I woke up this morning,...thinking about “woke” - a lot.
Specifically about how, just like Americans stupidly do yoga without understanding it or the dangers, they're also approaching woke in the same ignorant, superficial way. It's a weakness.
And, though it’s fun to watch otherwise intelligent people babble on authoritatively about something they clearly have no clue about - as though they're the smartest people on Earth, coming to save us from,…what they don’t understand - if you're black, and been through the whole "woke" thing, it still leads to feeling like you’ve been born in the world's most stupid era.
Every American, by now, should know what “woke” means. Long story-short: Smart. Blacks have used the term since the 1940s. That the rest of America is just now waking up - to the term - speaks volumes about how cut-off most are, from we people they've supposedly lived side-by-side with for centuries. Who, they insist, don't deserve reparations, presumably because they know our lives so well. They watched a few Thomas Sowell videos, don't you know.
That, Ladies and Gentlemen, would be a woke observation.
I been "woke" to black life. In the '90s, the joke was, if you wasn’t by then, your dumb ass gonna stay nappin'. Remember "It's a black thang, you wouldn't understand?" It appears that may still be true.
Now it's in the hands of the NewAge, so I've had nothin' to do with it. Seriously, those people are crazy, and anything they're behind is a lie that goes right off the rails.
It's crazy that 30 years after I was creating my own Jan. 6, people like John McWhorter (who it's easy to imagine nappin') are still actually missing NewAge, to see "woke," but as a “religion.” He's like people who aren't aware Trump highjacked the Republican Party: the NewAge movement took over "woke" - that's the sick 2023 M. Night Shayamalan twist.
They all see the spiritual movement. As I have, too, hilariously. They just can't identify it for what it is.
It's weird, watching this deeply religious country, terrified over the growth of a religion. After a lifetime of Christians insisting we, specifically, need to find “religion” as THE answer to all of our problems, now they fear a belief. In terms of NewAge - which is widely acknowledged as harmful - going "woke," I think it's fair to ask, “What’s changed?” Here's a quote to help explain things:
"If you've ever gone browsing in an occult bookstore (and you really should; it's like browsing in a science fiction bookstore, only the authors really believe the stories they're writing, or pretend to), you may have seen a shelf labeled "conspiracies" right alongside the sections marked "astrology" or "Tarot." People who write about fringe politics often miss the extent to which New Agers serve as a transmission belt, allowing ideas from the left, the right, and the counterculture -- not to mention more outré folks like the UFO buffs -- to slide from one subculture to another."
Wasn't anybody listening when Bill Burr told everybody it had something to do with white women? If you're truly "woke," as blacks used it, you knew it's the NewAge movement: white women ain't niggas.
"Many of the progressive and holistic ideas that lie at the heart of today’s lifestyle Left, the environmental Left, and the New Age movement share numerous unquestioned philosophical, emotional, and practical similarities with the intellectual and cultural currents that fed into and sustained Nazism."
- Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism
Those are white women who listen to Oprah, who, skeptics have noted "promotes the paranormal, psychic powers, new age spiritualism, conspiracy theories, quack celebrity diets, past life regression, angels, ghosts, alternative therapies like acupuncture and homeopathy, anti-vaccination, detoxification, vitamin megadosing, and virtually everything that will distract a human being from making useful progress and informed decisions in life." That's their bastardized, inside-out version of "woke." Just from that old list from 2008, I can pull out psychic powers, new age spiritualism, conspiracy theories, quack celebrity diets, homeopathy, and anti-vaccination as major social problems, today, that were helped along by Oprah. I'd add scarily bad journalism to the list, as well. Hell, I could make a really long list after how long she's been around. These people were destined to be a problem.
Her white supporters thought it was out-fucking-standing when Oprah campaigned with Obama, even after some of her follwers died over The Secret, which Oprah was calling “Science”. These are the Get Out kind of white people who - it doesn't matter what they're pursuing - aren't tied, all that tightly, to reality. But they think they're slick - clever even.
But, if they were clever, they would've screamed "Fraud!" because that would've been "woke".
"For [Oprah's] believers, self-knowledge is much less important than self-'love.' But the question they never seem to ask themselves is: If you wouldn't tell another person you loved her before you got to know her, why would you do that to yourself? Skipping the getting-to-know-you part has given us what we deserve: the Oprah culture. It's a culture where superstition is 'spirituality,' illiteracy is 'authenticity,' and schoolmarm moralism is 'character.' It's a culture where people apologize by saying, 'I'm sorry you took offense at what I said,' and forgive by saying, 'I'm not angry at you anymore, I'm grateful to you for teaching me not to trust shitheads like you.' And that's the part that should bother us most: the diminishing, even implicit mocking, of genuine goodness, and of authentic spiritual concerns and practices. Engagement, curiosity and active awe are in short supply these days, and it's sickening to see them devalued and misrepresented."
