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The Religious Fervor of the Woke
Charles Lipson has written a thought-provoking essay about our latest Great Awakening Awokening. He begins,
One of the most striking features of American history is its periodic waves of religious fervor. We are in the midst of another today, stripped of its references to God but filled with the same passionate desire to be reborn, absolved from past sins.
From time to time others have noted that today’s leftism is a de facto religion, with its own creed and rituals. With the recent Gallup survey of church-going practices of Americans showing that fewer than half attend religious services, perhaps it is not surprising that politics has become a substitute faith.
Lipson continues with a description of the players involved, white, black, Asian, Hispanic. But I think he only scratches the surface. I think the real issue is class:
…as second- and third-generation Hispanics embrace the American Dream, adopt bourgeois values, and move up economically.
It’s not only that some Hispanics are embracing middle-class values (setting aside the current tidal wave at the border), but that too many of all races have been mired in the underclass for generations. Urban housing projects, the removal of vocational programs in high schools, addiction, plummeting marriage rates…problems the government has tried yet failed to solve, and in many cases exacerbated.
It is hard to find a silver lining here, but there is one. This frenzy of self-flagellation is unsustainable. It will fade away.
On this point I’m not so sure, because
(p)rogressive leaders must know their time is limited because they are moving swiftly to push their “anti-racism” agenda through Congress.
Like any government program rushed through Congress, once the Woke-Government coalition establishes its official religion as a point of law it may well approach immortality.
Never let a crisis go to waste.
Published in Domestic Policy
Sadly this religion doesn’t come with any redemption. People are forced to apologize but nothing changes and they are still shunned.
It is unsustainable but that is not a final answer. Will the right come back because of widespread revision of the Big Stupid the left is now pushing or will the left take these new gains and quickly morph into something less repulsive?
A help understanding the Woke:
https://css.cua.edu/humanitas_journal/church-of-woke/?s=09