Tag: woke

Commentary: Big Pharma’s Wokeness

Michigan Star Staff
Pfizer Vaccine

Big Pharma is not your friend. Whether it’s hiking up drug prices or bribing the Swamp, the pharmaceutical industry works against the people’s interests. Many Americans are aware of Big Pharma’s greed and the power it wields over Washington, D.C., but fewer are aware of just how left-wing the industry is. It serves as a cash cow for the left and pushes woke ideas on its employees and the country at large. This may explain why Democrats, who act like they hate Big Pharma, serve the industry’s interests.

While the drugmakers spread their cash around all of DC, they overwhelmingly prefer Democrats. In recent elections, Big Pharma donated significantly more money to Democratic candidates than Republican candidates. From 2016 to 2022, the industry gave a whopping $29 million to Democratic candidates. This trend stands true for the current election cycle, with more cash going to Democrats once again. This favoritism extends to the presidential race. The drug lobby has donated four times more money to Joe Biden than it has to Donald Trump. And the industry’s generosity to Team Blue doesn’t end with individual candidates. Its chief lobby, PhRMA, also gives millions to liberal campaign arms like the Democratic Attorneys General Association.

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Commentary: America’s Priorities Need to Change in Order to Protect Its Citizens

Michigan Star Staff
Illegal Immigrants

The horrific murder of Laken Riley by a repeated felony offender and illegal alien Jose Ibarra, 26, a Venezuelan citizen, was preventable—had federal immigration laws simply been enforced by the Biden administration.

When called out in his recent State of the Union address, President Biden referenced the deceased Ms. Riley. But Biden misidentified her as “Lincoln Riley”—the USC football coach!

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Commentary: Bidenomics Is Behind Jerome Powell’s Woke Turn

Michigan Star Staff

In February 2021, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told Congress, “We are not climate policymakers here who can decide the way climate change will be addressed by the United States. We’re a regulatory agency that regulates a part of the economy.” When Powell said that, less than a month into the Biden administration, inflation was 1.6%.

Just eight months later, in remarks on November 22, 2021, President Biden said Powell – then up for renomination and facing stiff opposition from congressional progressives – “made clear to me: A top priority will be to accelerate the Fed’s effort to address and mitigate the risks – the risk that climate change poses to our financial system and our economy.” At that time inflation was 6.8%, on its way up to a 40-year high of 9.1%.

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Commentary: Identity Studies in Academia Is the Birthplace of Woke

Michigan Star Staff

In 1983, having spent four years earning a PhD in English, I instantly turned down the reasonably secure entry-level faculty position my alma mater offered me and chose instead to sign up for that most financially insecure of all professions: freelance literary journalist. Why? Partly because it had taken me that long to face the fact that I just wasn’t the academic type. And partly because I saw that the kind of jargon-heavy approaches that were taking over America’s English departments — from politics-driven “feminist criticism” to pretentious postmodern “deconstruction,” straight out of France by way of Yale University — had nothing whatsoever to do with my own reasons for wanting to spend my life reading and writing about books.

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Commentary: Biden-Era Funding Is Skewing Scientific Research More Woke

RealClearWire
Man on sight with microscope

While pushing record spending for research and development, the Biden administration is working not just to advance science but also progressive ideology. In line with the administration’s “whole of government” commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, recent grants and requests for proposals from the National Science Foundation encompass research that: 

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Commentary: Equity and the Race to the Bottom

RealClearWire

Over the last few years, the rallying cry of “woke” activists has become “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (often abbreviated to DEI). There is little reason to object to such principles on the surface. After all, America was founded on the principle that all people are created equal. Unfortunately, the meaning of words can change over time.  

Rather than the Founders’ vision of equal opportunity for all, the use of the word “equity” today denotes equal outcomes for all. The implementation of this “equity agenda,” however well-intentioned, will lead to terrible consequences. 

