kimberlysteele | The Retardation of Woke

As I have mentioned, I believe we are seeing the demise of wokeness and its demotion to cringe status. Woke, which reigned supreme from approximately 2014 - 2023, took a nosedive when average people realized they could fight it by not allowing it to have their money. Bud Light may recover from becoming a laughingstock, Target may nix its Satan-worshipping designers, and boys’ bathrooms may still have tampons (at least in Illinois), but it is clear that wokeness is going the way of the Tide Pod challenge and Tamagotchis. Follow stupid trends, win stupid prizes, including death. Woke has claimed its fair share of victims in its short rule, whether it was via the genital mutilations commonly known as bottom surgeries or the now-extinct careers of pop stars who virtue signaled one too many times.

Now that the fever is ebbing, I think it is time we started walking things back.

Language: Words We Were Not Allowed to Say

One way the Woke tried to cow the masses to their toxic astral pyramids was by commandeering language. I will never forget when a vegan former friend tried to rain hellfire and brimstone on me for defending the word ritardando as it is used in music. First of all, ritardando is not an English word. Like many music terms, it is Italian. Ritardando or (clutches pearls) ritard for short means to slow down the tempo or beats per minute. The opposite of this term is accelerando, which of course means to speed up the tempo of beats per minute. She actually tried to get me to stop using the word ritard in a strictly musical context! Now look what she's done...

I think it is time to bring back the term “retarded”. Retard is not malicious. Like its musical counterpart, it means to slow down. When a person is retarded, it does not peg them with a diagnosis; it only means that they learn slower than the general pool of people surrounding them. For instance, I am retarded when it comes to learning how to dance. I become easily confused when trying to put simple dance steps together in a series and I don’t move my torso, legs, or hips as easily as I move my fingertips and wrists. I don’t even take issue with being called a retard; because each of us is special in our own way. Do you see what I did there? The facts on the ground are that WE ARE ALL RETARDS. He or she who is not retarded should cast the first slur.

Also, I usually try to be more polite these days, but if I’m feeling crabby, I may just openly mock someone who wants me to use pronouns. The whole pronoun thing pisses me off — the English language is hard enough without adding an additional layer of fantasy claptrap to confuse ESL learners, the elderly, and the kindhearted. Any person who defines their pronouns and expects me to adjust my speech will heretofore be addressed as “it”, as in “It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.”

I will no longer recognize the term “people of color” as a sensible utterance and will correct the person by saying “Oh, you mean non-white people? How do you know their DNA by looking at them?” Back in the civil rights era, the word “colored” was actually quite vicious and used to segregate the non-white people to the back of the bus and a special, separate drinking fountain or bathroom. Person of color is just another word for colored and its use is disgusting; most times there is the clandestine hope that white people will be forced to the back of the bus or shamed as revenge. As someone who often passes for white, I enjoy informing racists who presume I am white that I am exactly as white as Barack Obama.

Oppression

If you want to send a wokester into a tailspin, ask them which side of the Israel/Palestine divide they are on and how they reconcile the atrocities. No matter what side they are on, they are going to be confronted with the Jewish question and torn apart by trying to be two things at once. Jewish Americans were the OG wokesters, and their money funded the media that put Woke on the map in the first place. Nobody does white guilt better than the Jewish, amirite? Wokesters tend to find out the hard way that money is super-important and that they don’t get along too well without it, just ask all those Ivy League graduates who are blacklisted from cushy positions in big companies because they went militant pro-Palestine last year.

As ugly as it may get, I am going to start calling wokesters sexists and racists and call ‘em as I see ‘em. Racism against white people is still racism and I am tired of it. Another thing they don’t get to do anymore is to pretend that anti-white racism is nastier than anti-black or anti-Asian racism. Nobody gets a free pass because they hate whitey instead of blackie, Apu, or Charlie Chan. As someone who is half-white and half-Asian, I know what anti-white and anti-Asian racism looks like from up close. I have even been discriminated against because I was too yellow for the white people and too white for the yellow people. You seriously cannot win, even if you have an extremely heterozygous genetic makeup, so don’t bother playing.

I am not great at telling jokes, but I think it is time we started poking fun at each other again. I don’t care if non-black people (though once again, how do I know their DNA?) use the N-word. I hate that word, so I am not going to use it, but you do you. I have no problem with the lampooning of either of my races — white and yellow. I am fine if someone wants to chuckle about Japanese kamikazes or inbred Pennsylvania crackers right in front of me. It’s time to recognize the humor in The Jerk — Steve Martin’s opening line is “I was born a poor black child” and it is hysterically funny. If you can get through the Thousand Miles Latrell scene of 2004’s White Chicks without so much as cracking a smile, I salute you, because I cannot do it. It’s time to make Lisa Lampanelli great again.

Those who cannot take it should not dish it, and the Woke have been serving us all unwanted helpings for a decade. Want control? Do Kegels. Oppressed? Grow up. Offended? Too bad. As Candace Owens wisely said, “Life is tough, get a helmet”.