Of Woke and Nuts...

 "I think what the 'woke' culture needs is to be woke. But then, that could be a very rude awakening..." -- Craig D. Lounsbrough 

I have often expressed my fears for the future on this page. Today's edition will be no different, except that I might have something of a constructive suggestion that could, possibly, make some small (perhaps infinitesimally small, but that is still progress) difference that might solve a good many of today's most-pressing social problems -- if enough people followed suit.

The catalyst was a conversation -- wait, did I say 'conversation'? I meant 'received a boringly tiresome lecture' -- that I had with a young lady of 20-ish this past weekend.

The young woman (but far be it from me to misgender anyone) is of a certain type that has become all-too familiar in today's 'polite society', which is to say, that she's a caricature. A mere cardboard cutout trained to reflexively vomit forth whatever the current fashionable opinions are, usually without having given any thought to the words and implications, all of it delivered in that stupid, vapid, voice that is largely monotone until one gets to the end of a sentence.

At which point, there is that annoying upwards inflection.

It is a common affectation of those who are seriously trying to convince you that they are disaffected.

A conversation began among others concerning the somewhat racist alternate name of..all things...the Brasilia nut.

Those of you of a certain age will know without me having to clue you in exactly what I'm talking about.

To be honest, I had never heard the expression until it had somehow come up during the course of conversation. You learn something new every day, I guess.

Anyhow, this particular young lady -- of the typically plump, doughy, bland and uninteresting sort that predominates nowadays, only with a nose ring and enough tats to shame a merchant marine -- took offense that others were using this derogatory term so freely and easily.

She trotted out the usual response to this racist perfidy (the people involved were not actively trying to be racist, they were simply reminiscing about a an otherwise unimportant detail of their youth -- which (all together now!) goes like this:

"You would never use that term to a Black man behind the nut counter in the supermarket, would you?"

Oh, geez...you poor thing.

To which I responded:

"No, but what makes you believe, automatically, that the guy behind the counter doesn't go home at the end of the day and use racist-sounding language of his own?"

She had just stepped into a great big steaming pile, and didn't even know it.

What followed was a litany of every 'woke-ist' trope you've ever heard. I shall spare you, because I care.

Eventually, I had two points to make. The first being that the people involved here are all significantly older than she is (I have underwear older than her, and it somehow managed to keep it's shape, unlike her) and grew up in a different time, experiences and cultural context. It was not fair of her to a) judge people by the standards of her generation, and b) no one is perfect.

This was received about as well as you might expect. The next box on the "Show your disgust with humanity" box got checked; the upturned nose.

My second point was that everyone at this table was already in their 30's by the time Pasty McDoughball was born, and had lived an entire 'her lifetime' in that period, which meant that a) they have more experience and knowledge than you do, especially about human nature, b) habits, even bad ones, are hard to break, and finally, c) by your expression of incomprehension and obvious lack of life experience, you're not smart enough to tell everyone else how to live.

This was met with the expected running away and weaponized dirty look which is the Nuclear Armageddon of the 20-something dingbat who has been told their child-like keening is unwelcome and noisome, retreating into the company of the other fat, colorless, unpalatable 20-something females, seeking validation and reassurance that the big, bad MAGA man was only projecting his own White Supremacy, misogyny and penile insufficiency on to her poor ready-made-victim psyche.

Her overly-dramatic exit from the intellectual arena, complete with the heavy sighs, tongue-clicking and exaggerated gestures of the Gen-Z'er was received with...laughter.

By the way, Miss Pillsbury Crescent Roll 2022 happens to be a New York City schoolteacher.

And probably not a very good one,

And this incident evoked an idea, which is not exactly new to me as I have had this thought before and seen expressed elsewhere, that the antidote to all of this gratuitous kneeling at the altar of 'Woke' is simple laughter.

Mockery. Relentless mockery, in fact.

We've already seen it in other aspects of our daily lives that mockery, laughter and plain old ignoring of the 'Woke' seems to work wonders in deflating their over-inflated egos.

Facebook censors memes that it believes are insufficiently pandering to the woke.

YouTube will censor videos that don't follow the program of social, intellectual and educational sterilization that follows woke as certainly as 100 follows 99.

Our politics is stunted by the perceived need to not speak directly and forthrightly for fear of giving offense.