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Commentary: Understanding ‘Woke’ Supremacy

Admin

In a recent interview, Bethany Mandel, author of Stolen Youth, a book discussing how woke ideology is erasing childhood, was asked to define the term woke and froze. The media has predictably had a field day with this. We can be sympathetic to Mandel’s explanation of the stress she was feeling in the moment. At the same time, this situation can remind us that when engaging in such conversations, having clear definitions and logical arguments is foundational. So what do we mean by woke?

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New Country Music Label Baste Records Launched for Anti-Woke Artists

Rachel Alexander

A new country music label is recruiting and promoting anti-woke artists, launched by the young founder of The Post-Millennial. Matthew Azrieli, who is also a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, started Baste Records to promote talented country singers who are struggling to survive in the mainstream music business due to their right-leaning political and cultural views. He’s brought on talent like Chris Wallin, also a singer and songwriter who has written music for some of the biggest country stars, including Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney, Garth Brooks, and Trace Adkins. 

Azrieli told The Arizona Sun Times that he started Baste Records because music is a passion. He wanted to “provide a healthy outlet for conservatives, instead of just complaining.” Baste Records intends to appeal to a certain niche, the center right, instead of attempting to have a broad appeal that risks alienating factions. He pointed out Netflix is an example of an entertainment company that is engaging in the latter, angering both conservatives and the transgender community, causing it to lose market share. He said, “Cultural and political identities are driving entertainment media.” 

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New Republican Majority Plans to Target ‘Woke’ Businesses

Michigan Star Staff
exterior of BlackRock

One of the top agenda items for the GOP’s new majority in the House of Representatives is the targeting of “woke” corporations on Wall Street, threatening investigations and other government action if such companies do not reverse anti-American policies and practices.

Politico reports that some of the measures the GOP will be scrutinizing include “ESG (environmental, social, and governance)” policies, divesting from fossil fuels, and race-based affirmative action hiring policies for the sake of “diversity.”

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Commentary: Undermining U.S. Citizenship at K-12 Schools on American Military Bases

RealClearWire

Schools on American military bases, educating almost 70,000 children of service personnel, push the same anti-racism curriculum found in America’s most liberal school districts, with the goal of preparing these students for lives dedicated to a global citizenship meant to displace American citizenship and the American way of life.

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‘TikTok Channel for Cosmic Gendersmurfs’: Science Journals Bow to Woke Orthodoxy, Provoke Ridicule

Admin

Before “The Science” became the default invocation in response to criticisms of COVID-19 policies, scientific journals, academic departments and faculty sought to unshackle the discipline from its purported white male heterosexist biases.

With COVID mitigations receding from American public life, the earlier ideological battles in science are are now reemerging.

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Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Here Come the Bad Old Days

Admin

There is no end of history. Instead, civilization is a constant fight to embrace what has worked for the common good through the ages – and to reject what in the past has failed abysmally.

Bad and bankrupt ideas, protocols, and ideologies – like McCarthyism, communism, various cults, or fascism – resurface not because of their intrinsic or lasting value or record of success, but because civilizations become less vigilant and allow human vanities, ignorance, arrogance, and evil to reassert themselves.

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Commentary: Woke Retailers Seek Congressional Smash-and-Grab on Your Credit Card

Admin

Woke retailers like Home Depot, Kroger, and Walmart are asking Congress to pass their own special smash and grab worth billions of dollars by mandating changes to how credit cards are processed.

Joining forces with far-left Democratic Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, retailers are seeking changes in federal law threatening rewards programs that many consumers use to take some of the sting off of the high cost of everything from food and gas to furniture and travel.

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Commentary: Drain the Academic Swamp

Admin

Recently, a number of medical schools have joined the anti-European, anti-Christian, pro-Marxist woke bandwagon. According to physicist Lawrence Krauss, “the American Association of Medical Colleges has approved a Diversity-Equity-Inclusion based curriculum, which the AAMC Council of Deans Chair says is as important as teaching the latest scientific breakthroughs.”

Meanwhile, our military leadership continues to push incoherent gender ideology upon a captive audience of young soldiers, sailors, and airmen. And justices at the heights of our judiciary system, because of political correctness, dare not even define the word woman.

