Jason Aldean’s Try That in a Small Town and Oliver Anthony’s Rich Men North of Richmond are two exceedingly popular songs that have caused a lot of angst in liberal circles across America.
The very idea that Americans might actually like a song that criticizes the rampant lawlessness in America’s (mostly Democrat-run big cities) or a working class anthem that bewails low wage jobs, elite corruption, pedophilia, and welfare fraud has sent progressives into a tizzy that would be funny if it were not so sad. A glance at everyone’s favorite tool of easy-bake Woke propaganda, also know as Wikipedia, shows that each of these two audience-pleasing songs has already been tarred with the two catch-all labels most often used by those who prefer hating to either listening or discussing: “far-right” and “racist”. This is sadly predictable, and it speaks to the rigidity of thought and reflexive dislike for average Americans that characterizes the political, cultural, and social elites in America today.
A similar fate befell the smash hit movie Sound of Freedom when the censorious souls at Wikipedia got a gander at a storyline that celebrates efforts to save children from sexual trafficking and slavery. As a film reviewer from Slate (no surprise here) sneered “. . . it arrived in theaters surrounded by a cloud of innuendo put forth by its star and its noisiest right-wing supporters—conspiratorial insinuations about who doesn’t want this story to be told and what real-world traffickers are really up to.” Later in the same entry, it is noted that another reviewer “accused the film of ‘echoing’ antisemitic tropes, including blood libel” because, one would guess, any connection made to super-rich international child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who Jewish or not was an irredeemable slimeball, is enough to damn a movie that risked all by taking on a tough and unpalatable topic that might easily have repelled movie audiences.
In a normal nation fighting back against violent criminals, criticizing economic inequality, and cheering for those protecting children would be uncontroversial, but we live in a uniquely abnormal time in American history. Given that catching and punishing criminals is now considered bigotry, calling out the depredations of our elite economic overlords is somehow dangerous, and suggesting that children might be victimized by unscrupulous adults is insulting to the adults who are victimizing them, we are expected to follow the lead of our betters and jeer at anyone with the temerity to challenge the regime narrative.
The growing resistance of so many Americans is clear to see everywhere we look. It has also manifested itself in successful boycotts of Bud Light beer, Target stores, and leftist public school systems by those fed up with so-called Progressives pushing the transgender agenda on children.
The continuing efforts to shame, fire, and deplatform those who refuse to comply in thought, word, and deed has led to unprecedented (and certainly un-Constitutional) efforts by federal officials and agencies to force social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to censor opinions deemed detrimental to the narrative of “gender affirming care” that sounds so much nicer than either the “experimental hormonal treatments” or “irreversible genital surgery” offered to children and adolescents who are not in a position to give informed consent for these procedures—and are simultaneously encouraged to conspire with educators and medical professionals to keep their parents ignorant of what is being done to them.
Throughout the span of American history, we have often relied on a combination of common sense, timely leadership, and open debate to help our nation self-correct when we have veered toward extremism—but this might no longer be possible. Unfortunately, too much of the dialogue dominating our country today reads like postings on a Wikipedia page. Vociferous and implacable ideological stands—pure opinion, in other words—are what typically spews from our journalists, politicians, and other national leaders. Cold, hard facts that deny or discredit their preferred narratives are readily and regularly ignored in favor of cheerleading for their side’s frantically-held beliefs—as if a reality can be created simply by shouting loudly enough—while simultaneously silencing the voices of others.
Conversations are impossible with fanatics, and this is the crux of the problem facing America today. It would be helpful if we could have a responsible and forthright national dialogue regarding the many challenging issues now facing our nation, which also include abortion, election integrity and illegal immigration, but far too many of America’s leaders now seem to have graduated from the Woke Wikipedia school of mob-inspired speech and action.
The disdain of Leftists for the morality of opinions that diverge from their own, which is perhaps a puzzling phenomenon in our abundantly amoral modern world, is an insufficient explanation for their rage. Therefore, a different term to explain this is necessary: fear, plain and simple. The many terrors that today animate the American elite—of thought, microbes, the summer weather, police officers, free speech, an end to unending government spending, border security, traditional marriage, children and adolescents shielded from gender indoctrination, and (certainly most prominently) former President Trump—drive a fanaticism that is frightening in both its scope and depth.
What is, however, most terrifying are the questions we are no longer permitted to ask. The stultifying intellectual conformity that exists on so many of our nation’s college campuses, ruthlessly policed by campus DEI officers, Marxist faculty, and the Red Guards among the student body, has turned what were once citadels of curiosity and inquiry into indoctrination centers—very expensive ones, by the way—that are planting the seeds of their own destruction as more and more average Americans shun them, which is already leading to a doom loop of rapidly declining enrollment and program cuts. By the same token, the obvious disinclination of mainstream journalists to ask even the most timid question about either the sources of the Biden family’s stupendous wealth or the possible political uses of prosecution to hobble the election campaign of former President Trump has, unsurprisingly, erased the remaining credibility of the news media in America and removed a critically important check on the actions of our public officials.
Oppressive official silence is death for a democracy, but the ravings of Wiki-leaders and Wiki-thinkers who find the opinions and values of their fellow Americans unworthy of respect are equally fatal to our great nation. Conducting ourselves according to the non-normative norms of Wikipedia is, as we are finding out more and more each day to our dismay, a guaranteed path to dissension and decline. We can attempt to fool ourselves into believing this is not the case, but the prognosis in both the short and long term is the same: an America unable to both have honest discussions and solve its own problems—until it is too late.