It’s time once again to look at what’s going on in the imaginary world of “woke,” in which I highlight some improbable things right-wingers have declared “woke” in the past week.
Canada:
“Canada Is Transforming Into a Woke Authoritarian Dystopia.” declares Hunter Wallace of Occidental Dissent. His problem with the Great White North? He seems to be mostly outraged that the “woke” have been vandalizing or simply tearing down statues of Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill, among others. He’s also convinced that laws on hate speech online will be used to censor people like him,
In this new progressive era, “woke” has been substituted for “liberal.” … In Canada, the “liberals” are now tearing down monuments of liberal icons, trampling on religious freedom and embracing censorship. Churches are also being vandalized and burned down. …
[T]his is the result of educating several generations of Canadian children that their race, culture and civilization is immoral and illegitimate. Liberalism is also illegitimate for being part of that civilization.
Oh, and did he forget WHITE GENOCIDE?
Isn’t it fair to say that this force is anti-White, anti-Western, anti-Christian and anti-liberal? It is just completely opposed to White people, their existence and the culture and values.
I think he almost slipped into “14 words” territory with that last bit.
Dungeons and Dragons:
“The Woke Are Coming for ‘Dungeons and Dragons,” Kurt Schlichter laments in a rant on Townhall. He’s outraged, even though he provides no evidence of this new “wokeness” and he himself thinks of D&D fans as hapless virginal nerds.
It’s amazing to me that there are people out there who think, “You know, I play a lot of ‘Dungeons and Dragons,’ but I’ve been looking for a way to make myself into a more complete loser. And I think I’ve found it! I think we’re going to play ‘Woke Dungeons and Dragons.’ Instead of running around with swords and stuff, attacking people, I think we’re going to sit around and have a struggle session about our feelings about the elf privilege that’s been making things bad in ways.” I don’t understand any of this.
He decides it’s all part of a struggle for POWER — and more.
Why are they doing it? There’s a reason. … Yes, they’re lonely shut-ins who need attention, obviously. Obviously, this is a way for powerless people no one likes who can never achieve anything on their own to try and get something like power and attention, clearly. But it’s more than that. It’s part of a cultural war because they want to invade every institution.
And they have invaded every institution.
They’ve invaded Major League Baseball, the National Football League …
Look, they want to be a part of everything because they want to destroy everything. And they want to destroy you. They want to destroy everything that’s not bizarre because then they get to be the arbiters of truth. They get to be the arbiters of reality. They get to exercise some sort of power that they can’t earn in any other way. ….
Mickey Mouse:
As Disney reopens its various parks worldwide, the tabloid Express notes,
it appears officials have altered the familiar introduction of “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls” in a bid to be more inclusive. … Disney have replaced the greeting with: “Good evening, friends.” …
[T]he change was to make sure people of all sexual and gender identities felt “comfortable in the park”.
But the new greeting has been heavily mocked and criticised on social media, with many suggesting the change was completely unnnecessary and branded it as “woke”.
The Michigan State Police:
“Is Michigan Wokifying Its State Police Department?” Jeff Charles asks on Redstate.com. Naturally, he answers “yes” to his own question,
It looks like infesting the military with woke theology isn’t enough. Now, it appears the hard left is trying to sneak its destructive ideology into law enforcement, at least in the state of Michigan. A recent report indicates that the Michigan State Police (MSP) is beginning to adopt some of the tenets of wokeism and include them in their operations. While this first foray into wokeism might seem small, it is not difficult to imagine how far the left might take it as they gain more power.
So what horrible thing have these “hard left” wokesters done to the state police department? They’re asking employees to list their gender pronouns in their emails.
Wait, what? That’s it?
At first glance, this memo might seem silly, but harmless. After all, what harm is there in placing one’s pronouns at the bottom of an email?
It’s that whole slippery slope thing.
Still, it is worth pointing out that the hard left rarely stops at harmless suggestions. It is not out of the realm of possibility that this could just be the first step toward wokifying the MSP. The slippery slope is evident, isn’t it? How long will it be before employees are punished for failing to use preferred pronouns? What if they don’t adhere to the other tenets of woke theology that the department decides to foist upon its workforce?
I don’t know, they’ll be arrested in their sleep and sent to the Pronoun Gulag?
We’ve already seen this trend in the United States Armed Forces. At least one service member was fired for speaking out against the creeping Marxism in the military.
Yep, you read that right. A surprisingly large number of right-wing dingbats have convinced themselves that the military has gone Marxist. Because that’s the world we live in now.
It’s not hard to imagine that this same paradigm could be imposed in other police departments across the country.
