The Real Victims(tm)
If it weren’t for the fact the kindergarten drama has been weaponized, it would just be sad and ridiculous.
What is happening at the Washington Post is the six-episode Netflix mini-series of what has been happening in America since the awakening of the woke.
For those who have not been keeping score, a synopsis of the series to date:
First, you have a blue-checked WaPo reporter, a guy who used to be at least moderately reasonable until he succumbed to the Post’s culture, Dave Weigel, who retweeted (retweeted, mind you) a mild joke about all women being “bi” – either bisexual or bipolar.
Another WaPo employee, a female (at least I assume she identifies as such) called Felicia Sonmetz took umbrage to the joke and fired a twitter cruise missile at Weigel. He immediately apologized and took down the retweet, but that wasn’t enough. Sonmetz kept crybullying and pushing until Weigel got a thirty-day suspension – WITHOUT PAY.
Now she is mining for scalps in Weigel’s old tweets and going after fresh meat in the form of Jose Del Real, another WaPo employee who had the temerity to tell Sonmetz to chill on rallying the Twitter Cancelation Mob to get Weigel fired.
All this is on the heels of the Post needing to make several corrections (including a couple of “stealth” changes) to yet another flight of fantasy passing as journalism by Taylor Lorentz, where she lied about contacting targets of her fiction for comment when she didn’t. Lorentz is the Queen of Cancelopia, where everyone who doesn’t avert their eyes when encountering her gets cancelled.
Needless to say, both Sonmetz and Lorenz have a history of stirring the pot and then when the pot starts to boil, making themselves the center of the story by claiming to be the Real Victims(tm). In all cases, these ladies got off free of consequences (Sonmetz even sued her current employer) – but rather than feeling chastised, in an episode of the absurdly absurd, both rode their shame to even more status and power.
It has been a bad year for the Post compressed into just a few days – and it isn’t getting better.
The interesting things about these events are that 1) both women still have jobs at the Washington Post (wonder why?) and 2) how closely this process playing out at the Post mirrors the old Stalinist purges of the insufficiently communist in the good old USSR.
Woke culture is the same culture as every communist society in history – complete with the domestic spies and scolds, the virtue and status signaling, the violent crackdowns of dissent and elimination of free speech, and most of all, “now we see the violence inherent in the system. … Come and see the violence inherent in the system! HELP! HELP! I’m being repressed!” (Gratuitous Monty Python Holy Grail reference). It is a culture that strangles fun in its crib, renders art brutal, crass, and incomprehensible, debases morality to the point of animalism and crushes freedom of choice at every opportunity.
In Russia and China, the communist culture spared no one who was not sufficiently down with the program, friend, or foe, it did not matter, if you did not toe the party line, if you varied by a millimeter from the approved narrative, you were toast.
None of this has anything to do with any social ill, this is all about giving power to the worst among us. If you are not a wokester, and even if you are but not a sufficiently radical wokester, you are a counterrevolutionary and an enemy of the humanity and you must be punished.
It reminds me of the old story about Lenin at a dinner gathering. The group at the table rose in praise of Lenin and gave him a rousing standing O – after a few minutes of this, one attendee grew tired and thinking enough was enough, he sat back down.
Lenin had him sent to the Gulag for insufficiently supporting the revolution.
It is as if Mao’s cultural revolution came to America but this time the power is in the hands of angry, petulant, selfish children who want their binky and will stop at nothing to get it.
Under a thin veneer of “social justice” lies the destruction of everything - capitalism, private property, the family, religion, and the introduction of “equality” by force, ideological trial by tribunal, imprisonment for “bad thoughts”.
It’s Kafka, Stalin, Mao and Orwell on crack.
Mao’s revolution included the destruction of statues, the burning of buildings and businesses, the destruction of history books, implementation of loyalty oaths and imprisonment or execution of those who refused, the destruction of churches, re-education camps and children given over to the state.
See anything in common with what is happening today?
Sonmetz, Lorentz, Weigel and Del Rosa are just the comedic entertainment portion of the dinner theater.
The main act is the Biden administration.
Great column. You need a spot in oped’s in many newspapers. But no, you make to much sense.