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Commentary: The Decline and Fall of Newspapers

RealClearWire

A few years ago, you would have unfolded your newspaper and read opinion and analysis like this. Those days are gone. Today, most of us get our news and commentary online, perhaps supplemented by network or cable television, although TV viewership is far smaller than in the days of  “The Big Three.” Buried alongside those iconic broadcasters is the public’s confidence in news from all sources. Only 16% of Americans say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers, only 11% in TV news. Those numbers keep sinking. Today, if Walter Cronkite ended his broadcast, “And that’s the way it is,” most people would just smirk.

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Commentary: ‘Woke’ Corporate Support of Black Lives Matter Has Deadly Consequences

RealClearWire

You’ve heard the chants in the streets of America: “Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon.”

You’ve seen the graffiti scrawled on walls and monuments and broken windows in the wake of “peaceful protests”: ACAB, which stands for “All Cops Are Bastards.”

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Michigan Schools Are Getting Paid to Change Their ‘Racist’ Mascots

Michigan Star Staff

Several Michigan school districts will receive more than $400,000 in funding to change their mascots, according to a Native American Heritage Fund (NAHF) press release.

NAHF, which receives some of Michigan’s gaming revenue, is giving $411,438 out of $480,000 in grants to four districts with mascots that depict Native Americans, according to a press release from the fund. Each school district will receive the funds for its transformation in August.

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Commentary: U.S. Spirals Toward Lawless Carnage; BLM and Woke Corporations Silent

RealClearWire

Being “woke” once symbolized one’s awareness of the historical and present injustices faced by an individual or group in the pursuit of their advancement or being. It meant that the blinders of matters of racism and systems of oppression were removed so that one could fully awaken to the reality that racism exists. It is a continual and daily acknowledgement of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

I am a young, 26-year-old black man in America. I have seen true racism, and the racist carnage in Buffalo, Charleston, Houston, and other cities across our country, and it has stirred in me and in many others a desire to see justice served.

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Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: The Cycles of Revolutions in Our Midst

Michigan Star Staff

We are witnessing a number of radical military, social, and political revolutions that are changing the United States—and the world—in fundamental ways that we still have not appreciated. 

The taboo about never mentioning the first-strike use of nuclear weapons in a major conventional war is now apparently over. Vladimir Putin routinely threatens their use. Communist China hints at its growing nuclear capability and is hell-bent on rushing into production a huge new nuclear missile force. The world is defining nuclear incineration down.

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Academia’s Woke Influence on the Media: Analysis

Admin

Higher education’s push for Critical Race Theory influences not just college campuses, but also American society and media.

Earlier this year, Campus Reform reported on a Jan. 20 speaking event at the University of Pittsburgh where three scholars used the Critical Race Theory framework to examine three controversial court cases decided in Nov. 2021.

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Commentary: Woke Is Broke and Costing Democrats

RealClearWire

We are in the first month of 2022, and, from every sign, it appears my Democratic friends are determined to stick to their guns when it comes to both their agenda and how they intend to sell it. In other words, America has not heard the last of the Woke Police.

The 2021 elections, especially in Virginia, could have served as a wake-up call for Democrats. When Terry McAuliffe announced he thought parents should not be telling schools what to teach, the voters spoke loudly and clearly that they felt differently. Attempts to make Republican Glenn Youngkin into the Old Dominion’s version of Donald Trump fell flat as he scored a solid victory.

You might think that after the events of 2021, Democrats would be inclined to engage in some self-reflection. You would be wrong. How do we account for the largest increase in the inflation rate in a generation? President Biden has decided Sen. Elizabeth Warren has it right. Defying logic, gravity, and common sense, they have placed the blame on “meat conglomerates.” Why the cost of a steak would cause spikes in the cost of so many other items, including gasoline, is a carefully guarded secret. Why don’t Democrats in a position of leadership make clear they will not submit to viewpoints held by such a small percentage of the public?