To a certain kind of right-wing dingbat, there is nothing scarier than pronouns.
More Woke to come in next week’s Week in Woke. Send tips if you spot something relevant!
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@ allandrel
Someone more cynical than me might be tempted to think that’s because there’s a new Boba Fett TV show in the offing and Lego want to capitalise on the brand recognition.
https://www.starwars.com/news/the-book-of-boba-fett
I’m living in a “woke authoritarian dystopia”? Funny, you’d think I would’ve noticed.
@Moon Custafer – Yes, exactly. And I don’t know where this guy is seeing the kind of widespread chaos he describes. I heard of one church being burnt down in a probable protest of churches’ role in the residential schools – I’m not saying there weren’t more, or denying other acts of vandalism, but it really pales in comparison with what happened for so many years.
@epitome of incomrepehensibility, last I heard, at least four churches have been burned, and around twenty have been vandalised.
The Catholic church still hasn’t officially apologised for what they did at the schools. What are they waiting for?
@Moggie
The realization to hit them that they’ve done something calling for an apology.
@Ohlmann
A lot of trans gamers who’ve been playing since the olden days disagree with you. You’re also confusing your timelines, and missing some of the meat of world building. What Gygax and/or Arneson were specifically thinking when they put the item in the game (probably a sophomoric joke, knowing the pair of them) has nothing to do with what Ed Greenwood was thinking when he started building the first internally consistent playable world for AD&D*.
For, while the belt might be considered cursed by a rando who tries it on not knowing what it is, there has to be a reason why someone would go to the enormous trouble of making such an item in the first place. Once you frame it like that, there’s one extremely obvious answer and zero other plausible ones.
*Blackmoor/Greyhawk predate the Realms, but that world belonged to the BECMI D&D line, not AD&D (which is the game presently in its 5th edition, and the one presently under discussion.)
Off topic, but earlier today I came upon this conservative “joke” related to recent topics on this site: “Britney Spears just needs to identify as Bill Cosby. Problem solved.” I don’t think I need to say how there are multiple layers of wrong in that.
All hail the hypno-mouse…
Boy oh boy, don’t tell that one guy about the permanent floating D&D game I had in high school around… eh, 1978? A few of us started it, rolled up the characters, and then as people went to and from classes, they’d drop in and out. You played whatever character was needed at the time, you got a couple minutes of recap of where the party was and reading though your stats, and you played a female wizard or a male thief or whoever was available at the time. Ended each day when it was time to catch the bus, picked up each morning before class, I forget how long it went on.
So much wokeness! Or, y’know, it was hard to get together on weekends and only 2 of the guys could afford the books and stuff. And we were theater geeks, so you BET there was emoting galore. Last I heard, everyone turned out fine, with jobs, relationships, and also hetero and cis.
With what’s been revealed (again) in Canada, I don’t think taking down a few statues is the crisis they think it is. And maybe don’t whine about a non-existent white genocide when there was an actual Native genocide for centuries.
Canada only just became woke? That’s strange, I thought that happened when we elected Justin to look woke for us.
Also, @FishyGoat, I feel I have to disagree with you slightly when you say the residential schools were concentration camps. They were really more reeducation camps, à la Vietnam or Xinjiang today.
@Redsilkphoenix
After your post, I felt the need to go read some Not Always Right earlier today. Are you familiar? Might be a good place to blow off steam.
notalwaysright.com
@Surplus
Currently doing my part to bug a Canadian friend to get his soon.
@Snowberry
Their “joke” (they’re so bad at humor) doesn’t even make any fucking sense. I don’t know what kind of pretzeled “logic” is required to get that one.
re: The retail things – I have a lot of stories from ten years of working in a U.S. national (plus a couple of stores in Canada?) craft chain.
There are some people who seem to need to feel superior to others and retail workers are frequently their victims due to the fact that the workers are very limited as to what they can do about it. I remember feeling very much like a captive audience at times when random customers wanted to rant about various things, some not even remotely related to the company I worked for!
The Not Always Right website is a good one. I enjoyed Retail Hell Underground as well.
Has anyone else here been mistaken for a retail worker in a store they didn’t work in? It used to happen to me at Target all the time! I didn’t even own any red shirts then.
@Dalillama Pathfinder actually has a canon NPC who used a Girdle of Opposite Gender to go undercover in the Grey Maidens (a group of all female knights who protect the evil queen Ileosa Arabasti) to investigate what had happened to their sister and ended up discovering that they were more comfortable as a woman. I always thought that was a neat character.
