Why Are They Woke?

Victor Davis Hanson June 23, 2021

The systemic con behind wokeism.

There are lots of reasons why wokeism spread like wildfire once America lost its collective mind during the pandemic, quarantine, self-induced recession, and rioting of 2020.

Wokeism was never really about racism, sexism, or other -isms. Instead, for some, it illustrated a psychological pathology of projection: fobbing one’s own concrete prejudices onto others in order to alleviate or mask them.

Consider outspoken liberal icon Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). He’s one of the Senate’s most woke. Yet Whitehouse turns out to be a mostly unapologetic member of a de facto all-white prestigious “beach club” of elites in Newport, Rhode Island. Is Whitehouse committed in the abstract to rooting out white privilege so he can concretely relax amid it with fellow bluebloods?

The second catalyst of wokeism is the distraction it provides from scary problems that threaten the very existence of American civilization. While the country consumes itself in demanding more than 12 percent representation of black actors in television commercials, it is nearing $30 trillion in national debt. Eventually, the astounding red ink will require recessionary belt-tightening, more inflationary money printing, or both.

The woke Biden Administration cannot stop 2 million immigrants this year from crossing illegally and with exemption into the United States. Almost all are in need of free American health care, housing, food, and legal subsidies. Violent crime is spiking at an astonishing rate. Yet few dare say why that is—or how to stop it.

When our elites are clueless about national debt, inflation, illegal immigration, crime, and soaring gas prices, they reassure themselves that at least they can cancel out Father Junípero Serra or knock down another statue of Robert E. Lee.

America is systematically being conned by those who disguise their hypocrisy, who manipulate the guilt-ridden, who have no interest in solving America’s most dangerous problems, and who get or stay richer by hyping an America in need of massive rebooting—and with it their own careerist remedies.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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