Woke(ness): Parker Johnson

My dad tells a story about the day he was sitting at a 3-way stop when a white Buick Skylark came barreling through the intersection on its merry way to wherever it was heading - low and behold, behind the wheel was his 83 year old dad. Oblivious. That was the day we took the keys away.

In their seminal book, the Fourth Turning, authors Neil Howe and William Strauss make the point that a pattern of generational cycles turns the wheels of evolution in roughly 80-year cycles. The future emerges from the collective will of the younger generations as they come online to design and build the culture they wish to live in. Never has an older, passing generation successfully kept the will of the emerging generations at bay.

To this end, 80-year old Lance Morrow’s opinion piece condemning today’s rising Left wing fringe as the “Dawn of the Woke,” comparing them to McCarthyism and the Zombie Apocalypse is terribly ironic, ignorant, tone-deaf and irrelevant. I heartily concede that his condemnation isn’t without some merit. Yes, the radical Left is just as desperate and scared as the radical alt-Right, both of whom feel invisible, forgotten, and dismissed. The Right by an evolution of culture that is leaving them behind, and the Left by a legacy of culture that has systematically ignored them, until now.

Meanwhile, it is as insidious as it is revealing that Morrow uses McCarthy, who was the radical alt-right Fascist of his time, as his whipping boy of projection onto the fringe of the progressive Left. Accusing one’s enemy/adversary of the worst of one’s own party’s shadow is a clever tactic to demonize them while conflating one’s worldview with blindspots. Perhaps a more empathetic, wisened and curious Morrow might inquire what is behind this loud resurgence of social justice and the emergence and empowerment of the disillusioned, disenfranchised and heretofore largely invisible. Perhaps he need look no further than the title of his very own 2001 National Magazine Award essay on the attacks of 9/11, entitled, “The Case for Rage and Retribution.” Let that sink in.

Mr. Morrow’s house in on fire. Our house is on fire. Essays and articles like this do nothing to bridge what must be repaired.

It’s time to take the keys away from Mr. Morrow and his ilk.