- Peter Birkenhead, 2008
You're "woke" if you know Oprah’s girlfriend, Gayle, is supposed to be a journalist. But - even after convincing the entire country a quack, like Dr. Oz, was “America’s Doctor” - you don't expect any kind of investigation into anything Oprah’s done. Because it's totally "woke" to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. If you're in the NewAge movement.
Everybody knows Oprah's “broadcasting career started at the church” - but now she tours with Deepak Chopra - who's hardly a Baptist preacher. Not even an honest man. And no one blacks care about. But those white women.
They crazy.
Anybody can see Oprah's 2016 Netflix show, Greenleaf, is a “megachurch melodrama” but can they see she's fucking with you?
Are they smart enough to know it's a cover for that other Netflix show, When They See Us?
You’d think it wouldn't be possible for deeply spiritual and religious people to make deeply dishonest and racist films - films anyone could debunk - but Oprah would. Because she's the Queen of "Woke."
Well, they're trying to make her the queen of something.
So, as the Queen, President Biden (and many others, like Chris Cuomo) can repeat her lies, on their own fraudulent way, to the White House and beyond.
Like a Central Park Five rapist, entering politics, and holding a seat on the New York City Council. As a Democrat, of course (Bill Clinton smiles).
"That would be the same Marianne Williamson who introduced the world to "A Course in Miracles" in her book, A Return to Love. And those would be the Miracles described by Jesus-channeler Helen Schucman, who, at the end of her life "cursed, in the coarsest barroom language you could imagine, 'that book, that goddamn book'," and whose life-partner sidekick, William Thetford, was oh-btw concurrently doing research on "Personality Theory" funded via the CIA's then-secret MK-ULTRA mind control program. Weird, I know. But hey, I'm just saying."
- Rage Boy, from The Mystic Bourgeosie, who noted Obama "actually said 'new age' twice in his inauguration speech"
All these flakey people. All from Oprah's orbit, or under her influence, spreading NewAge in politics and the world, to assume power, with a much more poisonous flavor, than ever before.
It'd be amazing if no one didn't notice something.
"Woke" is knowing what was being let loose, in 2013, when Obama - who the NewAge called "The Lightbringer" - was handing out the U.S. Medal of Freedom like it was candy. And what effect such lousy recipients would have 10 years later.
"Woke," today, is now pure mystic mayhem.
"we people they've supposedly lived side-by-side with for centuries. Who, they insist, don't deserve reparations, presumably because they know our lives so well."
ReplyDeleteI want to hear more about your case for reparations. I don't think I know your life or anyone else's life so well, and I absolutely don't think Black Americans don't "deserve" reparations; I just don't see how the idea works in practice, either economically or practically to improve the lot of present Black Americans or to bring about a more cohesive social order. And, by the way, as most of my family hasn't been in the United States for longer than about 140 years, and was in Wisconsin then, I can't and wouldn't make any claim to living alongside Black Americans "for centuries" - my mom tells me there was literally one Black family in her hometown when she was growing up. So no, no claim to special knowledge.
I am traveling and don't have my computer - if there's an archive to your blog where you've discussed reparations, I'm not seeing it on your mobile site. Can you post a link to any post about your opinion on reparations? I am very interested in YOUR case, not Ta-Nehisi's, which hasn't compelled me so far.
Reparations is a debt being paid, not a way to "improve" black lives. And, well I understand what you're saying here, when your family arrived has nothing to do with whether or not Americans can petition the federal government.
ReplyDeleteSure, of course Americans can petition the federal government! What I'm saying is that while I understand the concept of a debt being paid, and being paid by the government, practically speaking and in reality that debt would be paid by the current taxpayers, none of whom had anything to do with the debt's being incurred and many of whom could (and in my opinion would) take that payment - being paid to other citizens like themselves - with deep resentment. And the consequences of that social situation seem to me to be very possibly far worse for Black Americans than continuing to live with an unpaid debt that cannot in any case be entirely recompensed, with money or otherwise.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I say that I don't see how reparations could work, economically or with regard to the social order in which we all live and move. A poor analogy would be, maybe, if parents (stay with me here, I'm not trying to be patronizing about the role of government and I started by saying it would be A POOR analogy) paid for one kid's college education to an expensive private college while their other kids either didn't go to college at all or went to a cheap state school while living at home (I'm adding the "living at home" and I'm not saying that the cheap state school kid put herself through college, to encompass the idea of that kid's still getting a significant benefit): regardless of why the parents decided to share their resources in the way they did, the kids who didn't receive the expensive private education for free could resent their sibling who did, and that's not great for family cohesiveness when, ultimately, all the siblings are going to continue to be siblings all their lives. SO many problems with this analogy, including, importantly, that none of the kids is paying into the parents' coffers. But it's the best I can do in my current state of jetlag.