Zombie Children

 

There is a horrible, gruesome scene at the end of the classic horror film, Night of the Living Dead in which the little girl that has been bitten by a zombie comes back to life and while her mother begs her sweet little daughter for her life, repeatedly stabs her mother to death with a trowel with screeching sounds in the background in a scene reminiscent of the shower scene in Psycho.  The dissonance of the murderous scene is jarring to us as a child turned cold murderer, so devoid of humanity that she brutally stabs her mother.  The little girl later goes after the film’s hero.  He is able to fend her off, toss her aside, and barricade himself in the farmhouse basement.

That film, which recently turned 50 (both actresses that played the daughter and mother are still alive, ironically) was prescient and is a metaphor for what is happening on our streets today.

Children in certain areas of our cities have turned into zombie-like soulless killers, with no regard for human life and are stalking us.  Our law enforcement and criminal justice system is ill-equipped to deal with them.  

In November of 2019, little Tessa Majors, a freshman at Barnard College was stabbed to death by a 14 year old in Manhattan.

The two girls that coldly murdered Mohammed Anwar in DC last month were 13 and 15.

The knife wielding Ma’Kia Bryant was shot and killed in Ohio as she raised the blade fully intending to stab her victim to death as she announced her intent to do so.   Bryant was 16.

Also in Ohio a 13 year old girl stabbed another 13 year old to death.

Right here in Chicago, 13 year old Adam Toledo was shot and killed by a Chicago cop, a split second after he dropped a gun after a foot chase down a dark alley.  The officer had responded to a call that someone was shooting up cars.   Young Toledo had been given the nicknames “Li’l Homicide” and “Bavy Diablo,” clues to his “innocence.”

Chicago also has had some 2,000 carjackings from January 2020 through today.  Many are done by armed youngsters as young as 10 years old.

These incidents are not one-off occurrences.  They are happening every day, primarily in large metropolitan areas of blue states.

The Woke Left blames society at large, law enforcement, or, more absurdly, the victims themselves.  When Tessa Majors was murdered, the MSM put out the claim that she was in the park trying to buy pot.   When Mohammed Anwar was murdered, Mayor Bottoms tweeted (since deleted) that car owners needed to be more careful guarding their autos.  Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, blamed all of society for the death of young gangbanger Adam Toledo.  “We failed Adam,” she exclaimed, then promptly ordered the police department to cease chases unless the officer received permission from his supervisor.  A social justice warrior fund (Chicago Community Bail Fund)  posted bail for the gangbanger that provided Toledo with his weapon.  In the case of knife wielding Bryant,  White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki immediately talked about race and proclaimed, “She was a child.” 

These juvenile terrorists are proliferating in a society that seems increasingly pathological.   It is a problem that is mostly confined to minorities, where the illegitimacy rate is 70%, or where there is little or no parental oversight.  

Ma’Kia Bryant had been placed in a foster home.  Adam Toledo’s mother did not report him missing for 72 hours.  One has to assume that the killers of Tessa Majors and Mohammed Anwar have similar unstable backgrounds.  Yet Black Lives Matter proudly proclaimed that the destruction of the nuclear family was one of its basic tenets (since removed from its website), and we are now seeing the fruits of the destruction of the family and the downgrade of religion.

The question remains – what to do about these child killers and terrorists.   Pandemic has kept them out of school.  Gangs know that the criminal justice system will go soft on them. 

The Supreme Court last week ruled 6-3 in Jones v. Mississippi that a juvenile may be sentenced to life without parole without a showing that the child is incorrigible.  In that case, a minor brutally murdered his own grandfather, stabbing him multiple times—so viciously that he broke the knife.  Laurence Tribe remarked, “it gutted the just and decent treatment of juveniles.”

But what is the just and decent treatment of juveniles that are so lacking in behavioral inhibitions that they would commit such heinous crimes?   Even with therapy and a structured environment, what does the future hold for the soulless little killer of Tessa Majors, or the two girls that coldly killed Mr. Anwar and were seen on video obsessed with finding their cell phones, while Anwar died in a crumpled heap?  Is there any doubt that if Adam Toledo had slipped away that he would have eventually taken the life of someone else, if he hasn’t already?  The answer cannot be 6 months with a social worker and turn them loose on society again. 

