When they compassionately defenestrate you

Watching Rose McGowan and Nicki Minaj get raked across the coals of Leftist media reminds me of the fact that we’re seeing an ideological sorting hat at work: people can either be liberal, or they can be Woke, but they can’t be both. And if you’re a liberal you will be shoved onto the other side, along with conservatives, libertarians, and everyone else who just wants to not be bothered with 24/7 impassioned harangues, histrionic commandments, unconstitutional restrictions, and dogmatic doggerel.

The attached web comic made the rounds this morning. It reminded me of my philosophical and political journey since 2001. I’ve been shoved over that line so many times on so many issues, I’ve lost count. The multi-headed hydra of Wokeness — which has been gradually manifesting in ever more hideous forms since the end of the 1990s — brooks no compromise. It’s a purely tribal thing. Admitting that a given topic or subject may be multifaceted or nuanced, or that there may be more than one accurate analysis of a specific problem, gets you ejected from the circle of correct thinking. And it’s gotten so aggressive across all arenas of life, people are being forced to make choices: stand up for your independence and your freedom to make up your own mind, or become a robot who simply regurgitates whatever madness the Left is churning out this week.

I honestly can’t see how America survives this. There must be room for difference, or America isn’t America at all. Back in the counterculture 1960s the American Left devoted all its time to crying for space to do what it wanted to do, think what it wanted to think, and be what it wanted to be. And now that the American Left has all the cultural, economic, and political power it did not possess previously, the American Left is determined to stamp out disagreement — both real, and perceived — at every turn. We are not allowed to question. We are not allowed to arrive at our own conclusions. And if we resist being tamped down like square pegs in round holes, we are cast out. Cancelled. The people who hang their hats on caring and compassion behave like the worst, most despotic cretins imaginable.

You don’t have to guess what they’re thinking. They tell you every day all day on Twitter, and from a menagerie of media outlets — who all toe and parrot the same political line.

The Sovietization of American society may fail, however, if enough people simply decide they’ve had it. Been pushed too far. Are expected to swallow too many lies. Defenestrate too many friends. The chief strength of Wokeness is that it’s monolithic. But this is also its chief weakness. Because monolithic ideologies tend to crush an ever-expanding number of people who simply by dint of being individual human beings, cannot or will not abide the crushing. So one by one folks stand up. Refuse to be afraid. Cannot be made to cower. And when a critical mass of protestants (note the small p) is reached, the monolith crumbles. Because the monolith only has power so long as a majority of the population embraces that power.

If enough people scofflaw — as I have pointed out in this space previously — the law becomes worthless. Ineffective. For any rule to function, people must cooperatively and voluntarily embrace it.

The various and sundry overreaches of the past two decades, being capped by Covid Panic and all its excesses, may be the tipping point when sufficient numbers of free people conclude there’s literally no more benefit to going along with the totalitarian charade. How many rights must be curtailed or forfeited? How many people punished? How much red-pilling does it take for a society to simultaneously barf up the dog’s breakfast of Left-wing assertions, shibboleths, diatribes, and absolutely mindless samethink which has been shoved down our throats since the turn of the young century?