Tag: woke culture

The ‘Woke’ Agenda Is Extremely Corrosive To American Politics


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me be clear — I fucking hate the MAGA New Right with a white hot rage. And think of the following as gentle advice to people I otherwise agree with. I’m far more anti-MAGA than I am liberal, progressive or Leftist. But I’m willing to make common cause with liberals, progressives and fuck, even Leftists if that’s what I have to do to destroy the MAGA New Right as an American political movement.

But we have to talk about how corrosive the “woke” agenda is to American politics. It’s corrosive because it’s being used as a political bludgeon by the fucking fascists to destroy any chance that Traditionalists will ever do what is necessary to save American democracy — make common cause with anti-MAGA forces.

In fact, in a way, I fear that ship has sailed. The MAGA New Right is ascendant and dominate when it comes to the hard power of passing laws. As it stands, in real terms, woke people are just annoying. But we have to address that a lot of well meaning Traditionalists feel that because of the “woke agenda” they risk being “canceled” — having their lives ruined — simply because they’re conservative.

This is a real concern on a personal basis for the conservative Traditionalists in my family. The idea of something they say or do being recorded then going viral and they having their lives destroyed is constantly at the forefront of their minds. This ever-present terror is one of the central reasons why they will never, ever make common cause with Anti-MAGA forces.

So, in a sense, we’re fucked. Fucked. Fucked. Fucked.

The two sides haven hardened their stances to the point that either we become an autocracy or we have a civil war. In either stance, I suspect the whole “woke agenda” will drift out of existence and into the aether. Being woke is a luxury of peace, prosperity and a properly functioning Western democracy with a civil society.

If you’re too busy either evading ICE or bombs, well, quibbling over your pronouns isn’t something that’s as at the front of your mind. Twitter is to blame for this cluckerfuck, to some extent.

Twitter always takes the most extreme position of any issue and then people on either side have that have to fight over it. I just don’t see any “normal” ending to all of this.

Things are going to get bumpy, staring the moment Republicans take the House and Senate in January 2023.

‘New Masculinity’ & The Zelensky Zeitgeist


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

American men have, for about a generation now, been derided and castigated as part of the monovalent “patriarchy.” It all kind of creeped up on us. Now, I’m coming at this issue as a rabid anti-MAGA New Right person. I fucking hate MAGA with a white hot rage, to the point that I’m writing five novels that lay out — in subtext — how and why I fucking hate the movement so much.

Zelensky

Anyway.

The point is –I’m very empathetic to women who want to “slay the patriarchy.” And, yet, the point could be made that “slay the patriarchy” is kind of like “defund the police.” It is a slogan that is easily used to get a crucial element of the body politic — “Traditionalists” to join the fucking MAGA New Right and destroy that precious commodity known as democracy.

And, remember, it is actually pretty rare for there to be a “vibe shift” in the way men perceive themselves. The thing that would tip off a vibe shift — how men appear — isn’t really applicable. Dudes are dudes. Either you’re wearing a suit to work and have power and influence or you don’t.

So, I’ve sat up and taken notice at how it’s beginning to look as though the standard, traditional masculinity of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky is beginning to show results. What’s key about all of this is he doesn’t follow the current American media narrative about what it means to be masculine. If this was a Hollywood movie, Zelensky would be a woman struggling to run a nation while “slaying the patriarchy.”

But, surprise, he’s a dude doing traditional dude things in a traditional dude way. There’s no plot twist or flipping the script. It’s the traditional narrative of a man rising to the occasion on the world state in an effort to protect the collective home and hearth of his besieged nation.

So, we now have something of a cultural and historical question before us. Is this just a blip as part of a broader, macro trend towards traditional male values continuing to be disparaged or is there a change that we’re on the cusp of a “New Masculinity” that harkens back to the leadership of Lincoln, FDR and Churchill.

I honestly don’t know. For that to happen, I think we would have to actually have, like, uh, WW3. Only a major global war would force us to appricate the value of traditional male roles and concepts. I’ve already suggested something along these lines when I posited that our current “woke” culture will end around 2024 – 2025 when we decide as a nation if we’re going to be an autocracy or have a civil war.

So, I don’t know. It’s all very much up in the air. It could go either way.

Forget Joe Rogan — Let’s Talk Howard Stern


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This is going to be extremely lazy. I’m not getting paid, but I am getting drunk as I write this. Anyway, I’ve always respected Howard Stern’s interviewing ability. He’s probably one of the best interviewers in the media today. AND YET. He’s got a real problem — he has within the last 10 years, maybe more recently — used the n-word on multiple occasions.