Our society is now so ill that it has bred a whole legion of feral children—zombie-like creatures, like the little girl in Night of the Living Dead, directly out of a Steven King novel, that will stalk and terrorize us while the New Left points fingers at law enforcement officers that are struggling to protect us against them.

Think for a moment of the officers that were faced with the awful choice of pulling the trigger on Bryant or Toledo and what they now have to live with, attempting to keep them from destroying the lives of others.   These events represent the essence of Critical Theory—to place a decisionmaker into a no-win situation.  In Toledo’s case, if the officer doesn’t shoot, he may be killed.  In Bryant’s situation, if the officer doesn’t shoot, the victim will likely be killed.  In each case, the officer is in an awful position—and must decide in a split second.

We are experiencing Night of the Living Dead in real life.

Conspiracy Theories

 

Tucker Carlson was slammed by the Antidefamation League last week for asserting that Democrats are attempting to replace the population with immigrants (legal or not) that would be more likely to vote Democratic in future elections.  He has been vilified on social media for being a “white supremacist” and a “conspiracy theorist.”   He contends that demographic change is the key to the Democrats’ political ambitions.” 

I actually think he’s understating the problem.  It would be hard to dream up a better and more insidious plan to cement one party rule over the country than is being executed now.  It is so wonderfully Stalinist, yet much more stealthy and sophisticated than the brute Stalin could design, or even Adolph for that matter.

Adolph asserted sovereignty for his vision by seeking liebensraum for the German peoples.   His political adversaries, the Bolsheviks, were jailed, beaten and murdered.  Jews were rounded up into ghettos, humiliated and ultimately deported to the camps on boxcars for extermination.   Stalin engaged in similar tactics, although he was not quite as systematic, efficient and industrial as the Nazis.  He starved out the Ukrainians and deported Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians to Siberia to exert control over those lands. 

Today’s Leftists in America are a bit more nuanced (although I suspect that if Plan A ran into roadblocks, they would become less so).   But they are engaging in a form of ethnic and political cleansing no less ambitious than what Hitler and Stalin engaged in.   

If you wish to take over a country and assert sovereignty over it, what do you do?   First, you take over the cities.   That is what armies have done for hundreds of years.  Our armed forces most recently asserted control over Baghdad, Basra, Fallujah and Mosul.   In Afghanistan, we went for Kabul and Kandahar.   World War II in Europe wasn’t settled until we took control of Berlin.  The American Left knows that these major cities are the nerve centers and they wish to have complete control over them.  Make no mistake, New York, Baltimore, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, LA, Portland and Seattle are already under control and the deportations have commenced.

What?  What deportations?  Believe me, they are happening.

The American Left is much more sophisticated than the 20^th century tyrants.  They rely much more on subterfuge than their 20^th century counterparts.   Barack Obama and Susan Rice are much smoother than Old Uncle Joe Stalin.  They are engaging in ethnic cleansing and deportations by simultaneously making these cities unlivable for the existing professional, entrepreneurial and working class and making them very attractive for illegal immigrants and the underclass.  

Aided by the COVID19 pandemic, these cities are no longer livable for most people.

Unlike Stalin and Hitler who herded people into boxcars, working people are self-deporting.  The boxcars are not necessary.

The most important factor is safety.  Murder and sexual assault rates have skyrocketed.  Cashless bail and failure to prosecute has led the “Criminals Gone Wild.”   Illinois just signed into law its criminal reform bill forbidding police to even give chase to criminals.  Carjackings are a routine occurrence now.  You have to be able to go to work every day and enjoy the cultural aspects of a city relatively free of fear of physical harm.   Even after pandemic recedes, citizens are going to be very reluctant to go into the city in the evening for a symphony concert, opera or a play.  New York’s mayor DeBlasio took over several hotels on the Upper West Side and placed homeless, drug addicts, and sex offenders.   Hundreds of them are now wandering around the once middle class vibrant neighborhood, defecating in in the street, harassing and assaulting people at outdoor bistros, and masturbating in the open.   Illinois just passed a criminal reform act and human rights acts, putting restrictions on police (i.e. prohibiting them from chasing perps) and putting burdens on employers (prohibiting them from “undue” discrimination against job applicants with criminal convictions).  In Illinois, landlords cannot make inquiries of prospective tenants about their prior criminal history.  All this is to make urban areas less safe, less livable and more accommodating to criminals.