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Commentary: The ‘New Normal’ and the Assault on Reason

Michigan Star Staff

Our political situation is so chaotic and strange right now that we can’t take anything for granted—including what is normal. So it’s often necessary to explain what may seem obvious to readers of American Greatness, but is regarded as strange or almost incomprehensible to other people. 

For example, it is obvious to me, and probably to you, that today’s “progressive” agenda is actually pushing our country back to a more primitive past. 

Consider some of the most urgent priorities of woke ideology:

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Commentary: Five Times Campuses Ruined Holidays in 2021

Michigan Star Staff
two people with Santa hats looking at Christmas tree

Woke and leftist ideologies often target traditions and celebrations around holidays, particularly those that pertain to Christianity and American identity. 

With 2021 coming to an end, Campus Reform has compiled a list of the top five instances of colleges and universities ruining holidays on campus.

1. Colleges celebrate Valentine’s Day with ‘Sex in the Dark’

Multiple colleges hosted a question and answer “Sex in the Dark,” a virtual Q&A event with health experts, just in time for Valentine’s Day. 

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Commentary: Five Times Campuses Ruined Holidays in 2021

Michigan Star Staff
two people with Santa hats looking at Christmas tree

Woke and leftist ideologies often target traditions and celebrations around holidays, particularly those that pertain to Christianity and American identity. 

With 2021 coming to an end, Campus Reform has compiled a list of the top five instances of colleges and universities ruining holidays on campus.

1. Colleges celebrate Valentine’s Day with ‘Sex in the Dark’

Multiple colleges hosted a question and answer “Sex in the Dark,” a virtual Q&A event with health experts, just in time for Valentine’s Day. 

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Commentary: Christmas Movies Without the Hollywoke Scrooge

Admin
Christmas tree, TV playing The Grinch and stockings on chimney

Hollywoke may be spearheading the War on Christmas, but three cable channels are mounting a far more effective counteroffensive, running traditionalist Christmas movies 24/7. And one of them, Lifetime, is a surprising beachhead. While HBO Max is showcasing the insufferable Seth Rogan’s latest bomb, Santa, Inc. (angry elf girl wants to succeed white male Santa Claus), the once male-bashing Lifetime “for Women” now boasts such romantic “heteronormative” fare as My Sweet Holiday, A Sweet Christmas Romance, and A Christmas Village Romance. Lifetime has joined the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies and Mysteries to reflect a realistic rather than fantastical vision of and for women, and their genuine desire for true love over a feminist-fueled man-light career pursuit.

Some Grinches criticize the films as bland, corny, and predictable. They’re certainly not on par with Yuletide classics by Ernst Lubitch (The Shop Around the Corner) or Leo McCarey (An Affair to Remember), and they do stress a secular more than spiritual Christmas magic. But normal viewers gleam from them values no longer found in the tiresomely “dark, edgy” mainstream series and feature films, such as beauty, sensitivity, warmth, uplift, and niceness.

Start with beauty. The movies are gorgeously photographed to resemble, yes, Hallmark cards. Many depict Robert Frostian villages and valleys in holiday winter, but even major cities like San Francisco in A Christmas Village Romance, Chicago in A Kiss Before Christmas, and New York in the majority appear as lovely metropoles instead of the crime-ridden progressive hellholes the Left has made of them.

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Jordan Peterson Spots Another Woke College Math Course

Michigan Star Staff

Jordan Peterson, the famed psychology professor, recently pointed out that his institution, the University of Toronto, is offering a “Liberating Mathematics” class.

The course description argues that “progress” in the discipline has been “led in large part by women mathematicians, in particular Black women, Indigenous women, and women from visible minorities” who offer “a daring critique of traditional mathematics, re-imagining of mathematics culture, and more.”

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Commentary: Ground Zero of Woke

Michigan Star Staff

Many of our once revered and most hallowed institutions are failing us. To mention only the most significant ones: our top-ranking military echelon, the leadership of our federal investigatory and intelligence agencies, the government medical establishment—and of course the universities.