If I was getting paid to write this, was not drunk and knew anyone was actually going to read this outside of my usual randos and stalkers, I would look up instances of this on YouTube, but, lulz. Anyway, the point is, Joe Rogan — who I’m not fond of — is rightfully getting all this shit for using the n-word, when Stern is out there using it all the time, too.

What the what?

I can remember the first time I heard him say it. I was so taken aback I couldn’t listen to him again in the same way. But I don’t know, maybe he and South Park are the two last remaining pre-“Cancel Culture” pieces of media that can still get away with some really objectionable shit.

With Stern, some of it has to do with who is his core audience — the Blue Check liberals who would be the most likely to lead the charge to “cancel” him in the first place.

Anyway. Lulz. This bourbon is good.

A ‘Don’t Look Up’ Best Picture Win Would Be The Ultimate Triumph of ‘Woke Hollywood’



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me be clear — I’m very much willing to bend over backwards to give Don’t Look Up good press. It’s message is dear to my heart. The problem is, the movie itself sucks.

And, yet, here I am, listening to Vanity Fair’s Oscar podcast and they’re saying that Don’t Look Up could very well be in the running to win Best Picture. I get it. It makes sense. But, God, on a storytelling basis did that move suck. And, no, I haven’t gotten around to watching is all the way through yet.

I think some of that comes from how out of synch my expectations for the movie was. I went into it blind and I had some vague notion that it might be a modern day Network dealing with global climate change. But it just seemed way too busy sucking its own cock to be a Network-level movie. It was just annoying and irritating and I totally agree with its message.

What I saw of it was just too over the top. It seems to be trying too hard. It was too eager to make A Statement that it lost sight of telling a cogent, great story. If Don’t Look Up was a modern day Blue State Network, then I would love it and defend it against the slings and arrows of MAGA dipshits.

But, sadly, Don’t Look Up was just A Bad Movie on a storytelling level. It’s just irritating on a storytelling basis. It was all over the place, to the point that I didn’t care about the characters and didn’t want to watch it to the end despite being very receptive to its message. If it gets Best Picture despite that, then Woke Culture will really have flexed its power to the point that it will make me roll my eyes.

The thing about Network is it’s timeless. It’s such a great story that you could release it today and it would still be popular. Anyway, as I keep saying, I’m going to at least try to watch the movie all the way through and then re-reevaluate it.

How The ‘Woke’ Era Ends


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s self-evident that not enough people remember how much war really is hell. Over two generations of Americans have gone without the fear of a draft. As such, we’ve grown too fat and sassy.

We quibble about the stupidest shit. The Left, rather than making common cause with Liberals and NeverTrumpers to defeat the rise of fascism in America are willing to die on the hill of TERFs, pronouns and transgender kids. (Not that those aren’t all valid things to be concerned about in the modern world, but we do have honest-to-God fascists to deal with at the moment.)

My point is — woke culture is a luxury provided by decades of living in a stable, peaceful liberal democratic nation. The moment things grow existential for people in the center-Left, be it because we turn into a civil war or we transition into autocracy, all of the more annoying elements of being woke will simply burn off.

I keep thinking about how we seem to be at the end of an era. While I’m still not convinced that the Fourth Turning is a real thing — seems like a reversed engineered pseudoscience to me — we definitely are running on fumes as a nation. And that sense of running on fumes applies to both culture and politics. We’re at the end of one era (Turning?) and just about to begin another.

As such, it would make a lot of sense for everything to change one way or another between now and January 2025. If we turn into an autocracy, then there’s a good chance that Hollywood will decamp, en masse to Great Britain or Australia. I keep saying — Perth would be perfect for New Hollywood. It is in the middle of nowhere, but everyone I’ve ever met from Perth was extremely creative and interesting, just the type of creative pool of people that a moved Hollywood want to tap into.

And, God forbid we have a Second American Civil War, everything really would be thrown into the air. The nightmare endgame is the country doesn’t re-unite and we just bomb ourselves into the Stone Age for no damn reason other than Traditionalists are afraid of losing political power to secularists, scary brown people and economically liberated women.

Anyway. I just don’t see the Woke Era lasting beyond 2025. Something’s gotta give. When you’re worried about ICE blowing your head off or a race war because a civil war has broken out and WMD are being used, then, well, the issue of pronouns won’t be QUITE so urgent.

A Creative Conundrum



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I find developing and writing female characters a lot more fun because of how much of a challenge it is to do so as a man. I often also populate my work with POC including American Asians, etc. This is all well and good, but for the fact that at same time this thing that I’m told is expected in a modern writer is also, in itself, something that can cause problems.

