Yo, are you holy woke, bro? Yes? By how much? Are you genuinely holy woke, tho? Have you identified your grievance, malady, and kink? Nobody cares about pronouns anymore. That’s so yesterday. Did you submit your GMK choices to the PUDFARB Committee on Compliance, Karen? What was the verdict?
To be holy woke, bro is to be irredeemably fucked. You are either the source of all evil or a victim of those who are the source of all evil. There is no middle or subtlety. So . . . did the PUDFARB COCK judge you to be bougie? Sorry about that.
The zenith of the Woke True Folk Way is a full-throated shout that each of us is god. God mind is infinitely a part of the universe and everything in it. There is no God independent of the thinking meat we say is our self. Kind of. The Dear Leader is the big G GOD. Alle begrüßen den lieben Anführer! The path to paradise is through the struggle for ultimate consciousness. If you have consciousness then you understand. And if you understand you will behave the way 皇帝咬我 says you should behave.
Holy Woke, No
So, what’s wrong with being woke? Everything. Woke, as it has been co-opted by the Maoist Woke True Folk of the New Woke Order, is at its core, a religion rooted in hate. Like so much good consumed by American Maoism it began with good intentions and then got stolen by extremists who only want the fight.
American Maoism is what happens to religion when secular humanists try to have it both ways. God is dead but there are rules to follow. So many rules. If you have a heartbeat you violate an American Maoist rule. You are still in violation if you are dead and were born to an enemy of the New Woke Order. It’s sort of Islam without the need to pray or the uncomfortable strictures on who you can date and marry.
I’ll always be unclean to the Woke True Folk. I’m a WASP for starters. I’ve said enough about that. The thing is, I realized I was free once I learned that I can’t apologize enough. Jesus forgave so his followers could get on with being disciples. Not so with the New Woke Order’s Woke True Folk. You are never forgiven, ever. Now hand over all your cash. All of it. Jewelry, cars, and land as well. You will own nothing and like it.
What’s Wrong With Awake?
Woke was awake. Awake was a way of saying that we are aware of the trouble Satan delights in causing. Then Marx, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Castro, Guevera, Pol Pot, and others evangelized a twisted faith that declared itself to be an enemy of God. The genius of Mao was that he realized he could gain more power by declaring himself to be God. Mao was the ersatz Emperor. Mao made himself a brutal God who genocided anyone accused of being antirevolutionary.
Awake was a Christian term. But all things socialist/communist revolutionary can’t abide in anything that feels like God. God must be dead. The only permissible entity worthy of worship is the Dear Leader. So “awake” is an apostate term you must never allow to enter into your consciousness. To even think it is a crime. Ergo woke.
Where woke condemns you as either oppressor or oppressed, Jesus said something crazy, “You are forgiven.” That’s not possible. Everyone is either an oppressor or oppressed. There are no exceptions. Claims of being an exception are apostate and you will be excommunicated. Ok, ok, party leaders are more equal.
Apostate
PUDFARB had hopes for me. Joining Taxi Unlimited was cause for celebration. And then the values my Mom & Dad taught me started to make a mess of things. PUDFARB deemed me to be bougie and thus, an oppressor because of my ancestry and whiteness. If I behaved I might get a pass on that.
Don’t ask me to behave. It won’t go well. I wanted Taxi Unlimited to pay its bills, maintain its cars, and serve all of its customers equally. Well . . . I might as well have called the entire collective a bunch of Reagon voters. How DARE I? They nearly kicked me out of the collective. But one of the more prominent members needed someone to service the drum brakes on his cab and yet one more mechanic had quit because we wouldn’t pay him.
“You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me . . .”
Exodus 20:5 ESV
It’s been a long road to a cranky old man and MAGA Trump supporter. PUDFARB excommunicated me sometime in the late 1980s when I gave a confession of faith to Berkeley’s First Presbyterian Church. I ain’t woke and I like that.
All In for Christ
耶穌是道路、真理和永生。Yep. You knew it would go here. The New Woke Order has a choice for me. I can become a Woke True Folk. To rise high enough in the New Woke Order I have to be what they claim is evil: corrupt with enough reputation and money that I am untouchable. Coulda, woulda, shoulda, and didn’t. Or I can suffer their slings and arrows and follow Christ. Guess which choice I made? WTF? That’s funny.
What would you do? Join a cult that teaches you to hate? One that requires you to loathe yourself, carry a grievance, nurse a malady, and judge your kink as unworthy? Descend a staircase into deep resentment, addiction, and high achieved evil? Or . . . a two-thousand-year-old religion started by a no-account stone mason from Nazareth? Did you choose the New Woke Order? Ok. Don’t ever amount to much. If you start to achieve some degree of success and stable living then you are headed to bougie life. You can’t be bougie and woke.
To be woke is to live a toxic life. Something other than you is responsible for your choices and misery. Repeating—you are either the cause of the misery of others or the victim of some unnamed enemy of the people. Jesus promises me I am forgiven so that I can get on with following him. There is no guilt with him for achieving bougie life.
Give Me Jesus
I’ve been to the altar more than once. At First Presbyterian Church they accepted my confession of doubt. I had questions. No other pastor was as excited with my questions as Earl Palmer. That was nearly forty years ago. Jesus and I became best bros. I cannot imagine life any other way.