For too long American higher education’s reputation of global academic superiority has rested mostly on the sciences, mathematics, physics, technology, medicine, and engineering—in other words, not because of the humanities and social sciences, but despite them. The humanities have become too often anti-humanistic. And the social sciences are deductively anti-scientific. Both quasi-religious woke disciplines have eroded confidence in colleges and universities, infected even the STEM disciplines and professional schools, and torn apart the civic unity of the United States. Indeed, much of the current Jacobin revolution was birthed and fueled by American universities, despite their manifest hypocrisies and derelictions.

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Analysis: Woke Teaching Programs Create K-12 ‘Social Justice Educators’

Michigan Star Staff

Integrating activism in the K-12 classroom is the trickle-down of liberal bias in higher education. The results are seen as educators mirror anti-racist trainings and social justice workshops, which evolved from college campuses.

For instance, University of California, Los Angeles’ Teacher Education Program (TEP), trains “social justice educators” and follows an “anti-racist and social justice agenda.”

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Commentary: Spy Couple Follow in the Grand Tradition of Treasonous Leftist Couples

Michigan Star Staff

In the wake of the recent arrest of Maryland nuclear engineer, Jonathan Toebbe, and his wife, Diana Toebbe on charges they tried to sell classified nuclear warship information to a foreign country, the mainstream media has focused on the “mystery” of how this could happen. But very little media coverage has focused on their progressive political background—the most likely key to their misdeeds. 

In fact, strangely enough, husband and wife traitor teams are often linked to left-wing politics. Why hasn’t the establishment media focused on this tie?

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Commentary: Breaking Up America

Michigan Star Staff

I never thought I’d be writing about secession or anything close. Not in a million years. “America, the Beautiful” is my favorite national song, bringing tears to my eyes with its “sea to shining sea.” Giving up the magnificence that entails would be heartbreaking on so many levels.

But the times being what they are and the man occupying the presidency being who he is, not to mention those surrounding him being who they are, plus the issues that divide us from national defense to education to immigration to race to public safety to the pandemic to values in general being so intractable, I feel compelled to discuss secession or division as if they were a real possibility worth considering.

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Commentary: Unions’ Focus on Woke over Work Rankles Rank and File

RealClearWire

Los Angeles school teacher Glenn Laird has been a union stalwart for almost four decades. He served as a co-chair of his school’s delegation to United Teachers Los Angeles and proudly wore union purple on the picket line.

But Laird is now suing to leave UTLA and demanding a refund of the dues the union has collected since his resignation request. His turning point came in July 2020 when the union, the second largest teachers union in the country, joined liberal activists to demand that Los Angeles defund the police in response to Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

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Shrier: ‘Aw Shucks Conservatives’ Are Handing America Over to the Woke

Michigan Star Staff
Christopher Rufo

Both meek “aw shucks” conservatives and “chest thumpers” conservatives are handing America over to woke activists, author Abigail Shrier claimed in a Monday Substack.

The journalist and author highlighted the successful work of anti-Critical Race Theory writer Christopher Rufo, who Shrier praised for speaking not to elites, but to Americans, by “gathering evidence and pointing out the glaring harm in clear, unapologetic (but never crass or rude) language.”

“Rufo is out there identifying the problem, alerting the public, and sounding all available alarms,” Shrier wrote. “If he hasn’t yet slain the beast, he has at least awakened American parents from their coma, convinced them that they cannot trust the teachers and administrators and school boards who treat children, not as students, but as recruits for their revolution.”

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Commentary: Wokeness Has the Potential to Destroy the Military from Within

Michigan Star Staff

Wokeness might do to the American military what no foreign enemy ever could: Fracture the world’s greatest armed forces from within, through divisive political indoctrination and controls.

Wokeness—extreme ideological intolerance of opposing views and the imposition of life-destroying punishments for the insufficiently woke—is organized fratricide. 

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Over a Thousand Former Military Members Sign Letter Warning About ‘Wokeness’ in the Military

Admin

by Debra Heine   Over 1,000 former members of the military have signed a scathing public letter warning that the increased priority placed on “wokeness” in the military is a threat to the Constitution and the nation’s military readiness. The letter comes after Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley…

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Commentary: The ‘Woke’ Are Sleeping on China

Michigan Star Staff

Every day I read online about systemic racism, transgender issues, President Joe Biden’s latest faux pas, and other American social ills.

