Woke Politics As Comedy, Soap Opera, Vaudeville, And Grand Guignol–How Can Anyone Take Them Seriously?

There those on the Left for whom politics is existential.  The successful fight to remove Donald Trump from office was nothing less than mythic – a St. George and the Dragon tale of mighty heroism, a glorious struggle to remove evil from America. 

The continuing struggle to remove all traces of his hateful vision of a racist, homophobic, and greed-driven nation and to replace it with one of love, compassion, and tolerance has been cast in the same fabled way.  The New Age of progressive values -  the restoration of the black man to his rightful place at the top of the cultural pyramid, the erasure of heterosexuality, the final and absolute recognition of women as the superior sex, and the complete restructuring of America’s economic system from capitalism to redistributive reform – is next to godliness.  Far from a socio-political regime change, it is spiritual in proportion and intent.

There is no room from comedy in this reform.  The intended Utopia too grand, too inevitable, and too glorious for any sniping satire.  It is beyond criticism, above censure, as pure as any God-inspired place on earth.  Reason is a thing of the past, used by white men to justify their oppression of the poor and the marginalized.  The logic of Aquinas and Augustine, early Christian philosophers, the benchmark for critical intellectual analysis ever since, is nothing more than a manipulative tool for the clerical elites of Christianity who, since the appearance of Jesus Christ have sought to terrorize and eliminate all other faiths.

A political movement without the limiting constraints of reason and logic, one motivated by pure belief and hopeful aspirations, can only inspire high comedy.  Untethered by the rules of analytical thinking, exegesis, or parsing, political idealists need no algorithms.  Tautology and self-serving conclusions rule. A particular law is good for Americans because it is a good law,. Black superiority is the new meme because black people are by nature superior. Investment in children is ipso facto right, just, and called for because children are innately righteous, just, and  pure.  Transgenderism will replace heterosexuality because it is there – a clear and unequivocal statement of sexual freedom and an obvious, innate challenge to another elitist system. 

The cancel culture is perhaps the most comedy club worthy plank of the progressive platform.  It’s headliner is the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a horror film where zombies threaten to take over the world, and the iconic image is Donald Sutherland howling j’accuse! and pointing his finger at one of the few remaining alive, soulful human beings left among the onslaught of the living dead.

J’accuse! is the rallying cry of the cancel culture.  Political zombies accuse their living, breathing, thinking neighbors, icons of history, and common folk.  ‘Racist, homophobe, white supremacist’ they howl like Donald Sutherland.

Jefferson, shining light of the new Republic, man of inspiration, philosophy, and political insight; personof rectitude and principle; a founding father with vision, understanding, and foresight, must be cancelled and remove from the American pantheon because he had sex with one of his slaves.  He must be dismissed entirely because of this manhood, this predictable behavior within the cultural norms of early America, and the unproven supposition of his abuse. 

The toppling of his statues, the calls to turn Monticello into a slave museum and a black writers’ workshop, the questioning of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights because of Jefferson’s hand, and the renaming of every school, town, and street with his name on it is nothing more than fodder for comedy mills. Such self-righteous tomfoolery and bald-faced ignorance can only be laughed at, satired, and pilloried for their hysterical excess.

The progressive big tent is big indeed.  All comers are welcome – gay rights activists, feminists, environmentalists, lettuce pickers, drag queens, let-‘em-in immigrationists, tax mavens, and wealth haters. Come one, come all.  In such a heady environment where foundational principles are hated by all – market-based capitalism is at the heart of all social dysfunction – cancelling takes on epic proportions.  

Anyone guilty of an infraction of the received progressive wisdom should be expunged from the public record, removed from consideration, exiled and banned from public discourse.

Men who look askance at women are sexual predators for intent is tantamount to abuse. Questioning the decades-long stagnation of inner city black neighborhoods is tantamount to racism.  Crime, drug abuse, broken families, truancy, vagrancy, and disrespect for civil authorities are logical, predictable, and therefore acceptable outgrowths of racism; and therefore any suggestion that personal responsibility, adherence to majority norms, and willingness to take charge of communities in disarray is a must is racist.

So the list of well-known personalities who need cancelling is long – every president of the United States with the exception of perhaps Richard Nixon and Harry Truman has been guilty of sexual deviance, adulterous affairs or lust in their hearts. 

Congressmen and Senators have been known for their bacchanals, spending a fortune on gas-powered travel, and treating nannies, maids, and leaf-blowers with disrespectful salaries, one hand up the dresses of interns and the other in the till. Every major industrialist of the industrial revolution chased women, supported mistresses, and travelled through life with nary a thought to compassion, consideration, or inclusion of minorities, the disabled, or the poor. 

Their intent was to make money and that enterprise built the country’s railroads, steel, oil, and shipbuilding industries, put thousands to work, and built the nation into the economic powerhouse it has always been.

Every single one of the Yale residential colleges was named for exceptional men, leaders of the new nation, and foundational thinkers; but since they all had some connection with slavery one way or another (what influential, wealthy man of the 1700s did not?) their names must be removed and replaced by worthy women of color.

So the cancel culture, identity politics, woke culture, thanks to its inconsistency, lack of irony, and sheer ignorant chutzpah, deserves whatever jokes leveled its way.

 Who can possibly listen to chicken-neck, mullletted, ambulance chasing Al Sharpton’s straight-faced commentary on America’s systemic racism and white elitism without thinking of Tawana Brawley and the hundreds of other ‘because-they’re black’ victims sought out by Sharpton?  

How can anyone listen to the tearful, mournful apologies of sexually wayward politicians and preachers without laughing out loud? Who can read the censoriously woke statements of college presidents who, having capitulated to the demands to teenagers, turn the campuses into Soviet-style gulags?

Men who look at the ceiling when a beautiful woman walks into an elevator, who hem and haw before they can even think of commenting on a woman’s looks despite the fact she has spent hours in front of a mirror before going to work are neutered fools.

Washington, DC is named after a man who owned slaves, a city whose Capitol was built by slaves, whose historic C&O Canal was dug by slaves.  Why not change the name of the Nation’s Capital as well as all public places with the discredited moniker? If the cancel culture radicals pick and choose among racists, then the whole enterprise is flawed and ridiculous.

The coming Republican victories in the midterm elections (11/22) will help to turn back this shamelessly ignorant tide, but it will take a more systemic change to stem it completely. Americans who have been cowed and are now afraid of their own shadows must fearlessly speak up.  Elon Musk has shown the way.  No more cancel culture on Twitter.  Say what you want, don’t look if you don’t like, and get on with it.

The end is not in sight, but a few cracks in the wall are visible.