The Insidious Woke Media

Last night The Omnivore was given a perspective that makes a lot of sense. The question was why run of the mill republicans are upset about various "woke" shows or movies--the whole "wokeness" of pop-culture in general.

If you ask them, they will tell you about the pernicious effects of woke-ness on our society: forcing good upstanding Americans to be white supremacists, shattering the great Melting Pot (into what? who knows), becoming a Majority Minority country, even! Oh, and voting blue.

But none of that holds up. There is a documented chain of radicalization that doesn't rely on TV shows like Madam President. The Great American Melting Pot allowed for Chinatown and Little Italy and, hell, Boston from day one. The damage being done by cultural shift and miscegenation exists only in the minds of racists.

So what's going on? Why is "Bob the typical Republican" so upset about these things? The Omnivore asserted--and knows this is part of it--that Bob's media pumps his eyeballs full of outrage. The Drag Queen Story Hour has 35 instances total--that's like one per 10+ million people--but when it shows up on your front-page web-site it's the End of the Republic.

That's only part of the problem though.

Peak Strong Girl

This appeared on The Omnivore's timeline and The Omnivore was amused (he has talked with the guy who posted it online). This is a show that apparently will exist on Apple TV. The guy in question almost certainly does not own / have a subscription to Apple TV--in order for him to be exposed to this (whatever it is) he would have to jump through numerous hoops just to see it and, let's be real, he's probably not an Apple guy to begin with.

So what's he complaining about here? He sees it as part of a larger culture battle--one where creeping wokeness is taking over (has taken over?) the media and is turning it all into one glob of nothing-but-woke pablum. This is, of course, absurd (after all, in far bigger venues we've gotten shows like Preacher and Happy--ultra-violent and not-woke, in the movies we recently got John Wick and just a few years ago American Sniper. This won't tip the scales).

His being upset with this isn't in line with any intellectually valid fear--no, it's something else.

He's Triggered by the Microaggression
The perspective The Omnivore was given is this: for the average Republican, living in modern society is full of "microaggressions." Remember that microaggressions are a "woke" term for a kind of off-hand micro-scale racism that majority-people practice without meaning to--always assuming the Asian kid is Good At Math, for example. Or consistently asking the brown-skinned girl "where she is from" (Topeka Kansas).

The woke-Left's campaign against microaggressions was much mocked by the Right--but here we see a a guy who is upset by a passing reference to a show with some women in uniform wearing sunglasses.

He's waiting eagerly for the "market correction."

Buddy: This *is* The Market. Apple TV is, like all those other streaming outlets, driven relentlessly by data-mining. The Omnivore can explain it to you, if you want.

But no amount of explaining to him how this is something they think their viewers will like--the Capitalist / Free-Market icons that Republicans used to stan for--is gonna work. Why? Because he's (minorly) Triggered.

Triggering is a real thing for people with, like PTSD (don't set off fireworks at the VA clinic) but it has been taken to mean "upset by"--or "butt-hurt about"--by the right.

It appears They Would Know--rather than just scrolling past this--a show he would have a difficult time even obtaining access to (probably), much less watching, he had to tweet. It attacked, after all--the Republican is Never. The. Bully.

This Makes A Lot of Sense
Before you just go and laugh at the guy, consider something: if living in the modern world is (a bit) like being microaggressed at all the time (after all, you go to the cinema and you see WOKE AVENGERS, WOKE BLACK JAMES BOND, and so on) then it seems, to the Republican, like they are under attack from a massive, coordinated, hostile force.

The entirety of The Media and Hollywood, and so on is Turned Against Them--and when big companies they like adopt "Diversity" or remove their ads from Breitbart or whatever, it's like being stuck by hundreds of little knives all the time.

That's gotta suck.

You think they'd be more sympathetic to the black dudes getting followed around the grocery stores, really.