Democrats Are Victims of 'Woke'
A lot of really decent liberals have been manipulated by an illiberal cult.
Over the past eight years or so, we’ve heard a lot of stories about people being canceled for daring to express ideas that deviate from the prevailing, batshit crazy orthodoxies around race and gender. They’ve been publicly shamed, had their lives threatened, and quite a few of them have lost their jobs. Many people who typically vote blue had become so repulsed by the Democratic Party’s progressive wing that they either withheld their votes last week or decided to cast them for Trump.
Having borne close witness to woke’s destruction,1 which I wrote about in last week’s newsletter, I’m one of those Democrats who didn’t vote. And, as I also said in that newsletter, I can’t help but feel relieved that the Democrats lost. It’s like a spell has been broken. (Well, almost.)
A lot of people feel very differently. They’re calling it the end of democracy. The arrival of fascism. “Last week was America’s last presidential election,” I’ve heard.
I’m friends with a lot of these folks on Facebook, which looks like the polar opposite of my feed on X, where many are saying they feel similarly to me. My Facebook friends are grief-stricken—as grief-stricken as they were in November 2016, if not more so. And I empathize with them. I worry, too, about the next four years. But, unlike them (it seems), I’ve completely lost faith in the party that, as a “good, liberal gay person,” I’m supposed to blindly support. And I’ve completely lost faith in the liberal media that props that party up. I mean completely and utterly lost faith. I read impassioned write-ups in legacy media outlets about the problem with Trump’s latest cabinet picks and I think, OK, yeah, you could very well be right. But do you seriously expect me to take your word for it? Do you actually think I would still believe a single thing you say, after all the lies you’ve shamelessly told? I mean, come on. You even deny the reality of sex!
Countless conservatives have been screwed over by woke, but many good, hardworking, liberal Americans who cast their vote for Harris last week have too. Liberal Americans who can’t be entirely blamed for signing off on the excesses of the illiberal left. Why do I think they can’t be blamed? Well, for one, everyone is so goddamn busy. They’re busy with kids and spouses and jobs. They have health scares and parents with Alzheimer’s and cars making weird noises. If you think about it, it’s kind of a big ask to expect everyone to know that most if not all of the news outlets and institutions they’ve venerated for decades had been captured by a backwards ideology. Yes, maybe some of these ideas sounded nuts to them. Maybe somewhere in the back of their minds, they periodically thought, Well that doesn’t seem right. But then it was 8pm and the dishes were piled up in the sink and their youngest hadn’t even started his homework yet.
Not to mention that, day after day, woke scolds were hammering into their brains that if they didn’t go along with these ideas and promote them to others, they were “very bad people.” This is what “good” is now. “Good” is telling little boys who like Barbies they’re actually girls and then giving them the same drugs that are used to castrate sex offenders. “Good” is telling a young black boy that the entire world is against him and that he could keep trying, sure, but he’ll probably end up dead or in jail anyway. “Good” is telling 15-year-old girls that, yes, it’s totally normal for you to want a mastectomy, let’s go see if we can make that happen. “Good” is convincing vulnerable white people they’re inherently evil.
On top of that, they were shamed for dating or befriending or even liking the social media posts of anyone who doesn’t follow the orthodoxy. Those people are transphobes. They’re white supremacists. Every minor objection was a “right-wing dog whistle.”
It’s the oldest trick in the cultists’ playbook: Cut off your followers from all outsiders and their ideas.
People talk about the cult of Trump, and there is a cult of Trump. Watching nearly the entire GOP collapse around him on bended knee has been a strange thing to witness.2 But a lot of people who voted for Trump didn’t vote for Trump. They voted against the Democratic Party. They voted against woke.
It’s that damn Newton’s law again. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The woke cult and the cult of Trump. The cult of Trump and the woke cult.
Back and forth, back and forth. Left and right are pushed further and further apart, each side fighting to drag the center along with them.
So what’s the solution?
Break the cultists’ rules. Befriend and date people on the other side. Dare to (gasp!) like their social media posts. And talk to people. Believe it or not, there might be a lot of reasons why a Latino voter chose Trump other than, “Oh wow, turns out Latinos are racist.” A Brooklyn mom who wants universal healthcare isn’t necessarily an anti-American commie. And the white lady who doesn’t want her 19-year-old daughter to have to compete against males in sports might not actually want to “eradicate all trans people.” She might just know what fairness is. And she might just love her daughter.
So maybe start there? It’ll be uncomfortable, sure, but that’s the easy part. The hard part comes when you have to admit where you were wrong.
I considered not using “woke” to describe what I’m talking about here but it’s just so damn succinct and everyone knows precisely what I mean when I say it.
I am absolutely not saying that all Trump voters are cultists, just like I would not say that all Democrats are cultists.
Hi Ben. I love this writing. I am totally struck by how some of my friends are 'grieving'. So much so that they talk about what stage of the grief process they are in (most don't know that Kubler Ross changed her mind about her stages later in her life!). I wish theses same friends would talk about grieving with me over the loss of my son to the trans ideology. They don't understand my grief, but say...what can you do he's a adult, yet expect that I will listen to the ruination of their lives because their candidate couldn't get elected! Me too....can't wait for your book!
if your reaction to friends and family who voted for trump is to disassociate from, disown and cancel them, you do not belong to a political party, you belong to a cult.