‘Double dees, double deeze”

Because I’m a white “CIS” male.

So, there is something of a paradox. I’m suppose to have representation in my work, which I find myself doing anyway, and, yet, because I’m a white man, that, by definition, is a problem.

It can make the whole act of creation rather frustrating. All these rules I have to follow — which often have contradictory expectations — can cause you to grow angry at them. As an aside, I will note one of these rules that makes me seethe is the Bechdel Test, which I’ve heard described as originally proposed as a “half joke” in a fucking comic of all things.

So here I am, slaving away to write the best four novel series that I hope might be popular — especially with women readers — and I’m expected to have representation, but if I do have representation then it’s bad because I’m a white man writing from a female, or POC point of view.

What’s more, it’s now a fairly ridged ideology among some that these works also have to feature two women talking about something other than a man. I call bullshit.

The point is for me to tell the best story possible that entertain the audience for hours using only their imagination.

As such, you, as the writer, in my opinion, need to follow your truth north. If you’re a white “CIS” male, you just can’t win with some people. By definition, they don’t like you and don’t like anything you produce. It’s enough to make me want to write under an assumed identity or something. I’m only half-joking, as it were.

Anyway. All I can do is try my best to flesh out my vision on the page and see what happens.

Woke ‘Oulaney’ Discourse Is The Worst Discourse


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

When it comes to often absurd discourse on the John Mulaney and Olivia Munn relationship, I’m firmly on team Oulaney. The core of the very dumb hot takes on this particular messy situation is apparently twofold, if what I’m seeing on Tik-Tok is accurate.

Leave Oulaney Alone!

One is, a lot of women who bought into Mulvaney’s Tiger Beat persona feel betrayed and use the proxy of his wife to express their outrage. They were invested in Mulvaney as a “good boy” that they felt they could bring home to mom. He didn’t want kids, sure, but he and his wife had their dog Petunia and that was good enough for them.

Meanwhile, the other thing that makes the parasocial people on Tik-Tok angry is, well, Oliva Munn. They don’t like that she wrote a book that was, well, the type of book you could imagine Olivia Munn writing. I remember her from The Man Show and she wasn’t, exactly, uhhhh….woke? The thing that made her a star, in fact, you could say started her whole career, was the episode of The Man Show where she struggled to eat a hotdog tied to a string above her head. (I think that’s what was going on.)

She’s kind of the type of woman that is “just one of the guys” but also is probably banging the best looking Alpha Male in that group.

And here is the point where I kind of hit a brick wall in my response to all of this. Because of how touchy woke people on Tik-Tok are, it’s so problomatic to comment on the surreal discourse about Team Oulaney that I honestly don’t know what to say.

I definitely validate the woke discourse. But I also think if those two crazy kids are happy, who are we to judge? Munn’s thing is being hypersexual and outrageous in a heteronormative fashion. That’s her thing. And that “thing” apparently does a number on the minds of some Tik-Tok users who think Munn is some sort of evil homewrecker who “stole” their Tiger Beat idol from his wife.

I find that argument dubious. Yes, she was probably more aggressive towards Mulaney than maybe they would like, but he was going through some things with his wife and she really, really dug him. That, as far as I’m concerned, is enough.

But I definitely think we can learn a lot about the excess of “woke” culture by mulling the arguments of people angry at Oulaney on Tik-Tok. It’s all very interesting….and a tad surreal.

9/11, Negative Polarization & Why Superhero Movies Continue To Be Popular


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Traditionally, at least within my own mind, superhero movies have been popular the last 20 years because of the lingering collective trauma of 9/11. We all just want a superhero to save the day that fateful moment in time and make the bad memories go away.

Given that it’s been 20 years since 9/11 now, I think it’s time to move on. And, yet, superhero movies now play a different roll — their value free nature make them the perfect tentpole move. Negative polarization has so consumed every aspect of American life that the idea of watching a movie that doesn’t preach to us and simply tells the story of a bunch of caped crusaders is very appealing to average person.

At the moment, it seems as though you have big tentpole movies and little woke movies that make you feel bad for not being progressive enough. (I still can’t get over being shamed into seeing Booksmart. I still fucking hate that fucking movie. Give me Heathers instead, any day.)

But, what sucks is we’re kind of stuck in a cultural holding pattern now. It does make you wonder what will come next. I honestly don’t know. I would like to think that at some point a random movie will be a huge hit — like The Matrix way back when — and that, in itself, will herald a New Age of movies that don’t involve people wearing masks and running around in Spandex.