@Hambeast: the only time it happened to me in Target was when I was wearing a red shirt and khakis. I have taken pains to make sure that hasn’t happened again.
I’ve gotten mistaken for an employee at bookstores. Maybe it’s the thick glasses and sensible shoes?
My mom *always* got mistaken for an employee of the fabric store. Which was okay, she knew more about fabric/sewing/etc. than some of the employees did. The manager tried to hire her a few times, but she didn’t want the job.
@Queen otH: I couldn’t make heads or tails of it either. I can’t say it’s funny even in a twisted evil way, because I can’t parse it. Purple monkey dishwasher.
There was a big jump in the 2nd-dose numbers today, about 10% (which would mean over a million people!), and a small drop in the fully-unvaccinated. Hopefully whatever the logjam was it’s gone now.
Meanwhile, anyone knowledgeable about Canadian law know if they recently passed a change to CanCon regulations compelling cable channels to devote a minimum number of hours a day to airing decade-old reruns of Cash Cab? Because suddenly that thing is everywhere, on Space, the Comedy Channel duo, E!, and others, and it’s “off topic” on every one of these (except, arguably, E!).
@Surplus:
I suspect most of the ‘stall’ in doses in Ontario is just a side effect of the dates given at which people are supposed to be allowed to get their second doses. The people who got their second doses before May 9th (which includes me) aren’t supposed to get their second doses until starting next week.
So I think what we have at this point is that the previous stage of people has already mostly got their doses and aren’t showing up anymore, while the next stage wasn’t allowed to be eligible until booking appointments two weeks ago or so.
My second dose is at the end of next week; based on the booking website, I strongly expect that while the current dose count is plateaued, it will spike upwards again next week as people who have been waiting since May finally have their new appointments come up.
“Also, the “canon” way to change gender in AD&D is a cursed item, designed to *involuntary* change sex (useable exactly once and not identifiable as such).”
I remember this very well, because I pined for it to be real. Like a lot of the magic items and some of the spells described in AD&D it was based on something from Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series, books which were terrific in some ways but very uncomfortable in others (rape culture, basically).
I’d actually like to read the whole of that astoundingly incoherent D&D piece David quotes, but it appears you need to subscribe to that site, so no.
@AlanRobertshaw I’m ambivalent about that tzompantli thing, as I’m rather cynical about artists giving voice to the voiceless and I’m rather suspicious of cis artists presenting trans people in a frame of heroic suffering. Also I liked the bare plinth, there’s no need to fill every space.
@Hambeast
As a two-decades-about veteran of the retail wars, I wearily agree with you. Our function seems to be part actually helping the customer, part being an unresisting punching bag for sad small people who need to flex their dominance over someone who can’t retaliate, and part trying to rationalize with the irrational (uh, sir, no you cannot fit an entire pallet of concrete into that Hyundai) without wanting to smack them for being so insistently stupid and then blaming you for their stupidity.
That’s even before politics enter the situation. Ye gods.
I mean, I don’t see any reason we can’t sit around and talk about feelings and elven privilege and shit and run around with swords and stuff, attacking the ruling class.
…
More stories about anarchist orcs, please!
@GSS
Well, I’ll show you! Especially for that “purple monkey dishwasher” remark!
@ColeYote
Hmm, your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
@ Coleyote
Anorchists?
(I’ll get me coat)
Perhaps I can recommend Of Orcs and Men, currently available for a pittance on Steam.
It’s about enslaved Orcs rebelling against their evil Human masters. The (slightly) more famous Styx games are a spin-off.
I only played it for 45 minutes, but it wasn’t bad, just not good enough to hold my attention with so many other games in my library.
Not a ringing endorsement, but right now, during the Steam Summer Sale (just 27 hours left as of posting) it’s only 1,49€, so I thought I’d mention it.
Just to be overly serious, I think Greek “anorchist” would mean someone seeking to live without testicles. An anorcist would be someone seeking to live without orcs, though I’m not sure what the proper spelling would be.
I’ve now had jab 2.
@Surplus to Requirements:
Congrats! I’ve still got a bit over a week wait.
@ColeYote: I, too, wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Maybe we can get a Woke D&D game going on Zoom.
@Surplus: Congrats!
@David: thank you for the “slippery slope” video.
I hate to warn everyone, but I found another horrible blog:
lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.com
Unlike the terrible eradication blog, this blog uses “dog whistles” to sound smart about their scientific racism. They even have the racist Steve Sailor as a featured cementer. They are linked to the terrible Eradica blog. Luckily, Eradica got taken down. Hopefully they are in violation of the terms of service and also get taken down.
They can be reported here: https://wordpress.com/abuse/