“The Republicans who revamped our constitutional system in the aftermath of the Civil War by devising the Reconstruction Amendments—banning slavery, guaranteeing the equal protection of the law and enforcing individual rights against the states—understood that they couldn’t simply project their moral and political views onto the unamended law. They had to change the Constitution.”
This is from a book review called Judicial Values by Tal Fortgang, on the book How to Interpret the Constitution by Cass R. Sunstein, published in The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2023.
This description sets wokeism in high relief. Wokeism is the idea that slavery is so evil, there is no need to change the Constitution to end it, you can just retroactively redefine terms with a commonly understood meaning. No need to heed legal or cultural norms if your cause is important enough. Anyone who disagrees gets branded as a defender of slavery. Slow change is unnecessary. Consensus is unnecessary. Preserving the process of law-making and the rules society has against violence and for the preservation of private property are unnecessary. This is a great example because slavery is the greatest evil our country has faced. Still, dismantling the Constitution to end slavery is counterproductive, and as history illustrates, unnecessary.
Regardless of the goals and policy aspirations of wokeism, its fatal flaw is the methods or lack of thereof that it uses to promote its agenda.
There is no text for wokeism. No written bible or other document. Every tenet, every platform is subject to change at any moment without notice.
That’s the heart of cancel culture- retroactive punishment on changing norms. If cancellable offenses were knowable and static, cancel culture would be the same as any social code that has permitted speech and speech that is cause for ex-communication. Wokeism is a harsh and punitive ever-changing code of conduct that offers no forgiveness and no warning.
This is what sets wokeism apart from classic liberalism, conservative thought, and organized religion: all philosophies who abide by an unchanging, or extremely difficult to change, set of well-articulated written values.
To me Intersectionality/wokeism is the literal regression of human civilization.
Why? It's simple. All the barbarism and horrible things that have gone down in the past. The stuff that makes people say, “Why not just shoot that person, or stab them? Why do they have to torture people before they kill them? ”
Intersectionalality makes all that barbarism OK again. 👍
Another way to look at it. Remember Manifest Destiny? Paraphrasing here, “American Indians are ALL savages, so we should kill them and take their land.”
The American Indians weren't savages, Manifest Destiny was a pretext to make stealing land from American Indians politically acceptable.
Intersectionalality and the whole illogical “oppress-ED/oppress-OR” type mindset is a similar prescription for barbarism.
We know this because people are backing many groups that commit acts of barbarism.
Intersectionalality plays to the absolute worst of all human emotions. Jealousy, Hate, Greed, Lust, Anger, Revenge.
I have a question, “What amount of oppression makes it acceptable to kill and rape random people?” Is there is a magic quantity to said oppression? We’ll never know, because it depends on which individual you ask.
Intersectionalality is not about logic, because those who adhere to it are “useful idiots.” Whatever happens to society, however all this plays out in the end, understand one thing. The useful idiots are never going to make it to the end. Useful idiots are only good/useful during the destruction and demoralization phases of societal downfall.
After all, you can't build a socialist utpoia comprised of people who can't be reasoned with, and who will view ANY power structure as oppression.
That's why some people consider wokeism a "mind virus" which isn't a bad description.
I like what you said about no forgiveness and no warning. Yet it walks around in the most regal clothing, preening in moral rectitude.