Anti-woke Faddism: Proof that “Goofy” isn’t Just a Disney Character
Back in the 1920s, there was a fad of swallowing live goldfish. In the 1970s, there was a fad of paying good money to own a pet rock. In the 2020s, there’s a fad of being outrageously anti-social in order to be the first on your block to have more than 15 minutes of fame. There are a couple of really popular routes to near-instant notoriety. One is to perform the rudest and crudest of acts as offerings to the ever-fickle news gods that they might answer a desperate prayer to grant fame as a punishment for bad behavior. This fad has become so fascinating to the political class that they anointed the faddiest of the nationally ranked fadsters as the fadiest fadster of the decade. Go Big Orange! (Sorry Ron or Rod, as the case may be, you’re still number two.)
There’s another fad that is popular in the 2020s. The rude fad is pretty much relegated to the MAGA class of society. But in the more historically aware class, those who can reference the reason the pilgrims came over the pond and the horrors of the inquisition, and the killing fields of Pol Pot, there exists an apparent denial of reality which is often stated as, “Nice rules”. There’s a chance this is mere ostrich-ing in the nearest sand trap or, maybe it’s an aversion to acknowledging an un-nice thing like reality. This fad is probably more dangerous than the fame fad because it gives a faddist a nice way to focus his disdain for the people who are not included in his level of understanding of how nice the world actually is in spite of Republican-held State Houses. He sort of wants the poor to remain poor but he doesn’t want them to suffer an un-nice life.
Here comes the fair and balanced part. Neither side has anything to hoo-rah about. Both “sides” are promoting their own version of that hit Indie show, Dog in the Manger. The MAGA faddists tout a reality that just does not exist even calling it a set of “alternative facts”. But then the Nice-ists suffer from better idea syndrome and want to remove suffering from the world. Which may be a really great idea. The only problem seems to be that the world isn’t ready to remove suffering. Probably because of how much we all love to suffer. None of us would have a thing to talk about if it were not for our everlasting suffering stories. Nice-ists do not even want to get near suffering so they tell stories of trying to scare it off with the money. MAGAs are upfront about their desire to watch people suffer and they all have that photo of a Turkish official torturing starving children with a loaf of bread stashed along with their porn in a secret app on their iPhone. As long as they aren’t the ones suffering, they’re up for it.
We’re all pretty used to folks doing everything possible to gain their 15 minutes of fame but some of the MAGA crowd should get awards for how dramatic their hoo-rah acts are. The only problem is that some of the hoo-rah-ing is getting out of hand and folks who appear to be mentally challenged are wantonly killing people because they don’t care for their ethnicity or they’re angry at a teacher they once had or are just plain crazy and convince themselves that killing a lot of people all at once is making a statement that will convince people of their righteousness. Murder does none of the above and hoo rah-ing for our side does not address the problem of gun violence as the leading cause of children dying in the United States¹. This is not a passing fad. This is a serious social sickness. I don’t see how it’s an issue that can be resolved with hoo-rahs. The same is true for the abortion issues.
There are real-world consequences for fantasy world decisions made in “wonder what the poor folks are doing now” parties where the frat boys from college are now the frat boys of political influence and where self-gratulation for the acme of socially deviant concoctions of power for power’s sake are planned and discussed. When those plans come to fruition there is always an inevitable hoo-rah. But there are not any hoo-rahs from the people who suffer the social dystopian fraternization of self-righteous legal restrictions on their freedoms designed by half-drunken members of a glorified boys club. There, now you have one possible picture of both sides of hoo-rah. A kind of “six of one and a half dozen of the other” perspective.
Here’s the goodie. That’s the very best system of political discourse that has ever been in the history of humanity. But there are checks and balances built into the system. Those checks and balances do not right the political ship immediately but they do not allow it to capsize either. That’s the system that allows “woke” to live even in Florida. It might take a while but “woke” will prove it has a right to life and the system of the collective political discourse will be wiser for it. There will be some folks who will get all twisted up because their horse ran second or third but the winning horse will still get the trophy.
This is the problem that all the faddists face. In a democracy, fads have to be measured in terms of popularity to even qualify as proper fads. There’s little doubt that the faddiest of the fadsters, Big Orange, passes the popularity test in certain areas of the country. While Old Dark Brand is not very faddy at all. The old guy is downright practical and just gets shit done. It’s hard to imagine that frat bro faddists of any ilk would cotton to that level of extreme practicality. Not even Mr. Practicality himself, Warren Buffet, cottoned to Dark’s economic concepts even though Mr. Buffett has consulted with the Brandon White House on the banking crisis. I suspect that is how political discourse is supposed to take place. People with opposing points of view communicate by exchanging information in order to reach an agreement that will result in the best possible improvement to what we all experience as real. Everyone involved in the discourse brings something to the table and no one gets exactly what they want. But with properly conducted political discourse everyone gets to move closer to what we all want in the long run.
Trying to punish a beverage because the advertising agency is too “woke” or punishing a corporation that states publicly that it (the corporation) likes to make money from all of its patrons can not be anything more than a passing fad. Nor is it anything less than faddish to claim that gentrified folk are less enabled by white privilege than redneck mud racers. What’s still true is that a black man who is subject to a traffic stop is at risk of his life while a white man in the same situation is not at all likely to die due to a tail light malfunction. That’s a result of hoo-rah faddism. That can not be right.
References
1. Child and Teen Firearm Mortality in the U.S. and Peer Countries. (2022, July 8). Kaiser Family Foundation. Retrieved June 11, 2023, from https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/
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