalty oaths that began to be required by the new government soon after its formation. I learned that many of the early German colonists in Southeastern Pennsylvania expressed strong resistance to the loyalty oaths, perceiving them as a very threatening government overreach. In the records I examined, men resisted government pressure to sign the oaths on the grounds that their religion prohibited them from signing them.
What impressed me the most in reading old personal records was that the early Pennsylvania Germans appeared to have a much clearer vision of individual freedom from government intrusion than we have today, and they did not back down when the government tried to control their speech and their beliefs.
Everything about the woke mind virus is frightening, but the most disturbing aspect is the clear intent to destroy our language, and thus destroy thought itself.
Thanks for the great essay, and for focusing attention on the attempted murder of the English language.
I agree! One of their favorite games is to declare that certain rules are now in place and debate is no longer open on them, when in fact that debate never occurred and the rules were invented five minutes ago. We don't have to go along with this, and if enough of us resist, the woke enforcers will be overwhelmed.
There was a high profile murder case in my hometown of Berkeley in which a psychotic young man went on a stabbing spree, including entering the house of his friend and brutally murdering a beautiful and promising young woman who lived there.
In the courtroom trial, he asked/demanded that he be referred to as “they” during the proceedings and I’m pretty sure he got his wish. I had never heard of the idiocy of this “they/them” stuff until then, and I was very angry this man had the gall to make this demand after the horrors he’d committed. I commented in the local paper that he didn’t deserve the dignity to be called such ch an absurd pronoun, and I got kind of vilified for it. Little did I know this would become mainstream in the years to come. These people are literally crazy and the so-called sane ones are letting the inmates run the asylum.
Puritans, Hammerpants and Ramaswamy all in one drop! Love this piece Sasha. Language manipulation is toxic to a free society, we combat this by refusing to repeat the Newspeak, no matter how often MSM chooses to use/print. Use our own language and be prepared to explain it if needed.
You're right that we've never had an internet before, and that's what's new.
Were we all to share one bloodstream, we would all die from shared infections.
The internet is a shared knowledge-stream carrying infectious mental illnesses, like woke and trans. Maybe we will die from them, or maybe we will recognize and reject them.
When critical thinking is cast aside, a kind of mind numbing solipsism seems to be adopted. Never mind Ockham and clear headed conclusions based on falsifiable principles, hail to the reign of subjective, blind force that squeezes all nuance and real, open thought into a set of ideas that are approved and acceptable. This mind hates ambiguity, the essence of the human condition.
Wokism is justifying the rewriting of books and history to avoid upsetting or offending woke idealists. If you sanitize books like Tom Sawyer, or especially Huckleberry Finn, then people never get to understand their message or the past in which they were written. Mark Twain was a gifted satirical writer, who was also strongly against racism and slavery.
I watch BOSCH. I liked the books which are of course set in LA although I find the TV show so-so. Anyway, in one episode there was a meeting between four important power brokers. I believe the meeting featured the Mayor, the DA, the Chief of Police and a prominent Defence Attorney. They were all Black. I didn't need to see a white character in the room, but I couldn't help but wonder why they couldn't throw at least one Latino in the mix. I don't live in LA, but I've been there and I know the city is way more Mexican and Central American than African American. This to me, was an example of woke.
To me, "woke" is the worldview that your lot in life is determined by oppression and privilege. In other words, your success is an accident of birth, not a result of your effort. Antiracism is the animating principle behind wokeness, which requires its parishioners to affirmatively try and dismantle power structures and rebuild them under the rubric of equity, which means equality of result, not equality of opportunity.
Ultimately it is a utopian fantasy, not too dissimilar to the Communists, Fascists and Progressives of yesteryear.
You might be giving anti-racism too easy a pass; it is simply open racism.
Sasha, you Rock!
Another fine column. You totally nailed it. The intolerant left is puritanical to the extreme, and simultaneously calling out for ridicule desperately.
Keep them coming. You are the best.
Woke is apologizing for everyone but yourself.
While "woke" might have started out as something positive, this is the definition today: "However, the term can also be used in a more negative way to criticize people who are seen as overly politically correct or who are accused of performative activism, where they only engage in social justice issues for the purpose of appearing virtuous or gaining social capital."