Taxes.   Illinois and New York continue to raise taxes.  The progressive tax failed in Illinois but they will try again.   New York is raising its top tax rate.  California’s is at 13.3%.   Property taxes in Illinois are the 2^nd highest in the country.   The bottom line is that these places are no longer places where a person can reasonably hope to build a net worth.  The state will confiscate it.

Education.  Pandemic highlighted the state of education in these places.  Unions in Chicago are blocking teachers from going back to work.  And when they do go back to work, the schools have become little more than indoctrination camps.  In Illinois, “Culturally Sensitive Education” and LGBT history (whatever that is) are mandated by state law.  Since these cities are sanctuary cities, your children have to take a back seat to the children of illegal immigrants.

Adding this all up and it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that certain segments of the urban populations are actively being driven out.  And because of the largesse from Washington, showering these mayors with federal dollars, they really don’t care much if their tax base flees.   They are being pushed out by implied threats of violence, the confiscation of wealth, and an education system that is not viable.  To rub salt in the wound, the cities are tearing down the edifices of our culture.  

The message is clear—your presence is no longer desired here.

But the politicians running these places are not quite as bad as those that ran 1930’s Germany.  They’re letting you decide to leave on your own.

For now.

If You Check Signatures We Will Leave

 

While it’s been awhile since I’ve been in business school, there are still a few things that I remember from my marketing and strategy classes.  I do remember a few of the maxims of the late great consultant, Peter Drucker, who famously asserted that “the purpose of a business is to create a customer.”   Other classes taught us about market segmentation, the acquisition costs of a customer and how to build brand loyalty.  I have clear memories of an excellent Harvard Business Review article on the Boston Red Sox, who, despite a long World Series drought, were able to build a tremendous brand and fierce brand loyalty.

Major League Baseball, in particular, has some real challenges.  Its core fan base is aging out.  Younger fans perceive the game to be slow and boring.  And it has lots of competition for entertainment dollars. 

Yet last week MLB was compelled to jump into politics and announce that it was moving the Midsummer Classic from Atlanta to Denver in response to Georgia’s election law that requires a photo ID.   MLB moved the All Star Game to Denver despite the fact that Atlanta has a 51% black population vs. Denver at 9% and the move would disproportionately hurt black businesses in Atlanta.  To rub salt in the wound, Hank Aaron, the man that broke Babe Ruth’s home run record as a Brave, and an African American that suffered racial abuse as a result, died this year.  The game would have also served, in part,  as a celebration to his life and achievements.  Twitter erupted with charges of hypocrisy. The move was to a state with a black population of only 9% and it cost black businesses millions in revenue.   The usual slow-footed Marco Rubio skewered MLB commissioner Rob Manfred for not giving up his membership at Augusta.   But MLB marched on.

MLB had another choice—do nothing, say nothing.  Simply carry on.  But MLB felt compelled to react and thereby offend a nonsignificant segment of its customer base. 

Businesses go through a great deal of work to learn about customer preferences, and how to keep customers and sell those customers other things.  I fail to see how MLB’s decision does any of that.   From what I can gather from the reaction of fans on social media, baseball will likely suffer some level of drop off as did the NFL and NBA after their leap into politics.

Certainly, the move by MLB created quite a kerfuffle and there is some logic to the notion that “there is no such thing as bad publicity” but that only goes so far.  

MLB joins a lengthening list of companies that have gone Woke. The president of Coca-Cola chimed in with his criticism of the Georgia election law (only weeks after it was disclosed that their implicit bias training urged employees to “stop being so white”), as did Delta Airlines.  United Airlines announced that it was going to apply affirmative action to pilot training and hiring.  Demonstrations of Wokeness heated up a couple of years ago when Nike deep sixed the Betsy Ross flag sneaker.

