Tilting at Windmills or a new Southern Strategy?

Ron DeSantis wading into the cultural war

It's sad to see so many persons taking up the "woke" crusade and for the silliest of reasons.  Recently Ricky Gervais sounded off on Puffin Books' decision to excise the more nasty words from Roald Dahl's classic children's novels. Of course, Ricky quickly turned his concerns on himself, wondering if his work would similarly be edited after he's gone.  Don't worry, Ricky, you will be forgotten pretty quickly.

However, it's not only comics who have mounted this anti-woke crusade.  Politicians have similarly vented their wrath on the "woke" crowd, and are actively taking measures to banish such sentiments from their states.  Newly elected Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee has banned the term "Latinx" from state documents, refusing to accept that anyone can officially be considered Latin binary.  Only about 3% of US Hispanics use the word.  76 percent hadn't even heard of it before now.  Thanks for calling it to our attention, Sarah.

I think most Americans and Brits would be hard pressed to define "woke," but it doesn't really matter.  It has become a catch-all term to define what reactionaries regard as a "fragile" and "easily offended" generation, to use Ricky's definition.

The interesting thing to me is how comics try to be both anti-woke and liberal at the same time.  Here is Bill Maher's recent attempt to distance himself from the term without being seen as a crotchety old conservative.  Needless to say he failed, largely because his reference points don't hold up.  

This is all too often the case among conservatives who make "straw man" arguments out of everything in an effort to reinforce what they regard as traditional values.  Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has taken it to the extreme, banning a wide range of textbooks he considers "woke," including math books, in his attempt to make Florida a color and gender blind society.  He is the cultural warrior of the 21st century, tilting at every imaginable windmill, making Don Quixote proud.

All this would be funny if these guys didn't take themselves so deathly seriously.  Comics literally believe "wokeness" represents the death of comedy as they know it, and conservative politicians see it as the final nail in the coffin of traditional values.  It doesn't matter that Puffin will release two versions of Dahl's books for the strong and faint hearted alike.  They couldn't very well throw out the newly edited editions, although I imagine they will very quickly end up in the bargain bin.

However, the cultural war in conservative states is much more worrisome.  Conservative state legislatures have put forward bills that would allow parents the right to reject school textbooks and library books that they don't think are appropriate.  This is part of a "Parent's Bill of Rights" that has been pushed since the 2020 elections by cultural warriors like Josh Hawley, who would like to see Congress pass such legislation.  The fact that it runs counter to the actual Bill of Rights is no matter to these conservatives, as they believe that "the church is supposed to direct the government." 

The odd part is that DeSantis and Hawley are both Ivy League graduates.  They managed to get through prestigious liberal universities like Harvard and Yale without losing their conservative values.  Shouldn't children be given the same opportunity?  

Seems like not, as they worry that today's youth is being groomed in "woke" secular values and is losing touch with religious conservative values.  The 2022 midterm elections bore this out, with an estimated 70% of Millennials and Gen Z voting for Democratic candidates nationwide.  Studies indicate that these younger generations will make up 40% of the 2024 American electorate, a daunting number.

For decades conservatives have been aiming their message at older votes, believing that young people don't vote.  Now they are finding that young people do vote and tilted a number of close elections in the Democrats' favor across the country.  The most disturbing examples being Georgia and Arizona, which Republicans had long regarded as their "safe place."  It only stands to reason that conservative lawmakers are now taking aim at the youth vote, but in all the wrong ways.

They think by tightening their grip on school curricula and banning Tik Tok, they can stem the flow of unwanted information seeping into these poor kids' heads.  This is what comics should be making fun of, then maybe kids today would appreciate their humor.  Instead, Ricky gripes that kids today don't get his off-color jokes from 30 years ago. 

Whatever the case, we have to do something about this latest wave of conservative evangelism or we will see our secular values totally gutted in many states, leaving liberal families no choice but to pull up stakes and move to more inclusive states, or "sanctuaries," where they can lead a normal life.  At that point, it will be virtually impossible to reclaim these "red states" as there will be no way for a Democrat to win in these deeply conservative states.  Eventually, there will be enough of these red states that they can tilt the electoral college in the Republican favor each and every time.  At that point, it will no longer be a laughing matter.