And, yes, it is very much a religion. When you have scientists *apologizing* for their findings because they "offend" people, you are dealing with a religion.
Lillia, good point about it starting positive and then becoming negative because that is like a double loss in that the people who initially were onboard with the intent, but then became vilified in its name, now themselves feel betrayed and resentful.
I like the woke.
Pre-woke, it took time and effort to find out that you had nothing in common with someone.
Now its easy.
...after my own heart. ;-)
It's a neon sign.
"By now, though, it has become a full blown political movement, a religion, that keeps evolving, or devolving, inventing new rules as it goes along."
Calvinball in real life!
Excellent piece, once again, Sasha!
Truly splendid!!
Woefully
Obnoxious
Killjoy
Extremist
If you hyperventilate when you see, hear, or read something you don’t like you are woke. Simple.
Thanks from Oz.
Good article Sasha, BUT...... You're probably too young to remember it, but the words "under God" were not part of the pledge until the 1950s. I was in grade school when they were added. I remember my teachers and parents being opposed to the addition of the words. Baptists, in particular, were opposed because we believe in separation of church and state. The words were added by President Dwight Eisenhower at the suggestion of a Scottish - NOT American - preacher he heard in a prominent church in New York. The pledge as recited now was penned by a Baptist preacher named Francis Bellamy who deliberately made no reference to God because of his deep belief in the separation of church and state. It did not become officially recognized by the US government until 1942 when Congress adopted it during the dark early days of World War II.
I was going to mention this. My elderly father remembers pre-“under G-od” pledge in elementary school
"Under God" was added in 1954. Anyone who was in school before then said it without the reference to God.
And you know why that is, right? Because of America coming out of the Red Scare. That's my guess.
Sasha, I don't think it was so much that as it was that Ike was influenced by the Scottish Presbyterian preacher. I'd have to look it up, but I believe he heard the sermon at the Collegiate Church in New York City. Ike was a Presbyterian. The Presbyterian church was the Church of Scotland. One of my ancestors was Scottish and his father put him in a seminary to become a COS minister. He rebelled and fought with Bonnie Prince Charlie. After they were defeated, he moved to England and became a baker. He was with the Methodists for a time - he is mentioned in the history of John Wesley - but couldn't reconcile his beliefs with the Methodist emphasis on works and became a Baptist. His sons came to the US after he died and right after the revolution.
As far as "the Red Scare" goes, it was mainly in the press. It actually goes back to the 1920s and continued through the 30s and 40s.
Interesting. That year 1954 was pivotal. I think that was the year of the shootings in the Capitol. The height of and the end of McCarthyism, an end Eisenhower helped orchestrate. I think it might have something to do with it but maybe not.
Ah see! https://www.history.com/.amp/news/pledge-allegiance-under-god-schools
I did not know that the Baptists strongly supported the separation of church and state. It certainly makes sense, because the Anabaptists, then the Baptists, all started as illegal in countries that had state religions. Thanks for offering this history!
Baptists in Virginia, in particular, were highly influential in the establishment of seperation of church and state. They were persecuted in Virginia and had been in New England until they finally won freedom in Massachusetts. A Baptist preacher named John Leland moved to Virginia from Massachusetts and led the fight. After the original Constitution was sent out and the First Congress was set to assemble, Leland initially opposed James Madison for the seat. They both lived in Orange County, VA. Madison paid Leland a visit. They talked under a large tree in Leland's yard. Madison promised Leland that if he would drop out and support him, he'd sponsor an amendment guaranteeing freedom of religion.
Speaking of persecution, I have German Anabaptist ancestors who immigrated initially to Pennsylvania because of persecution by Catholics and Lutherans. The family later migrated to Carolina, which later became South Carolina. Their name was Culp. My ancestor, who was born in Pennsylvania, was scalped and probably raped by renegade Cherokee. She was 27 and pregnant at the time. She lived into her sixties at least.
Historians ignore the role of Baptists in the freedom of religion fight. W.W. Sweet wrote two books about religion in Colonial America and in the early United States. He devoted one chapter to the role played by Baptists in gaining freedom of religion and establishing the policy of separation of church and state. In fact, the very term, "separation of church and state," came from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury, CT association of Baptists. It's not widely known but several states continued to have established churches for some time after the adoption of the Bill of Rights.