Perhaps the personal wealth of the CEO’s of large corporations is too insulated from risk these days.  Even if they are fired, most get severance packages larger than the GDP of most developing nations.  In a bygone year, CEO’s burnished their images by taking high level board positions in civic institutions.  Today, I suppose it is more important for them to make visible demonstrations of their Woke bona fides.  But I am stunned by the fact that they are willing to do it at the expense of their customer base and their  shareholders.

The Infirm and the Fearful

 

Make no mistake- we are going through as wrenching a period as WWII, an outcome uncertain and the changes to our society, our world, will be permanent changes.   Whether they usher in a prolonged dark period or a return to some form of enlightened, free society will depend on steadfast leadership.  So far, I don’t see it.   What I see is the old and the fearful.

The people now at the helm and that are charged with the responsibility of guiding us through this period are simply old and decrepit.  President Joe Biden is an old 78, and obviously struggling with dementia.  If he puts his pants on with the zipper in the front 5 days in a row, he’s having a good week.  He often struggles to find the right words.  This is a guy that you would not let house sit while you were on vacation and have confidence that he would remember to feed your cat or water your plants.  Biden makes the old Soviet premiers—Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko look like spring chickens.   And Biden is at the top of the decision making tree.

Then we have the old war horse, Nancy Pelosi at 80 is still browbeating legislators, spinning, threatening, and manipulating to advance her goal of a one party, big government system.  Unprincipled and undemocratic, she is ruthless and as power obsessed as any woman in world history.

Finally, there is Anthony Fauci, elected to nothing, but granted de facto unchecked power by the emergence of COVID19.  At age 80, Fauci’s proclamations, often incorrect unsupported by evidence, carry the weight of legislation.  He is responsible for the needless shutdowns, the closing of schools and businesses and the nonsense of double masking, masking of children, and social isolation of our nation.  Without regard to the economic and emotional costs, his inconsistent views have done more permanent damage to our society than Osama bin Laden.   The grotesque aspect of Fauci is that he has been in the SAME BUREAUCRATIC GOVERNMENT JOB FOR ALMOST 40 YEARS, AND HAS NEVER TAKEN ANY PERSONAL RISK, YET DEEMS HIMSELF TO BE AN EXPERT ON ADVISING AN ENTIRE SOCIETY ON MANAGING RISK, and has been empowered to do so. 

We are at a critical juncture as we set a path for the nation’s future, and three of the people that are making crucial long lasting policy decisions themselves have very limited futures.

Not only are we facing multiple threats with ancient leadership, our leadership class is stoking and magnifying fear.  During the last existential crisis of the West, we at least had FDR (“we have nothing to fear but fear itself”) and Winston Churchill (“we shall fight them on the beaches… we shall never surrender”).  This week, in the face of a pathogen with a 99.7% survival rate, the new head of the CDC Rochelle Walensky announced that (“I am scared…I feel a sense of impending doom”).   How did this woman ever achieve a leadership position?   A Margaret Thatcher she is not.  Imagine if our other leaders had said such a thing at critical times—Eisenhower on D-Day, the Founders that knew they would be hanged by the British for signing the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln after the First Battle of Bull Run.  In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson recounts how Winston Churchill, against the advice of his advisors, would sometimes go out on his roof at night to observe some of the air battles going on overhead during the Battle of Britain.   How is this nation supposed to overcome when leaders like Walensky are so timid, uninspiring and anxiety-ridden?   This is a time to present courage, fortitude and equanimity if you are in the public eye.

I have great faith in the American people and great faith in the spirit of the nation, but it will be difficult for us to overcome these obstacles until we force the obsolete and the timid to move off the stage.

The Four Big Lies

 

You ask yourself, “How did I get here?”
Once In a Lifetime

-David Byrne, Talking Heads.

I asked one of my old history professors, Daniel Pipes, a speculative question.  If medical science extended his life long enough to write a new edition of William H. McNeill’s seminal work, The Rise of the West, to mark its 100^th anniversary (2063) what would the preface say?