The Woke Critique Of Storytelling Enrages Me


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here are three things that woke members of the audience are always harping on that really fucking get on my nerves. If you want to know why so much we watch and read fucking sucks, just look below.

Fridging
This is the idea, essentially, that any time a woman is murdered in story it’s a trope and there for must be eliminated. Or, you have to hold your mouth just right and get approval from Twitter Liberals before its ok to have it. I don’t know the specifics, but fuck all of this. As with all these woke criticism, this is often used by lazy people who don’t — or can’t — create anything to snipe at a story to make themselves feel better.
Manic Pixie Dream Girl
I understand where this is coming from — a lot of writers are lazy and simply use what’s floating around in their personal life to come up with characters — but too often this is invoked by people who have no talent, no vision, or are an intern at VOX who has 800 words to fill. It’s not like the average writer is fucking dating Captain Marvel.
Bechdel Test
I refuse to take seriously a story critique that was proposed in a comic. I’m going to tell the story I have to tell, fuck any fucking “test” that forces me to do this or that thing because some fucking comic came up with some half-assed metric as to what makes a good story. It should be about your characterization of your female characters, not if two of them have a conversation where they don’t talk about a man. Fuck that.

Watch Me Be An Internet Crank


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m not exactly in a situation where anyone will listen to me if I get upset over what I might hear on a liberal podcast, but I’m a devoted student of history and when I hear bullshit, I call it out.

So, there I was, listening to Deep State Radio when a historian they had on as a guest said some pretty weird things. I’m not questioning her credentials — I mean, she was on Deep State Radio, not me — but some her historical interpretations left me cold. I don’t remember her name and don’t care to spend the energy to look it up — which is probably for the best — but here’s what is eating away at me.

First, she said that Lincoln and Grant’s decision not to throw the book at the leaders of the Confederacy after the Civil War was a huge mistake because it led to the “Lost Cause” mythos. As a Southerner, I can tell you that is complete and total bullshit.

The Lost Cause was a macro trend that was inevitable given how ingrained slavery was in Southern culture and the lingering sense of nascent nationhood within the defeated CSA. By the end of the war, the North just wanted to put the whole thing behind it — enough blood had been shed — and so it was decided that in the name of mending the nation’s wounds that Jefferson Davis, Gen. Lee, et al would be given a pass.

And, remember, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address was all about forgiveness and compassion. It would have been pretty weird for him to be in favor of prosecuting the leaders of the defeated Confederacy. What’s more, the United States was very, very lucky that once the CSA was defeated that everyone was so chill as Reconstruction changed everything.

A note on Reconstruction — one of my pet peeves is when someone talks about the missed opportunity of Reconstruction. This bothers me because at the time, nobody knew nothing about how to handle the situation, so there were a lot of mistakes, half-starts and dumb compromises. It just was not practical to fix 300 odd years of servitude within the two year period of time that Reconstruction really had to do anything.

And if Reconstruction had been as radical as it could have been, there’s a good chance that all the prosperity that the United States enjoyed in the latter part of the 19th century would not have happened. What I’m saying is — don’t superimpose the woke expectations of the 21 century on what was going on during Reconstruction. It was probably doomed to fail no matter what happened, because to fix the systemic problems left over from slavery, you probably would have had to kill a lot of people over and above the number of people who died in the Civil War itself.

Reconstruction was, in fact, a unique moment in American history because for a brief moment the ideals of America actually were done in a real, practical manner. But, like I said, there was a lot going on at the time and there came a point when the victorious North grew tired of the South and gave up. This was going to happen eventually, no matter what. Americans, by nature, aren’t very radical for great lengths of time and Southern whites were just way too fucking racist to do a yadda, yadda, yadda, we’re going to have a society without any systemic racism anymore. Race is called America’s original sin for a reason.

The other thing that really fucking annoys me about what the historian said was her statement that some big event happened in 1879 that was almost the death of American democracy. I know my American political history fairly well and there was nothing that happened that year that could have possibly be interpreted as some sort of autocratic path not taken.

She brought this year up and there was no follow up by anyone else on the postcast. Either she misspoke the year in question or her interpretation of something that happened that year is so off the wall that her wokeness has warped her historical perspective.

Like I said, no one is going to listen to me. I’m kind of in the same situation Twitter is in whenever we all collectively gang up on the Trump Whisperer Maggie Haberman — powerful liberals are always — and I mean always — going to circle the waggons around her because she’s a member of the elite and they look after their own.