Thank you for this fascinating history! I am from Pennsylvania, and my maternal heritage is all German but the immigrant generations arrived 1830-1850, about a century after the Anabaptist colonists arrived. I have, however, been working for some years on a genealogy for a friend whose ancestors were founders and leaders of a German Anabaptist cult that came to Philadelphia 1720-1760. They started out as German Baptist Brethren then split amicably into a second group, the German Seventh Day Baptists. The leaders and their core group of disciples had been persecuted in the German states by being tortured and imprisoned for years doing hard labor in underground dungeons. They lived in South-Central Pennsylvania. In looking through their records I found that some of them refused to sign the loyalty oaths that began to be required by the new government soon after its formation. I learned that many of the early German colonists in Southeastern Pennsylvania expressed strong resistance to the loyalty oaths, perceiving them as a very threatening government overreach. In the records I examined, men resisted government pressure to sign the oaths on the grounds that their religion prohibited them from signing them.
What impressed me the most in reading old personal records was that the early Pennsylvania Germans appeared to have a much clearer vision of individual freedom from government intrusion than we have today, and they did not back down when the government tried to control their speech and their beliefs.
Everything about the woke mind virus is frightening, but the most disturbing aspect is the clear intent to destroy our language, and thus destroy thought itself.
Thanks for the great essay, and for focusing attention on the attempted murder of the English language.
Yeah I refuse to use the word they to describe a single person. These folks aren’t important enough to redefine English grammar on the fly.
I agree! One of their favorite games is to declare that certain rules are now in place and debate is no longer open on them, when in fact that debate never occurred and the rules were invented five minutes ago. We don't have to go along with this, and if enough of us resist, the woke enforcers will be overwhelmed.
There was a high profile murder case in my hometown of Berkeley in which a psychotic young man went on a stabbing spree, including entering the house of his friend and brutally murdering a beautiful and promising young woman who lived there.
In the courtroom trial, he asked/demanded that he be referred to as “they” during the proceedings and I’m pretty sure he got his wish. I had never heard of the idiocy of this “they/them” stuff until then, and I was very angry this man had the gall to make this demand after the horrors he’d committed. I commented in the local paper that he didn’t deserve the dignity to be called such ch an absurd pronoun, and I got kind of vilified for it. Little did I know this would become mainstream in the years to come. These people are literally crazy and the so-called sane ones are letting the inmates run the asylum.
I live in Portland. I feel your pain!
Puritans, Hammerpants and Ramaswamy all in one drop! Love this piece Sasha. Language manipulation is toxic to a free society, we combat this by refusing to repeat the Newspeak, no matter how often MSM chooses to use/print. Use our own language and be prepared to explain it if needed.
You're right that we've never had an internet before, and that's what's new.
Were we all to share one bloodstream, we would all die from shared infections.
The internet is a shared knowledge-stream carrying infectious mental illnesses, like woke and trans. Maybe we will die from them, or maybe we will recognize and reject them.
When critical thinking is cast aside, a kind of mind numbing solipsism seems to be adopted. Never mind Ockham and clear headed conclusions based on falsifiable principles, hail to the reign of subjective, blind force that squeezes all nuance and real, open thought into a set of ideas that are approved and acceptable. This mind hates ambiguity, the essence of the human condition.
Wokism is justifying the rewriting of books and history to avoid upsetting or offending woke idealists. If you sanitize books like Tom Sawyer, or especially Huckleberry Finn, then people never get to understand their message or the past in which they were written. Mark Twain was a gifted satirical writer, who was also strongly against racism and slavery.
I watch BOSCH. I liked the books which are of course set in LA although I find the TV show so-so. Anyway, in one episode there was a meeting between four important power brokers. I believe the meeting featured the Mayor, the DA, the Chief of Police and a prominent Defence Attorney. They were all Black. I didn't need to see a white character in the room, but I couldn't help but wonder why they couldn't throw at least one Latino in the mix. I don't live in LA, but I've been there and I know the city is way more Mexican and Central American than African American. This to me, was an example of woke.
I'll make the Wokesters a deal: I'll define 'Woke' after you define 'Woman'. Bueller ? Bueller ?Bueller ?
OK Clarence- step way from the bong!