The West is not doing well at the moment.  Every day, it seems, brings another bit of news that suggests that we are being torn apart, that the liberal society founded on the precepts of the Enlightenment is coming apart.  We don’t yet know the ultimate outcome but it’s clear that the West is experiencing its most challenging crisis since WWII and in America, since the Civil War.  I would entertain other factor, but I would posit the rapid and accelerating decline of the West on The Four Big Lies, some of which I was lured into believing.  I will put these out on the table and invite others to offer more. In subsequent posts, I will expand on these falsehoods.

Chy-na

This is the Big One.  The free market gurus and corporate America peddled this one for years.  As recently as four years ago, I heard Nobel Laureate Eugene Fama proclaim it in person—If we have open trade with China, a prosperous middle class will emerge, demand more freedoms from the Chinese regime, AND THEY WOULD BECOME MORE LIKE US.  This view will turn out to be the most disastrous judgment in the history of Western Civilization.

What we got was precisely the opposite.  Our relationship was never really reciprocal- it was abusive.  China never gave us the access to their markets that we gave China.  China stripped out our industrial base, caused a collapse of our middle class and the attendant social ills, stole our intellectual property, hacked into our systems, crushed democracy in Hong Kong and now openly threatens a free Taiwan.  Xi Jinping altered their constitution to become president for life and obstructed and covered up the disastrous outbreak of COVID19.

The most insulting part of this is that they didn’t become more like us.  We became more like them.  Our freedoms have been greatly eroded.  The tacit partnership between Big Tech and Big Government has tremendously weakened the 1^st Amendment and created a surveillance state.  Worse, the Democrats seized power and are well on their way to executing on a plan to create a one party system (see, e.g. HR-1).

If we fight them there, we won’t have to fight them here.

This was the mantra of George Bush and largely continued under Obama.  The Forever Wars.

This had its origin in the Gulf War of 1991.   The U.S. led coalition, with its Cold War enabled military routed the world’s 3^rd largest army with a dazzling display of advanced technology, air power and a very disciplined volunteer force in 100 days with light casualties.  The ghosts of Vietnam had finally been exorcised.

Ironically, the war went too well and subsequent presidents were tempted to use the military with less restrained and with hard to defend purposes.  The initial black eye was the loss of 18 Rangers in chaotic Somalia.   Then there was the Cole incident. 

The failure of 9/11 allowed a handful of zealots to inflict incredible damage to the U.S. and we followed it with an 18 year war in which we could not subdue an early 20^th century force in Afghanistan.  While I can see how we got drawn into Afghanistan, George Bush and Dick Cheney led us into a costly misadventure in Iraq (which our friends, the French tried to talk us out of and were called cowards in return).  We lost people, money, and international prestige over this debacle with no real gain. 

An underestimated cost of the overuse of our military is that every time we engage someone, our adversaries are watching us, studying our tactics and our technology and planning accordingly.  We continue to act as if the juggernaut military of 1991 still exists.  It does not.  It is now too busy training in Critical Race Theory, and integrating women and transgenders to be a feared fighting force.

Systemic Racism

The notion of “systemic racism” has permeated throughout our governmental and academic institutions.    Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo are its chief hawkers of this unsubstantiated and destructive idea, and it is now being preached as gospel in the armed forces.  It is being packaged and sold as an extension of the Civil Rights Movement, outed by author James Lindsey as The Big Lie.  Bret Weinstein proclaimed that Kendi’s “Anti-racism” was sophistry in his last podcast.  John McWhorter  launched a brilliant attack on “antiracism” in the excerpt from his upcoming book, The Elect: Neoracists Posing as Antiracists and their Threat to a Progressive America. 

