Mark Twain once said, “Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
Imagine what he’d think now. The woke world exhibits an extreme obsession with dividing our nation. Finding new victims of race, gender, and sexual preference while pointing an accusatory finger toward everyone else stirs a constant churn and burn of negative emotions within our culture. Woke warriors seem to own a year-round hunting license for oppressors while impaling and showcasing them like Yautja, the extraterrestrial hunter of humans in the movie Predator.
While the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World are positive, the following seven wonders are off-putting — even defying objective truth and reality. Like Twain, I use the word “wonder” with a sense of disillusionment.
1. We Must Wonder at the Woke-Scolding of Corporate CEOs
Corporations can give massive amounts of money to woke politicians and causes. Activists have learned the skill of woke-scolding corporate leaders until they cave and conform to their demands. If not, the mob targets and swarms the executives until they succumb to unrelenting social shame and public pressure.
Through partnering with Veebs (an app allowing customers to scan store items to check for how well or poorly they support woke values), Newsweek published a list of the top 10 woke companies.
Here is the full list:
- Unilever (maker of Dove, Vaseline, and other skincare products)
- e.l.f. (cosmetics)
- Mars (M&M candy, Pedigree dog food)
- Pernod Ricard (Seagram’s gin, Jameson whiskey)
- Campbell’s (soup, Goldfish snacks, Prego pasta sauce)
- PepsiCo (soft drinks, Gatorade, Quaker Oats)
- The Hershey Co. (chocolate, SkinnyPop snacks)
- Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams
- Mattel (Fisher-Price games, DC Comics-licensed toys)
- McCormick (Lawry’s spices, French’s mustard)
Surprisingly, brands like Disney, Bud Light, and Target did not make the Top 10, though we’d bet they’d make the top 20.
Corporate leaders are bowing down to elites’ in-your-face threats. While they may not personally believe that America had an evil founding and poisonous past, regrettably many CEOs cannot stand up under the heat of political correctness.
Unfortunately, corporate wokeness is already well on its way to threatening the American freedoms we enjoy. Disagreeing with a government and corporate woke alliance can lead to having your bank accounts and credit cards quickly frozen. (Ask Canadian truckers if you don’t believe me.)
2. We Must Wonder at the Woke World’s Slanted “Viewpoint Diversity”
Uri Berliner, an award-winning senior editor at NPR, recently shook up his news organization with a scathing piece at Bari Weiss’s Free Press. Berliner recounts his 25-year history as well as the left-leaning evolution of his outlet. Statistics told Berliner that by 2023, only 11%of NPR listeners were conservative with close to 70% describing themselves as liberal.
Sadly, Berliner writes, “An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.” He lists a series of failures in NPR not covering major news stories the American public needed to hear because its leaders did not wish to underscore the truth of news stories pointing out conservative reality.
Berliner concludes by indicting NPR with “the absence of viewpoint diversity.” Everyday Americans who follow the news resonate with this honest reporter and the woke world’s war on killing conservative and moderate stories and voices.
3. We Must Wonder at the Woke World’s Devaluing of American Border Laws
The wokerati envision a world without militarized borders, deeming such borders to be a tool of oppression conceived by white people, especially those of European origin. They deplore calling someone an “illegal” immigrant.
Victor Davis Hanson has warned of the left’s push to open our borders, stating, “Polls continue to show that the American people support measured, diverse, legal, and meritocratic immigration as much as they oppose mass illegal immigration into their country and the subsequent loss of American sovereignty on the border.”
Hanson continues with an ominous statement:
They understand what the Biden administration does not: No nation in history has survived once its borders were destroyed, once its citizenship was rendered no different from mere residence, and once its neighbors with impunity undermined its sovereignty.
Protecting our national borders is vital for a strong America!
4. We Must Wonder at the Woke World’s Vitriol Toward Capitalism
Countless myths about capitalism lurk in the woke world, and have convinced younger Americans to distrust capitalism. The Heritage Foundation’s Dr. Lee Edwards asks, “How can half of Americans between 18 and 29 favor socialism over capitalism?” He answers by saying, “Because they do not know the first thing about capitalism, the economic system that has made them the most prosperous and privileged young people in the world.”
After shattering multiple myths, Edwards states:
It is not a myth but a reality that capitalism has brought greater economic wealth and cultural freedom to more people than any other system in the history of man. As we look ahead to an uncertain, post-pandemic economic future, we should not allow the pervasive but unfounded myths about capitalism to divert us from this path of prosperity and freedom.
While each new generation of socialists believe it has the right recipe to bring about a socialistic utopia, history has always proven them wrong.
5. We Must Wonder at the Woke World’s Cozy Relationship with China
Writing for The Hill, Austin Lowe warns, “The Chinese government’s propaganda apparatus has found a convenient ally in American wokeism and leveraged it to avoid global censure of its grossest human rights violations.”
Chinese propagandists use every social theory originating from Marxist thinkers and members of the Frankfurt School. Modern-day disciples include Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, who specialize in the repackaged forms of Marxism known as critical race theory, social justice, intersectionality, and DEI.
The Chinese relentlessly use these social constructs to cause division, distrust, and confusion in American society. As the woke world strategizes to “problematize” social issues, the Chinese CCP helps to super-size those issues with thousands of online activists, bots, trolls, and spam accounts.
With all this help from Chinese Communists, neither the woke American media nor government or corporate leaders are willing to calling out China for its many human rights violations. For instance, the Chinese Communist Party currently holding an estimated two million Uyghur Muslims in internment camps, and mainstream media never discussed how the CCP treated their own people during the COVID crisis.
Woke globalist elitists around the world seem to believe that government is the answer to all societal problems — no matter how many people (including children) suffer in the aftermath of their deconstructive strategies.
6. We Must Wonder at the Woke World’s Attack on the Family
The traditional family works! A father and mother raising children within a stable home has been the cornerstone of any strong nation. Any movement seeking to tear down the institution of marriage and family should be resisted.
One of Black Lives Matters’ founding principles read:
We are committed to fostering a queer-affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking … We are committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, and especially “our” children to the degree mothers, parents and children are comfortable.
Disrupting or tearing down the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” on the notion that “it takes a village” to raise a family is based on feelings not facts.
7. We Must Wonder at the Woke World’s Absolutist Smear Tactics
In 2017, Sharyl Attkisson, a trusted veteran investigative journalist, wrote an eye-opening book about political smears. She outlines how the mass media can take a smidgen of truth and pervert it into “a weapon of mass destruction to advance an undisclosed larger goal, often political or financial.”
Suddenly and savagely, a former president, cabinet member, or Supreme Court nominee becomes the target of the sensational smear job. They suddenly find themselves swimming in shark-infested waters, bleeding and battered by wave after wave of half-truths and lies slamming them deeper into a dark abyss. Close friends and allies only offer consolation and support through private channels for fear of being sucked into the vicious vortex.
Picture the savage scene of Judge Brett Kavanaugh fighting for his honor and future during his confirmation hearings. Some people are old enough to remember when SCOTUS nominee Robert Bork got the same kind of treatment. So did U.S. Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas; at a meeting of the National Organization for Women in 1991, feminist Florynce Kennedy promised, “We’re going to bork him. We’re going to kill him politically, this little creep.”
We are facing a spiritual war, not just a cultural war. Those who strive to paint everything in our past as racist and everything in our present as tainted must not win.
Ron F. Hale is an interim pastor and freelance writer who has been published by The Stream, The Christian Post, The Christian Index, American Thinker, and various Baptist State newspapers.