It has come to my attention that there are some people out there, conservatives, libertarians, right wing thugs, Elon Musk, who have been putting it about that ‘woke is dead.’
I’m here to tell you that those people are in some kind of dreamland.
Musk tweeted in response to reports that some big American corporations were dumping DEI initiatives, that ‘The Tide has turned.’ This in turn triggered many a think piece declaring that woke is dead.
For instance, a very foolish Will Lloyd asked in the Times, “The end of woke spells trouble for the right. When there’s barely a whisper of wokeness at the Democratic convention, what will a network of outrage pundits do now?”
I am going to keep this simple; those who believe that woke is dead are dangerous, misguided fools, who should be ignored. We may be past peak woke, perhaps, it might not be so obvious. Some corporations may indeed pull back from the very worst DEI policies, some companies might even feature a white father in an ad (an extinct creature in the last five years) but be in no doubt: we will still be left with the annoying and dangerous elements of woke, especially in Ireland.
The reason why the Democrats didn’t mention woke at their convention is that it doesn’t have to be mentioned. Woke so deeply embedded in their policy and party that it doesn’t need to be said. They are still advocating cutting off the genitals of gender confused children. They still want to defund the police even though this has had a disastrous impact on desperately disadvantaged inner city black communities. They still expect the boardrooms and medical schools to be diverse. Some things do not need to be said. For instance, it is assumed I will give my children dinner every night, it’s not something I have to announce every morning at the breakfast table.
Let’s take Ireland, ground zero of woke, such is the political and media establishment’s desperation to be seen as the most woke country on planet earth. Here is a not so important but certainly annoying element of woke: Dublin City Council promoting their Winter lights festival. “The ‘Dublin City Council Dublin Winter Lights’ festival transforms the city centre with epic light features on iconic landmarks, buildings, bridges, trees, statues and Merrion Square Park.”
My ego is almost big enough to believe they have worded it this way just to annoy me. Winter lights, give me strength. Do you know what it used to be called? Christmas lights. And that is exactly the way it should have stayed in 2024 and forever more.
And don’t bother telling me that all peoples used to have some sort of celebration in the middle of winter to stop the clan topping themselves in the dark and relentlessly bad weather. I’m sure that is true. But do you know what is also true? That Christianity spread from an outpost of the Roman Empire, to then take over that Empire, all the way to Britain, and eventually to Hibernia, via St Patrick, and these celebrations became Christmas. In Ireland we celebrate Christmas, not ‘winter’.
In Ireland we celebrate Christmas and all its associated traditions from the Christmas tree (brought over by Prince Albert to Victorian Britain) to the worst Christmas movie in the history of time, Home Alone. We put Christmas lights on a Christmas tree, and we share Christmas dinner with our family including the annoying uncle. That’s what we do. So, it makes no sense for Dublin City Council to call this event Winter lights; they only do it, dear reader, to annoy the rest of us.
Such is the power of woke. You must understand that no one, not a single ordinary person on the island of Ireland, wanted the Christmas lights to be called “Winter Lights.” Despite this someone, somewhere in Dublin City Council just decided to dump the term Christmas lights and replace it with Winter lights. The Muslim teacher didn’t want the change, the Indian computer programmer didn’t want the change, no ordinary person going about their ordinary day wanted the change. But Woke did, so all must bow down to the great and mighty Woke.
And it’s not just Dublin City Council. At Malahide castle you can enjoy Wonder lights. (I’d enjoy it a lot more if you called it was, namely Christmas lights.) Or take this horror show in Waterford, called Winterval 2024 (they do manage to say Christmas in the blurb.)
Honestly, I am the resident Christmas Grinch in this house, and none of this is doing much to lift my mood.
And if that wasn’t enough, we got, naturally, a new definition of “woman” this week from the Irish state. You know, because the taxpayer apparently has an armada of employees in state agencies whose job it is to come up with new, ever more infuriating, definitions of “woman”:
All of the above are just the latest examples of why the morons who say woke is dead should have their eggnog removed from their drink’s cupboard. These people are, be in no doubt, the same people who told us, 10-15 years ago not to worry about all the students who were studying women’s studies, and gender studies, and interracial studies, and queer studies and all the rest of it. I don’t know if you remember this siren call dear reader, but I do. Oh, don’t worry about that, we were told, when these students leave university in debt, they will not be able to secure well paid employment. That’s what I was told.
Do you know what actually happened? The woke did all graduate, and they flooded the human resources department of every single corporation, council, university and winter lights festival in the land and now they control who gets hired and fired. It would be funny if it were not so serious.
I also remember being told that even though woke had overtaken the humanities department, not to worry as they would not come for Stem. Maths was safe. Physics was safe. Just chill. They can have Chaucer but they won’t get Newton. Turns out, maths is racist.
If you really want to know the damage woke is doing to western civilization from medicine to music you should read Heather MacDonald, When Race Trumps Merit. How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. I read it, and I’m still recovering.
The key issue is, despite how annoying they are, woke people really do believe in being ‘awake to social injustice.’ They do not do this just to annoy us (although sometimes I feel they exist just to annoy me.) When they see disparate outcomes across the sexes and races, why for instance Nobel prize winners are usually white men, they ask themselves why? They see this disparate outcome or unequal result as an injustice towards women and racial minorities and what to fix it.
Therefore, going forward the right must defend the meritocracy and explain why there are different outcomes for different groups. Unless and until the right can give a coherent answer as to why, when merit is the only selection criteria, we often end up with medical boards packed full of white men, then woke will live on.