Since leaving America August 2006, I have traveled to sixteen countries. A great deal has happened. This site is to share my thoughts, photos, music, writings, travel experiences, and developing political/social commentary with you. I hope you find it interesting and informative.
I read the other day that to serve some twisted notion of “inclusivity” and political correctness, a country in Europe has officially discouraged calling the Christmas holidays ‘Christmas holidays’, instead recommending ‘Winter celebration’ or some variation on that.
How odd! I won’t even get into the absurdity of this example of the culture war mentality or the arbitrary havoc wrought by cancel culture. It’s odd to compare this mentality with what is commonplace here in the East.
Christmas display in Beijing.
As I’ve written about before, my experience living and traveling Asia, has been that Christmas is celebrated with sheer enthusiasm and unabashed fervor in places like Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, China, even Cambodia.
Santa arrives in Cambodia!
None of these are close to being Christian countries. They are basically Buddhist. And China, Vietnam, and Cambodia are COMMUNIST COUNTRIES. Yet, their godless populations openly embrace the Christmas festivities, seeing nothing contradictory or offensive.
Christmas in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Granted, these celebrations are basically secular, sans mawkish religiosity. Hey! What’s new? Christmas is in America and much of the West just an orgy of spending on gifts, excessive amounts of food and libations, and piling on glittery decorations. Santa is not a religious icon, and I don’t remember seeing Mary and Joseph, votive candles, and frankincence at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, which officially kicks off the Christmas season. Visa and Mastercard each had a float.
Japan does Christmas in style. This year we went to Osaka and two floors of the huge Hankyu Department Store were Christmas themed. There was every holiday gift item from all over the world there.
It was a tense few hours yesterday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It wasn’t a large crowd that had gathered — 50 or 60 — but they were focused, angry, and determined to right a grotesque situation which one angry protester said “had gone on way too long.”
The object of their derision and evident nausea was the marble rendering of Venus de Milo by Alexandros of Antioch, a Greek sculptor of the Hellenistic Age.
The incensed mob, wielding ropes, pick axes, and sledgehammers fought their way past the security guards attempting to block the entrance doors, then rushed at the offending sculpture. Had not the museum’s director intervened, no question that this masterpiece, which had graced the lobby for several decades, would within minutes have been turned into a pile of over-priced gravel.
A spokesperson who might have just arrived from an Insane Clown Posse concert or an Extinction Rebellion rally shouted through a bullhorn.
“How can you have such a disgusting symbol of primitive values in full sight of not just undeserving adults but the thousands of children who come here? It’s exploitative, gender rigid, misogynistic, insensitive — just plain WRONG, WRONG, WRONG on every level. How many innocent boys have been turned into haters and rapists by this sexualized carving, this symbol of moral anarchy, this overt enticement to erotic anarchy? How many young girls been body-shamed and driven to suicide by its faux submission to modesty and subliminal glorification of coquetry?”
Without having any clue what the leader of the woke mob was saying, Max Hollein, current Appointed Director of the Met, managed to calm the irate protesters down, and convince the grumbling, weeping, giggling, frantic, but mostly neutered protestors that something could be worked out, a compromise was possible. No way was Mr. Hollein going to stand by while such a masterpiece was turned into rubble.
The world-renowned museum was closed for three days. Behind the locked doors, the woke protesters went to work. There was understandably a lot of back-and-forth between the woke crowd and the staff who ignorantly still embraced a traditional world view, but eventually compromises were made, the museum re-opened, and visitors hungry for the enrichment of great art were able to fully enjoy an “acceptable”, fully PC-friendly version of the disputed sculpture, one which was pan-gender sensitive and fully inclusive.
As one of the protesters promoting the transformation of society to a higher state of woke consciousness said: “My gender is neutrois and my pronouns are xe, xem xyr. Xe think this is great! We are one step closer to a world which makes sense for everybody, not just some lascivious old white men.”
Dan Kovalik’s latest is a much-needed, laudable enterprise, courageously sounding the alarm about a tyranny being perpetrated in the name of moral and social renewal. Similar to genocide, it is cultural cleansing, a systematic destruction of what its proponents singularly deem uncomfortable, unsavory, perhaps threatening to them and their adherents. Cancel culture is militantly aggressive, unforgiving, ruthless, aimed at vilification and final extirpation of anyone who disagrees with or in any way resists its unbending, non-negotiable agenda. Its stormtroopers are the PC Police, what I prefer to call the Woke SS. They answer only to themselves, respecting no other authority. Outside opinion, body of law, history, revered traditions, honored social practices and norms are irrelevant. Attempts to introduce any of these into conversations with them results in brutal retaliation. Their chosen battlegrounds include mainstream and alternative media, social media, the boards and HR departments of both corporations and academic institutions, and more recently the production studios for both TV and cinema.
What authority the woke mob claims is based on an inversion of the mechanism which has underpinned moral imperatives in the rich philosophical traditions of both East and West. Traditionally, after rigorous and thorough dialectic, we did what we did because it was the right thing to do. By inverting this, all that is done in the name of woke activism is right because it’s what they do. The woke have dispensed with the cumbersome process of arriving at moral truths by free, open, and constructive conversations, then respectfully and judiciously soliciting consensus and compliance. By unilaterally deciding they are on the right side of history and all important issues, their actions are deemed a priori correct and unassailable. It’s remindful of the German nation being led to believe in the 1930s that they were a super race of ascendant humans, thus their actions could not be evaluated and judged by external standards. Super men and women were only capable of superior and unchallengeable action.
As Dan Kovalik illustrates eloquently and in great detail, providing excellent support and documentation throughout, the woke search-and-destroy cultural scourge has antecedents and parallels in other areas of social and political life. Hypocrisy and self-sabotage are equally evident.
The U.S. has anointed itself as the exceptional, indispensable nation, chosen by history, consecrated by destiny to lead the world. Thus …
We wage war on nations to establish peace. We overthrow democratically-elected governments to promote democracy. We destroy functioning governments, kill innocent fathers, women and children, and create massive refugee crises, to promote and protect women’s rights, seed and nurture freedom. In our never-ending struggle against racism and ultra-nationalism, we malign China, fuel hatred of Russia, embargo and sanction Islamic countries like Syria, Iran, destroy Libya. In our embrace of multiculturalism, we suffocate the economies of Cuba and Venezuela, separate brown children from their parents and put them in cages. In our respect for and devotion to human rights, we arm and support Israeli apartheid of Palestine, the callous destruction of a whole people.
Now don’t get the wrong impression. It’s all good. You see, we’re America and everything we do is good.
This, of course, is the exact same mentality we see unfolding now in our own country. Woke is R2P on our own soil.
From its initial appearance on the American scene, the entire woke movement struck me personally as humorless, oppressive, facile, misguided, an anathema to creativity and free expression. Since those early days, it has become dangerous and frightening. Woke is turning the culture and politics of our nation into a huge snuff film.
I genuinely fear for the safety of this brilliant author. I’ve read and reviewed several of his other books. His scholarship is impeccable and his presentation highly inspiring. I especially loved the conversational tone which generously populates Cancel This Book. But all his works are powerful, accessible, readable. Author Kovalik has taken controversial positions in the past. But taking on the goon squads of woke is his boldest and most admirable effort. Without free discourse from all possible sources, the dystopia of woke is exactly what you get. Maybe the members of the woke thug battalions get their thrills from turning America into a wasteland. I personally don’t see much of a future in it.