Our media is infected with the poison of woke to the point where no issue, no story, no event can be honestly covered without paying some form of homage to political correctness and ideology.

I have begun to understand why people take up this ridiculous position, which is to say, because they've been rewarded for it, in much the same way the explosion of 'trans' occurs because there's certain benefits to it. Primarily, what everyone who espouses this stupidity is seeking, ultimately, is some form of social currency or dispensation which allows them to ignore, or paper over, their own imperfections when it comes to their complaints about everyone else.

It's not about 'debate' or even 'discussion'; it's about preventing either so that the afflicted doesn't have to examine their own shortcomings. Woke is a defense mechanism wielded offensively; passive-aggressive weaponized to the nth degree.

This is certainly not a new revelation, but it is important to remember this fact.

The next item on the motivations of Woke is dissatisfaction. With everything.

Like most leftists of my acquaintance, every Woke-ster I meet is a perpetually unhappy, reflexively-negative, passive-aggressive ignoramus who never examines just why it is they are so dissatisfied with life.

Because that would mean crushed feelz, self-improvement work and personal responsibility, maybe?

Just spitballin'.

They all seem to have the same exact quality insofar as even when you are retreating before them and giving into their repetitive cycle of complaint-passive/aggressive-fucktard it's still not enough. They are never mollified. Perhaps because they are too busy either taking advantage of the petty power that continual grievance gives them (at the acquiescence of others, by the way, not through any industry of the wokebot), or because they have some severe mental disorder that makes them assume every punch bowl has a turd in it, every birthday present is actually an insult, and that The Universe has conspired against them.

In Olden Days, these people would have killed themselves with an overdose of heroin or jumped off a bridge. Today, they are celebrated and given political power, media attention and all-too-much say over how others think and behave.

You can NEVER make these people happy because they have dedicated their lives and energies to being UNHAPPY.

Even Droopy Dog occasionally cracked a smile.

And, frankly, it appears to me to be counter-productive that if the whole point of the exercise is to 'uplift the downtrodden' that you're doing them a great disservice when all you can do is insist that every inch of progress is simply one more form of oppression.

One might even go as far as to call Woke the Oppression of Depression, perhaps?

Telling people they're victims, and treating them as such, even when they aren't, or insisting you are a victim when nothing could be further from the truth -- 24/7/365 -- doesn't sound very 'uplifting' to me, and certainly not very productive.

Finding racism -- searching for it, no less -- in the colloquial (if unfortunate) name for a nut doesn't appear to be a very productive use of one's time.

This may be why this young lady doesn't get it: she's certainly not spending her time in deep thought, reading anything of value, or examining her own attitudes, actions and ignorance in the light of experience.

Hence, 'public school teacher'.

The only lesson that sticks to that sort of mindset is humiliation. One hopes that after enough humiliation, the afflicted will suddenly decide that she's had enough and do something positive for herself, rather than just take offense (where none is intended) on behalf of others. That 'something positive' would probably include -- one dares to think -- some form of reflection and self-criticism.

I rather doubt anything of the sort will happen with this one. She's been given too many excuses and too many victim options to stop, most likely.

You look like an albino beachball?

That's 'lookism' and 'fat shaming', you know.

Can't speak without sounding like a cartoon character?

That's someone else's hangup.

Can't argue with a 55-year-old genius who is intimately familiar with all of your shop-worn and threadbare tropes and has a counter to every one of them?

He's a Maga head fascist who wants to keep you from aborting your children (assuming that any man drunk enough to attempt to impregnate you can manage to find your privates without first rolling you in flower to identify the wet spot -- sorry, I meant 'rape' -- and children will just destroy the planet by being born, anyway).

Can't stand the fact that you live in a world full of people who got here before you did and who are oppressing you with facts, different knowledge, experiencesand memories than your own?

Well, all those 'Boomers' should die, because they're only keeping you down. You poor thing.

This young lady may, one prays, one day grow up. I wouldn't place a bet on it, however.

But one thing has crystallized in my brain, which is that if you want to stop this self-destructive (and socially destructive, too) wave of insanity, the best thing to do is to laugh.

They can't respond to your laughter and they don't know how to handle it, either.

One hopes that after being treated like a fool on a regular basis, that 'the oppressed' decide to stop acting like one.