The world has witnessed in these last few weeks the spillage of ‘wokeness’ and ‘intersectionality’ out of college campuses onto American streets. First, an explanation. Wokeness, or to be ‘woke’, is a leftist idea whereby one is aware of the horrible racism and injustice permeating America today. Intersectionality is a doctrine in which one’s station and general lot in life is determined by interwoven and immutable characteristics like race and gender all linked together to create unbreakable systems of bondage, racism, sexism, and classism. Intersectionality creates a scale of power in which heterosexual white men rule for their benefit using vast, invisible forces to oppress everyone below them. Of course, President Trump is both the physical and metaphysical representation of all this.
Intersectionality reminds one of Cambodia’s Communist Khmer Rouge where Angkor, or the party, was all seeing and knowing, at once everywhere but untouchable. Which makes sense since Intersectionality was conceived by Marxist college professors. The author apologizes for the exercise in academic gobbledygook, but it’s important for understanding what is happening. In practice, Wokeness and Intersectionality mean college campuses are churning out young people obsessed with their ‘identity’ and convinced invisible forces conspire to keep them oppressed. These young graduates are now in the workplace.
A band of ‘woke’ staffers got an editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer fired for the headline, ‘Buildings Matter Too’, a perceived slap at the Black Lives Matter movement. Hundreds of young ‘woke’ persons at the New York Times forced an editor to resign because he published an op-ed by Republican Senator Tom Cotton calling for Trump to use the military to quash the nationwide George Floyd riots. Cotton’s is an outrageous argument to a political movement which is now calling for the police to be ‘defunded.’ Right now, the Minneapolis City Council, where the riots started, is planning to ‘dismantle’ the police department. When asked by organizers of a Minneapolis George Floyd rally if he supported defunding the police, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told organizers at a George Floyd rally that he didn’t support defunding the police, they ordered Frey to leave, and the crowd chanted, ‘Shame!’ as he forlornly skulked away. Frey is not the only mayor to be publicly humiliated. Attendees at a George Floyd rally in New York City booed Mayor Bill de Blasio off the stage.
Corporations across America are paying homage to Black Lives Matter, issuing statements of support for BLM and condemning the murder of George Floyd; as if anyone in America thinks Officer Derek Chauvin was right to put his knee on Floyd’s neck. The genuflecting includes giants of American life. Three years ago, the National Football League told players they couldn’t kneel in protest during the National Anthem. Now it grovels, ‘We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest,’ Commissioner Roger Goodell said.
The kneeling is not just metaphorical. It is real. In many places police and even National Guard troops have knelt as a sign of respect to BLM protests. In Cary, North Carolina and Dayton, Ohio, white demonstrators and police officers symbolically washed the feet of BLM members as an act of repentance. In Webster, Massachusetts, the chief of police laid down in the street for eight minutes and forty-six seconds in a recreation of George Floyd’s murder. Congressional Democrats led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi donned traditional African Kente cloth and knelt in Capital Hill’s Emancipation Hall.
During the worst of the riots, President Trump, as is his wont, said something controversial. ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts,’ the president tweeted. The left feigned outrage, but an American has the right to defend himself. Some in law enforcement are encouraging citizens to do just that. Polk County (Florida) Sheriff Grady Judd warned looters, ‘I would tell them, if you value your life, they probably shouldn’t do that in Polk County. Because the people of Polk County like guns, they have guns, I encourage them to own guns, and they’re going to be in their homes tonight with their guns loaded, and if you try to break into their homes to steal, to set fires, I’m highly recommending they blow you back out of the house with their guns.’
Indeed, between the Wuhan Coronavirus and the George Floyd riots, guns sales in America have surged. During the last week in May, when the riots started, sales of guns increased by 78% over the total from May of 2019. The FBI performed three million background checks in May, the highest total in their history. And, the stock of gun manufacturer Smith and Wesson has increased by 15%. Hundreds of thousands of rifle and pistol armed Americans have taken to the streets to defend their homes and business. Now whose woke?
