There’s lots of stuff that has annoyed me about the America of recent years.
One of them is a woke movement that has tried to convince me that my country is irredeemably racist, and if I dare challenge that verdict it would be proof that I’m racist.
Another annoying thing is how equity replaced meritocracy and success suddenly became “white privilege,” with all outcomes — good or bad — being somehow connected to race. The ideal of a colorblind society famously championed by Martin Luther King? That was replaced by identity politics.
If I wanted to discuss the merits of gender-affirming care for teenage kids, I was transphobic.
If I used words like “looting” during the Black Lives Matter riots in the summer of 2020, it was a sign of bigotry.
If I complained about the radical lockdowns during COVID, I was anti-science. If I called out the dangers of “defunding the police,” I was prejudiced.
And on and on.
We ended up with about half of the country constantly walking on eggshells, when the greatest fear became the fear of saying the wrong thing.
Have you heard of college professors who must be hush hush about supporting Israel, or regular Americans who are afraid to tell pollsters and others that they will vote for Trump? They’re in that part of America that regularly censors itself to stay out of trouble.
Here’s the thing we must be honest about, regardless of who we voted for on Nov. 5: the drive to censor people comes mostly from the woke left. Indeed it has been a staple of the woke left to use insults like “racist,” “bigot” and “transphobe” as weapons to shut down debate and cancel offenders.
Democrats who know better have been afraid to speak up, lest that would help the dreaded other team (also known as Republicans). These Dems know that the woke movement comes from their side, which is why they often try to ridicule or minimize it as “much ado about nothing.”
But in a free society that so values freedom of speech, shutting people up is much ado about a lot.
And yet, despite recent signs of a woke backlash, people are still walking on eggshells, still afraid of offending the easily offended with their speech.
One of the ironies of leftists shutting people up is that they used to be the champions of free speech. They even launched a free speech movement in Berkeley in the 1960s. How did these social rebels become such scolds, so fragile and self-righteous?
The Democrats, after all, are supposed to represent the “cool crowd.” Republicans may have MAGAs in pick-up trucks, but the Dems have Taylor Swift and George Clooney. They are the compassionate ones who push for liberty and worry about the planet.
And given that they control our cultural pillars – from academia and Hollywood to Silicon Valley and the media – there’s always been this sense that Democrats represent not just the mainstream but the majority.
Now, these same Democrats — the political home of the woke left — have taken a serious drubbing.
With Republicans winning a majority of the popular vote for the first time since 2004, the very definitions of “mainstream” and “majority” may be up for grabs. It won’t be as easy for the woke left to shut down dialogue with insults.
It’s as if a broad coalition of Americans decided to stand up and tell Democrats that the country also belongs to them.
This is a positive development for the whole country. It’s not healthy when either side believes it owns the truth. Because Democrats have run the White House for 12 of the last 16 years, it’s understandable if they felt like this was “their” country. But it’s also understandable if the other side gets its turn to run things.
When a candidate racks up such a decisive victory fair and square, with 73 million votes from across the spectrum, it becomes harder to attack his voters. Trump may still be as horrible as Democrats think he is, but he’s no longer illegitimate. His victory is democracy at work.
His victory is also a repudiation of the woke movement. We’ll hear plenty about the elections in the coming weeks, but as for me, I’m hoping for a more freewheeling America; an America where debate on the most sensitive issues will replace personal attacks; an America with a slightly thicker skin.
One nation, indivisible, with liberty and no more walking on eggshells for all.