(John McWhorter: The Neoracists - Persuasion)

The problem is that systemic racism doesn’t exist.  There is scant evidence to support it.  In point of fact, the “systems” mostly flow in the other direction.  Colleges and corporate America have been recognizing racial preferences for years.   Both institutions have materially lowered the bar and set aside positions for African American for a long, long time.   Yet Kendi and DiAngelo have been remarkably successful in getting the nation to spin in circles and adopt their religion.  Chief Diversity Officer jobs are a top position at many institutions (ironically, almost none held by whites).   Nearly all companies and universities now require “implicit bias” training.  Why send people off to the re-education camps when they show up voluntarily to hear this as part of their work or education?

Systemic racism is like Bigfoot.  Lots of people are convinced that it exists, when we know that it was largely extinguished over 50 years ago.  Yet people like Kendi have convince a large number of people that racism is everywhere. You just have to look hard enough. And keep looking.   I urge you to listen to James Lindsey’s Podcast, “NO! Critical Race Theory Does Not Continue the Civil Rights Movement!

NO! Critical Race Theory Does NOT Continue the Civil Rights Movement - New Discourses

Still, the faux religion of CRT is shredding the cohesiveness of our society and I fear that it will lead to its ultimate dissolution if it is not stopped soon.  I am not encouraged at the moment.  Remember, it took 50 years to prove the famous Patterson film clip of Bigfoot as a fraud.

15 days to flatten the curve.

Yes, we just passed the first anniversary of 15 Days to Flatten the Curve.  We actually flattened the economy and many of the basic rights guaranteed under our Constitution.   Next to our embrace of China, our policy response to COVID19 will be seen by historians as a hideous and grave error.  It has led to the crushing of thousands of businesses and the disruption of all of our lives.  But the worst effect has been on the lives of our children and on our liberties.   Politicians learned that they could invoke the fear of a microbe and brush away the Bill of Rights.   Poof! Almost all of our guaranteed freedoms gone and mostly sanctioned by a feckless Roberts Supreme Court.  Our Constitution is now fluttering in tatters in the wind.   Our youth has, and will continue to bear the brunt of the damage—an entire year without in person school, normal activities and socialization taken from them, and an unsustainable amount of debt piled on their backs to pay back out of their earnings in the future.  Youth suicides are predictably spiking as so many are choosing death over the future our cruel politicians have constructed for them.

The confluence of these 4 Big Lies are, in large part, responsible for the place we find ourselves in.  I am not entirely pessimistic, but I am a realist.  The West is facing its darkest days since Nazism swept across Europe.  We will need leadership, strength and courage to overcome, and we need to muster it soon.

The Costs of Woke

 

Well, well, well, lookie here.

Brett Blomme, president of the foundation that was pushing Drag Queen Story Hour on the nation’s libraries, was arrested on seven counts of child porn charges.

While the nation was tangled up in protecting children from the toxic masculinity of Mr. Potato Head and the racist imagery of the dreaded Dr. Seuss, a real predator was stalking our children.

If you need a reason to speak out against Woke culture, Mr. Blomme has given you one.

As libraries across the country hosted Drag Queen Story Hour, where a drag queen would read  stories to children aged 3 to 8, few had the sense to say no to this pathological event.  Even the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed which said that the kids looked confused, but that it was a fairly benign event.

They were dead wrong. 

At the time, I wrote a strident opposition piece to Drag Queen Story Hour and sent it to our local library as well as to Chairman of the Board of Trustees at The Newberry Library.  The Newberry Library never responded and the local library sent me their “official” tolerant milquetoast policy statement  in return.

Drag Queen Story Hour has nothing to do with tolerance.  It is astonishing to me that the leaders of these organizations failed to discern between tolerance and grooming.  No one had the fortitude to stand up and say NO, this program is not appropriate for children.  What, exactly, did they think was the purpose of this foundation and the push to expose children to drag queens?  How can anyone argue that drag queen story hour is a healthy, nurturing activity for children?

I was not in any of those meetings when Drag Queen Story Hour was presented as an activity.  But it’s a good bet that the fear of being labeled a “bigot” or “homophobe” or “transphobe” was not something they wanted to confront.  It was just easier to be Woke and permit Drag Queen Story Hour.

But the reality is that because they were unwilling to stop and ask whether having children crawl on the lap of a drag queen was appropriate. 

Hint: It’s not.

