Is the War to End All Woke Over?

Is it dead? Has its soul been vanquished? Does it lie unmoving on American free soil, a rotted, punctured corpse? Is its great reign of terror at an inglorious finis?

Has the Great Awokening, at long last, been put firmly to bed, then smothered with one of Mike Lindell’s sweatshop-seamed pillows for good measure? And have all the chirpy wokescolds been appropriately silenced in limited edition Ben Shapiro bridles, complete with “Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings” emblazoned across the mouth guard and available with every new Daily Wire annual subscription?

The second inauguration of Donald Trump has, if you spend an unhealthy amount of time on Twitter (more than five seconds, according to the Surgeon General), dealt a death blow to hard-left identitarianism. Woke isn’t just broke, it’s snapped in half, torn to shreds, burned down to its very last molecule, then gently dusted into the wind. Corporate America is binning race-favortism programs, Disney Studios is editing transgender storylines from its animated offerings, anti-racist proselytizer Ibram Kendi went from prophet to hornswoggler, Black Lives Matter has been exposed as a prestige MLM scam, affirmative action was spiked by the Supreme Court, my beloved New England Patriots pink-slipped “I do see color” coach Jerod Mayo in favor of the biggest, stockiest, white block of homegrown lard that’s ever led a professional football team, Saturday Night Live is tweaking the gussied worry warts at MSNBC, and the FDA just red-lined Red Dye No. 3. (Is the last item considered woke? It technically is not, though I suppose the wokeshivitz would object to any color besides white being treated discriminatorily.)

Progressive buzzwords are even losing esteem. The Anglicized ungendered “Latinx” is out; “BIPOC” is de trop; “safe spaces” are a running, if painfully boring, joke; “trigger warnings” are ninny flags; “antiracism” is an Orwellian dissembled phrase for non-white prejudice.

Most crucially, Donald Trump’s cleaning of the Democratic machine has brought a crucial cash-carrying cadre back into the Republican fold: venture capitalists, namely Silicon Valley techtrepreneurs. Wealthy industrialist and shit-poaster Elon Musk was the first to mingle with MAGA, spending billions of his own fortune to acquire Twitter all because a satirical website was censoriously scrubbed over making a trans joke. Musk’s venture into zing-take world of digital discourse was a flare up to his fellow billionaires that perhaps cultural leftism need not strangle profit-making.

Musk’s fellow moneyman Marc Andreessen noted the vibe shift among many PayPal Mafia players in an interview with Bari Weiss. He qualifies his observation by saying attitudes haven’t actually changed. “The vast majority of the CEOs, executives, founders of the big tech companies are still exactly where they were. The vast majority of the employee base is still very left-wing.”

Hmmmm. So which vibes have really shifted, Marc? What dispensation has drifted? Which weltanschauungs have waffled? What, if any, doxas have been defenestrated, displaced, and deemed déclassé?

Andreessen identifies one aspect of the engulfing “successor ideology,” its most potent convincing force: cancel culture. The deplorables who hold such squalid views like men can’t become women are no longer in danger of being stripped of their livelihood. “All of a sudden, there’s safety. There’s an unwind in the other direction,” Andreessen glees.

Every hairy-palmed undesirable wandering in the wilderness need not be afraid anymore. The gates of respectability, so meticulously braced by prudish progressives, have fallen. It’s now a freewheeling scattershot of orating edgy opinions without fear of reprisal. As one unnamed banker told the Financial Times: “I feel liberated. We can say ‘r*tard’ and ‘p*ssy’ without the fear of getting cancelled… It’s a new dawn.”

So much free rein to talk blue that you won’t reveal your name? Perhaps our coin-flipper is fluffing his own mouth-fouling. Or maybe we’re finally reverting to the informal understanding that epithets can be used sparingly, in sotto voce, with jest, and their use shouldn’t constitute social execution.

As for the federal recognition of PC baloney like “nonbinary” and DEI quotas, Donald Trump flushed those diktats down the bowl not long after taking his second oath of office. The de jure discrimination against vanilla-skinned bureaucrats is officially reneged. But Trump isn’t quitting at a retvrn to an ancient status quo—so retrogressive it was in force but four years ago. He’s moving forward and backward with his machismo patriotism, renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and reverting the Denali designation to Mt. McKinley, both of which are probably causing a deluge of tears in The New Yorker editing office.

And just why is Trump pushing his Divinely blessed luck? As Ezra Klein points out, the President didn’t exactly atomize the opposition. Yet, “Trump’s cultural victory has lapped his political victory.” His win, like the trollish provocations of his public benefactors, has produced a bro-backlash against the left’s ascendant she-bossiness.

For now, wokeness may be in a defensive crouch. But it’s rightie wishcasting, or America-First fanfiction, to think that the progish Balkanizing ideology is hereby banished to the shadow realm. It’ll be back, as soon as the triumphant dudes get too lulled by Zyn, the Super Bowl, PlayStation 6, and the Creed reunion tour.

The thing about vibes is that they wear off, your dendrites become inured, and a new, enthralling sensation must be sought.