Greetings and welcome to this 34th performance of the Carnival of Fools! This week the main acts have — for once — blessedly ceded the spotlight to some of the minor players. So let’s buckle up for a genuine variety show for once and get to some old-fashioned clowning.
‘Dark Woke’ Is Doomed
In general, any intellectual trend with “dark” in its name is in for rough sledding. After all, the “Dark Enlightenment” masticated Nick Land and regurgitated little more than Mencius Moldbug — the pale king, a sawdust Caesar of shreds and patches. The “Intellectual Dark Web” resulted in the Free Press, yes, but also in a bunch of social media cranks pursuing their madness into obscurity. “Dark Brandon” resulted in . . . well, I don’t think you need me to replay the 2024 presidential campaign for you, but the attempt to brand Joe Biden as that alter-ego meme led to perhaps the most memorable political disaster in recent Western electoral history.
In other words, my political advice for you as always is go toward the light; gazing into the shadows soon enough leads to madness. This of course is why I’m thrilled to see Democrats embracing their newest rebel political orientation in this befuddled age of renascent Trumpism: “dark woke.”
That’s right, kiddies: The progressives are now up at nights, brooding blackly upon just how woke they are. They’ve taken too many punches from the alt-right. They’ve watched their heroes like Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush go down in flames — to other Democrats, no less. And now they’re taking names, not prisoners. They don’t have time for your guff! And you know this is a real thing because the New York Times has just written about it lovingly:
As liberals try to get their groove back, some party insiders say Democratic politicians have been encouraged to embrace a new form of combative rhetoric aimed at winning back voters who have responded to President Trump’s no-holds-barred version of politics.
It’s an attempt to step outside the bounds of the political correctness that Republicans have accused Democrats of establishing. And it requires being crass but discerning, rude but only to a point.
Online, it has a name: “Dark woke.”
In other words, it’s time for Democrats to match Marjorie Taylor Greene in the classlessness sweepstakes. I’m not even exaggerating there: According to the Times, it was in fact the obnoxious catfight that Texas Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett got into with Taylor Greene on the floor of the House last year that has inspired this entire aesthetic. You may remember that episode as the time when Crockett publicly denounced MTG as having a “bleach-blonde bad-built butch body” — but not before Taylor Greene had taken a shot at Crockett’s false eyelashes first. I remember it instead as the moment when Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman cemented my affection for his tell-it-like-it-is style, pronouncing both of these people as seeming to have wandered into Congress from the ’90s-era Jerry Springer Show.
Others make the argument that Democrats have been put in a “respectability prison,” what with the Trumpist style of television politics, and it’s time for the Jasmine Crocketts of the world to stoke the fires of resistance by pushing back in the trashiest way possible. Push back, slap back, claw back — show some fight!
There are two observations to make here. The first is about the Times, whose media coverage of Democratic “resistance” to Trump’s second administration has been poignantly tinged over the last year or so with a “whosoever shall reach the Rebellious Youth we hear so much about these days?” tone. The reportage comically suggests a thinly veiled desire to “win back” a zeitgeist that the sorts of people who find themselves as New York Times employees are now desperately out of touch with. Remember that hilarious piece from last December about the effete “bro-whisperer” who was supposed to win back the Rogan demographic from the MAGA right? This week the Times is running with a piece about internet-famous antisemite Hasan Piker, who is adoringly described as “a progressive mind in a MAGA body” merely because he is passably handsome and hits the gym once a week.
The Times is in love with these sorts of pieces because the paper — while run at the top by an old and entrenched editorship — flows with the blood of progressivism in the veins of its reportorial and writing staff. Those who have lived long enough to see the youth zeitgeist shift from progressive to reactionary are currently in the midst of a deep generational panic (as well they ought to be), desperate to feature stories telling a different tale: that there remains progressive fight-back among the “influencers” who now dominate the political world of the youngest voting cohort.
The second observation to make is that this strategy will not work, because in order to win over the people by “sassing back to power” you need to plausibly portray yourself as the party out of power in the first place, and neither Crockett nor the Times grasps that this is a cultural war rather than a political one: It’s not about which party sits in the White House but who teaches and inculcates an entire generation of increasingly skeptical children.
When political progressives — who already control every single cultural lever in the Western world and pull them with implacability whenever necessary — try to “rebel” by being rude, they merely look like bullies. (Yes, Donald Trump is equally a bully if not more so. Don’t complain about this “double standard”; instead, grasp why he is perceived differently by voters by understanding the voters he claims to represent.) Crockett types, privileged to live in modern America rather than the world they still ask us to believe exists, sit irrevocably on the side of history’s winners. They are the quintessential insiders.
When outsiders are rude to insiders, it often plays as righteous rebellion against an insolent system. When insiders are rude to outsiders, it inevitably plays as haughty arrogance. (It can play in no other way.) I know there are many who believe the same applies to Trump and Republicans, now in power and currently making a mess of the economy. I do myself. It doesn’t matter. Americans instinctively understand progressives to forever hold the whip hand in matters of culture, even political culture — which explains far too many of the excuses for Trump’s own behavior now floating around. Only opponents can break those rules without suffering consequences, not the people who are defending the status quo.
Stop trying to make “dark woke” happen. It’s not going to happen.
The Killing of Georgie (Part II)
It’s been far too long since I’ve written in these pages about the doings of George Santos, an early focus back when I first joined NR. After all, how could you not love a guy who literally faked his entire résumé all the way to getting elected — in a swing district, no less! — to Congress? This is a guy who even lied about being Jewish: He later corrected his claim by saying he meant he was “Jew-ISH,” as in spent a lot of time hanging out with Jews. I love this kind of shameless grift, and if you write about politics for a living, it’s hard not to tip your cap.
Alas, the law does not feel the same way. He was just sentenced to 87 months in prison for fraud and identity theft. I suppose there’s a lesson in that, but it’s not one either George Santos — or most in electoral politics currently — seem inclined to learn. I am left hoping that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a secret South American identity (“Evita,” perhaps) that the media has failed to investigate.
The Most Ill-Fated Theft in Washington History
I held off last week when news broke that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem had her purse snatched while she was out to eat with family in Washington, D.C. It wasn’t just because she reported that her purse held $3,000 in cash — an oddity that made me wonder what exactly she was doing with that much money on her person (enough to take an entire family out for a field trip to the local cash-only weed dispensary). It also seemed like a bad idea to make fun of a woman who has been known to execute poorly behaved creatures with a shotgun blast to the skull.
But now I have to note with joy that, not only has Secretary Noem’s purse been recovered, but it was found in the hands of an illegal immigrant, one who stole her bag as part of a citywide illegal alien crime ring. Boy, you can’t make coincidences like that up. Of all the purses in the world this one guy could have stolen, he had to pick the one owned by the cabinet official most interested in making sure he and his friends never inhale a free breath of air in this country again. I don’t mind one iota.
Until next week.