The arrest of Blomme is exactly why we need to muster the courage to stand up to Woke.  Because no one had the spine to risk being called a bigot, children were put at risk.  The managers of these libraries were facilitating pedophilia, perhaps unwittingly.  We have a duty to protect these children, even at some social cost to us.  The reality is that pedophiles have been desperately seeking to latch on to the LGBTQ movement in order to normalize their sick activities.  The NYT has run op-eds about decriminalizing pedophilia and treating it like an illness.  The Left has been attempting to change the language, demanding that we refer to pedophiles as Minor Attracted Persons.   Netflix had no inhibitions about broadcasting the program Cuties that sexualized young girls.  We need to stop being naïve about how harmless this has been to kids.  It is most certainly not.

I sent the article on Blomme to both the local library and to The Newberry Library, with a sarcastic message, “thank you for your role in facilitating this worthy cause.” In a business, the exercise of judgment this bad usually results in dismissal.  Apparently with not-for-profits, there is little accountability for giving predators access to our children.

Wokeism and Pushing Back

 

For those of you that do not realize it, we are in a religious as well as a political war.  It is a religious struggle unlike the ones that have gone before- unlike the Crusades, unlike the Spanish Inquisition, and unlike the jihad of Islamic extremism (although it sometimes partners with it). 

I recognized it fairly early… about three years ago, and I was quite alone but now I am hearing similar things from notable voices—Douglas Murray, James Lindsey,  Bret Weinstein and others---that Wokeness is a new religion.  According to Douglas, man has a need for religion and with the decline of Christianity and Judaism in the West, Wokeness has come along to fill the void.  It has moved very quickly, taking over large swaths of our government, our educational institutions, from K-12 through universities, and much of large corporate America.   Once you begin to think about Wokeness as a new religion, more about the current turmoil in the West makes sense.  For instance, taking little children to Drag Queen Story Hour seems absurd, until you accept that these moms believe that they are taking their kids to some sort of religious service of a religion they believe in.  I do not even think about it as “political correctness” anymore—it has evolved from that harmless nuisance on college campuses to something more virulent.

Like Christianity, Wokeness has a Holy Trinity and a priesthood.  The Woke Holy Trinity is comprised of:

Racial Justice

LGBTQ Militancy

Climate Change

In addition to a Holy Trinity, Wokeness has its four gospels--- the gospel according to Ibram Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Michelle Obama.  But unlike Judaism or Christianity, it has no mechanism for redemption.   Judaism has its day of atonement- Yom Kippur.  Catholicism has the confessional.  But Wokeism has no redemptions.  It tolerates no dissent.  Its precepts are taken as articles of faith.  Each of the trinity contains a kernel of truth.  Blacks did suffer systemic racism, but it is debatable how much of it lingers.  Gays did suffer from some discrimination, but it was on the wane and gays were granted “marriage equality” in the U.S, and we should not sacrifice womens’ sports on its altar.  Yes, we should be good stewards of the environment, but that does not mean we should collapse our economy in pursuit of clean energy on unrealistic timetables. 

But Wokeism blows all these things up, magnifies them, and distorts them beyond all recognition. According to the Woke,  Blacks suffer from systemic racism,  are being indiscriminately killed by police, and the entire system is racist and must be dismantled.  Gender is a social construct and fluid. Climate change is manmade, happening so fast that it threatens all of mankind and requires massive and immediate government intervention.    Empirical evidence that contradicts any of these articles of faith is summarily dismissed, and anyone serving it up is written off as “alt right,” “right wing extremist.”  

If you doubt the seriousness of this movement and its dreadful implications for our society, I urge you to listen to this short exchange between Bret Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist and a self-proclaimed liberal  (but pro-science and pro-free speech) and members of the racial justice mob on the new platform Clubhouse.

 www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEK3fNJvCyI&t=82s

In this clip, Bret (who has a wonderful weekly podcast with his wife, Heather Heying (Dark Horse Podcast)), naively attempts, in good faith, to engage these people in a reasoned, intellectual conversation.  A few minutes in, it is apparent that he is trapped in a Maost type inquisition in which he is accused of being racist and transphobic (Weinstein is about as far from those things as you can get).  The black supremacist mob cuts him off, shouts him down, then accuses him of trying to “wiggle out” of answering their accusations. This clip is important and anyone that reads my blog should take a few moments to listen carefully.  This is the mob.  It cannot be reasoned with.  It does not wish to hear your point of view.  If you do not accept their doctrine, you are guilty.  Period.

