“Wokeness gives people a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue.” [Elon Musk]
Musk’s insights are very true. And experience will show you: Mean, nasty, cruel people don’t act this way out of confidence. They are hateful because on some level they sense the truth — while trying furiously to suppress it — that logic, reason and facts are not on their side. When you offer dissenting views (about whatever subject, ideological or more immediately personal), it arouses their anxiety and they lash out with nastiness in order to shout down the logic your dissension triggered. When dealing with horrible, hateful wokesters (or any other disturbed people of the angry variety), remember you are encountering a person with horrific inner conflict. I am not saying you are duty-bound to be kind to them, feel sorry for them or do anything at all. Just be clear what you’re dealing with: and it isn’t strength.
Perfect case in point of false virtue:
New Year’s Eve, Times Square in New York City will have a dual ball drop to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Soon after, the City will swear in its first Communist mayor, dedicated to the idea that all private property and individual lives are the property of the government. An ally of terrorists who brought down the city’s two tallest skyscrapers in 2001.
Contrast these two wildly opposing events; place the ideology of Marx next to Thomas Jefferson’s magnificent tribute to the sovereignty of the individual over his or her own life. Then consider all the people who see no contradiction.
You cannot fix cluelessness and stupidity of this magnitude.