The Exasperating Rise Of The Woke Right

On June 12th, 2020, at the height of the racial reckoning, Mariame Kaba published an article in the New York Times titled, Yes, We Literally Mean Abolish The Police.

It went extremely viral, though probably not for the reasons she’d hoped.

Over the following weeks and months, Kaba’s piece was quoted, reposted, shared and otherwise exhibited as indisputable proof of the “woke” Left’s insanity.

And I’m not just talking about the police!

Gender, whiteness, capitalism, men, “wokeness” became synonymous with calls to “smash” or “dismantle” things while never quite explaining what to build in their place.

And the most frustrating part is that with a little dose of sanity, those conversations might have led to productive change.

Most people agree that police reform is necessary. Most people prefer police officers who are honest and emotionally stable and can reliably tell their tasers from their guns. Heck, most people have their own story about a police officer who they wouldn’t mind abolishing.

They just don’t think the solution to these problems is to tear down a system that works for millions of people and take their chances with gangs of marauding criminals. And people who live in underprivileged or high-crime communities are more likely to feel this way.

But sadly, people like Kaba aren’t interested in nuance or coalition-building or a slogan that has the slightest chance of gaining popular support, there’s no time for the slow, painstaking work of reform. The police force is flawed and therefore, unfixable.

So why not burn the whole thing to the ground?

Thankfully, on Nov 7th, 2024, men, capitalism, and the police (especially the police at the Capitol) all got to breathe a sigh of relief.

King Trump declared a “massive” mandate after beating Harris by two million votes (let’s ignore the fact that Trump claimed he only “lost by a whisker” when Biden beat him by seven million votes), the “woke Left” was instructed to “cry harder,” and the woke Right finally had a president who would “dismantle” everything they disliked!

Foreign aid, fact-checking, accountability, the Constitution, no price was too great to “own the Libs.”

And again, for anybody who believes that any of this is about government efficiency, roughly 100% of people want less wasteful, less bureaucratic, more efficient leadership. They like freedom of speech and functioning healthcare and politicians who can reliably make it through a sentence. Heck, anybody who’s been paying attention has a laundry list of grievances with both sides of the political aisle.

They just don’t think the solution to these problems is to abandon all efforts at democracy and take their chances with an oligarchy. And there was a time when conservatives would have been more likely to feel that way.

But sadly, the MAGA faithful has no time for nuance or intellectual consistency or critical thinking, they aren’t interested in geopolitics or history or anything that might help them understand the consequences of their decisions, if the Trump/Musk symbiote claims “the Left” has something to do with a policy or institution, it’s unfixable. So who cares if Trump burns it to the ground?

Yes, they literally mean let an unelected, ketamine-addled billionaire abolish USAID and the Department of Educationand “entitlements” like Social Security and Medicaid, even though he has repeatedly demonstrated that he doesn’t understand how the databases work or care about the consequences.

Yes, they literally mean round-up students and tourists and immigrants who Trump claims “are not people,” and throw them in jail with no concern for due process or their First Amendment rights or whether they’re United States citizens.

Yes, they literally mean make an anti-vax conspiracy theorist Health Secretary, make a hard-drinking Fox News anchor Secretary of Defence, all while having the nerve to preach about meritocracy. Laugh as Elon Musk insults politicians on Twitter, cheer as Vance destroys America’s relationships with its allies, rejoice as Trump burns every shred of the credibility, respect and global leadership the United States spent the past eighty years building to the ground.

National security breaches, Nazi salutes, nepotism, none of it matters.

The woke Left and Right don’t hate each other because of policy issues or principles or any sense of moral consistency, they hate each other because, in every way that counts, they’re exactly as ridiculous as each other.

As the culture wars convince more and more people to abandon nuance and independent thought, we’re increasingly encouraged to think about each other in binaries.