In his latest New Discourses podcast in which James Lindsay, author of Cynical Theories, explains that this movement is NOT an extension of the civil rights movement, ends his podcast with this assertion:

“The question ‘Does this (CRT) continue the work of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s?’ has a definitive, clear, unambiguous, simple answer expressed in two letters—NO! ‘ ‘This is a paradigm shift’ they say.  No it’s a radical flipping over.  It’s not a paradigm shift.  It’s a radical inversion of the Civil Rights movement.  And these f***ers claim the Civil Rights movement as if they were its new heroes and champions.  They are literally rejecting it.

It’s the most effective lie that has ever been foisted in the world in the last 100 years.  And you say, “No, in 100 years?  You ignore the Nazis.  You’re ignoring Stalin.  You’re ignoring Mao.’ Where do you think this is going if this isn’t stopped?  It’s the same logic as all that.  It’s got Hitler’s race.  Mao used race.  It’s got the same cultural revolution moves as Maoism.  It’s got the same underpinnings.  Where do you think this is going?

And it’s taking down a society not like Russa or torn destroyed Germany between the world wars or peasant, broken China.  It is taking down the strongest liberal society in the world.”

This is deadly serious stuff.  Douglas Murray and Bret Weinstein have also wondered aloud how this doesn’t end in gulags (prompting Weinsten to sell “First Against the Wall Club” paraphernalia.  I do not think these intellectuals are being hyperbolic).  I watched The Killing Fields a few weeks ago and was haunted by the similarities between what is going on now and the re-education camp scene

In just the past couple of weeks,  the Mob has successfully gotten Mr. Potato Head de-gendered, Dr. Seuss canceled, and a film about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas de-platformed.  Coca-Cola has told its employees to “try to be less white.”

It has powerful allies in media, government and academia and is growing in strength.  Bari Weiss wrote a masterful article, “The Miseducation of America’s Elites,” which I highly recommend.

The Miseducation of America's Elites - Common Sense with Bari Weiss (substack.com)

While Wokeism has momentum, the pushback has begun.  As I noted last week, conservative and libertarian students at the University of Chicago started an online publication “The Chicago Thinker” with its motto “Outthink the Mob.”  These courageous students are willing to put their names on this publication,  in full knowledge that it risks their embryonic careers.

And a diverse group of public intellectual started a new foundation – The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR)(www.fairforall.org) .  It’s statement is wonderfully crafted:

“Increasingly, American institutions—colleges and universities, businesses, government, the media and even our children’s schools—are enforcing a cynical and intolerant orthodoxy.  The orthodoxy requires us to view each other based on immutable characteristics like skin color, gender and sexual orientation.  It pits us against each other, and diminishes what it means to be human.”

FAIR is precisely the kind of organization that is needed to counter the toxic and dangerous movement that Lindsay has been speaking and writing about.  FAIR has a wonderful, diverse (both racially and politically) group of people behind it—Bari Weiss, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Peter Boghossian, Melissa Chen, Samantha Harris, Steven Pinker, John McWhortle, Megan Kelly and Abigail Shrier among them.  James Lindsay labeled FAIR, the Un-Woke ACLU.  I have already signed up for FAIR’s newsletter, made a donation and sent an email to become a volunteer.

So many friends of mine are seeing this assault on our culture and on our basic principles of reason and the Enlightenment coming from all sides but are at a loss as to what to do.   Signing on as a donor and volunteer for FAIR is a good start (www.fairforall.org).

Yes, we are behind in the game.  And yes, it looks pretty dark and gloomy at the moment.  But the initiative of the students at The University of Chicago and the folks that have started FAIR, both within weeks of each other signal that the battle has been joined.  It is a battle that must not be lost.