One more thing. I’ve talked about winning in the last few posts. Winning is bougie, bougie is evil so winning is evil. To be woke is to align yourself with the downtrodden. You can’t win because that would be bougie and being bougie is apostate. How about no?
How about living a healthy life? Or living well? Another characteristic of the Woke True Folk is awfulizing. You can’t just live a good life with a family, a home, a couple of cars, and so on. No, it has to be epic in some way. Either the kids ride in the shopping cart on top of the few possessions you have or the home is a 5,00 sq foot flat on the Upper East Side. To have a good social credit score you must conform to a strict set of standards. Paper or plastic grocery bags is an imponderable question with no good answer. Reusable? What brand is on the bag? It can’t be a major supermarket chain like Kroger. Whole Foods is suspect.
Sick and Tired No More
If you are reading this you are sinning. World of Webb is banned for the Woke True Folk. Evidence that you read one of my posts is probable cause for arrest and detainment in a reeducation camp. I write this stuff so it’s worse for me. No worries. I’ve been deplorable since I was a kid.
My Dad lived well and left behind an honorable legacy. He grew up in a Woke True Folk house. His answer was to take a job on the East Coast, marry a good Presbyterian woman from a respectable family, and spend his career building radar and electrical supply systems. We have the AEGIS weapons system because of him and his fellow engineers.
I tried, y’all. Taxi Unlimited member. Off and On IT support trying to get ahead on a hamster wheel owned by financial institutions, and lately, delivery driver. All the remaining ways I know to make money are absurd. This blog? It’s a decade old, has 345 posts, and 5 free subscribers. Hope springs eternal.
Doors Closing on Holy Woke
In 1980 I couldn’t just stay in South Jersey and work my way from line cook to Executive Chef. I told the US Navy I wanted to be a radio/radar operator. But I *hated* to be miserable and misery is a core part of being a sailor or soldier. So I worked for a summer to save up the bus fare to come to Albany, CA and start my life as a grown-ass man.
In 2002 I left my apartment, my son, and my wife. I had nothing but the clothes on my back and a criminal record. It took me a decade to build a life I could sustain. I paid my way as a temp/contractor working a ticket queue as an End User Support/Break Fix Tech. I did ok but I still don’t do well as a cubicle rat.
Summer of 2019 I’m at the pinnacle of what an entry-level End User Support Tech can achieve. Then I get the dreaded phone call, “Gather your things and meet me at the guard shack. Don’t touch your laptop.” I met my boss at the gate, he collected my badge and thus ended my career as an IT Tech.
Time to Win Absurdly
It’s 2023 as I type this. Both Uber and Lyft have dropped me from their platforms. I think I’m done driving passengers for dollars. I’m still doing delivery through Roadie. But I’ve run out the clock on all the usual answers for a well-lived life and a comfortable retirement. So the answers I have are absurd. Absurd answers are the way I will pay my way and complete my legacy.
It fits because our leadership has absurd ideas of how to achieve their pastoral utopia. They imagine an idyllic society where they own everything and decide everything for us. The mechanism is an Artificial Intellingence they control. We would all have something like WeChat. Access to basic resources would be decided by their AI and a Social Credit Score. Crappy Score? Life will be difficult.
Life is difficult for a creative. The great thing about this is that I’ve got nothing to lose. If I fail I affirm what some believe about me. If I win I upset the dominant paradigms of the Woke True Folk. Cool!
The Lights are On and Somebody is Home
Ask around. Find the disciples of Christ that are quiet living well. Their bills get paid on time. They have no debt except for their mortgage. They met in college and are still together. The kids attend a private Christian school like Richmond’s St. Christophers. The family volunteers for area NGOs and non-profits. They are mid-life and on track to retire well. It’s a well-lived life.
Contrast that with a New Woke Order house. The cops know these neighbors by their first names. Every weekend by 8 pm they are taking Dad to the drunk tank to dry out. The kids are on the street making noise and committing petty crimes. Why the street? They were expelled after getting into fights with classmates who said that Trump was a good president. The repo man comes by every few months and takes the current car. The house was nice when they moved in. Now there are dents in the inclusive rainbow-painted front door from fights, the blinds are a mess, and the porch smells of dog urine.
This isn’t helpful—there is no middle. There are only kings and serfs. And a serf is a deplorable victim of the evils of kings. Christians are deplorable on their face. This makes me deplorable in the eyes of some. I’m good with that.
You Shall Comply
One more important detail. The dented door got painted black with an Anarchist A spray painted in purple on it. Behind the Anarchist A is an LGBTQIA++ rainbow. The thing that is well kept is the “Love Wins” sign kept company by a “Black Lives Matter” sign. One of those kids identifies as a girl and wears the current goth costume. That one was expelled for bullying a cis-gendered girl who liked platform shoes, short skirts, and tube tops. The nonverbal message is clear: you are the problem and you need to come correct.
I have both in me. My Grandma devoted her life to fighting against those she felt were not coming correct. My Dad achieved a well-lived life. I lived for a long time believing that my Grandma’s way was the authentic way. Beginning with Taxi Unlimited and until this year I lived with and served the ugly house with the BLM yard art. It is not the way.