All well and good. I’ve written about some of these same issues as well. But are we elevating the trivial at the expense of the significant? Many of our citizens are focused on the ongoing cultural battle over subjects such as racism and transgender athletes.

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New Docuseries Takes Aim at the ‘Woke Reformation’

Michigan Star Staff
Dave Rubin

An upcoming docuseries hopes to burst the woke bubble billowing across Western culture.

“The Woke Reformation,” first teased on “The Rubin Report” May 14, tracks the rise of a woke culture that has infiltrated everything from academia to global corporations like Coke, Starbucks and Nike.

Dave Rubin, a self-described “classical liberal,” broke the news about the docuseries via his “Rubin Report” YouTube show and podcast.

“Woke Reformation” director Travis Brown also teamed with Rubin to share details about the project via Locals.com, Rubin’s social media platform. The author of 2020’s “Don’t Burn This Book” created the cyber network to allow artists to speak their minds without fear of cancellation.

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Commentary: The Strange Death of the British Labour Party

Michigan Star Staff
Labour Party

I must visit Twitter periodically to renew my sense of horror. For lurid anthropological enjoyment, Twitter offers a safari to those inclined. Twitter is most satisfying when reality intrudes upon those dedicated to unreality, the “my-truthers.” 

Last week’s elections in Great Britain were such an occasion. “Fascists live among us!” cried the Woke, who call for the professional death and canceling of anyone who disagrees with them. 

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Commentary: How ‘Woke’ May Be Leading Us to Civil War

Michigan Star Staff
Riot in Minnesotta; BLM

The other day, I wrote that “woke” was the new conformism.

It is, of course, but I undersold it. It’s much more than that and more dangerous.

As Tal Bachman notes at Steynonline, it’s now our state religion, a state religion in a country that—constitutionally and for good reason—isn’t supposed to have one.

But “Wokism” is yet more than that, too. It’s a mass psychosis similar to many that have arisen throughout history when the masses followed leaders who, in their zeal or self-interest, took them to disastrous ends.

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Commentary: Tuning Out Wokeism

Michigan Star Staff
Group protesting; "no justice no peace" sign

If wokeness should continue and “win,” by now we all know where it will end up. After all, this is not a prairie-fire, peasants-with-pitchforks, spontaneous bottom-up revolution.

The woke Left seeks a top-down erasure of America, engineered by the likes of LeBron James from his $40 million estate talking revolution to Oprah at her $90 million castle, as Mark Zuckerberg throws in $500 million here, and his colleagues $400 million there, and as the top executives of Coke, Target, and Delta Airlines believe their $17 million-a-year salaries make them experts on the crimes of non-diversity, exclusion, and inequity. Anytime revolutionaries at the outset of their enterprises seek exemption from the consequences of their own ideology, we know their plans will end badly for everyone else.

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Commentary: The U.S. Military Is Just Another Woke Institution

Michigan Star Staff
The backsides of American soldiers in uniform

Tucker Carlson spurred a much-needed reexamination of the military in March. His monologue criticizing the military’s political correctness drew a more furious response from top brass than any foreign threat is likely to do. The generals’ response only affirmed Tucker’s points about the degraded state of our armed forces. Why do generals—both current and retired—feel the need to condemn civilians who question the wisdom of putting women in combat?

The answer is that the military, along with the entire national security establishment, is at one with the Democrat-Media complex. The image we have of generals and senior officers as defenders of tradition is wildly out of step with reality.

This fact is underscored by its contrast with a letter issued in France last week. The letter—signed by 20 retired generals, 80 officers, and 1,000 lower-ranking soldiers—was stridently right-wing. “The hour is late, France is in peril, threatened by several mortal dangers,” the letter states. Though retired, we remain soldiers of France, and cannot, under the present circumstances, remain indifferent to the fate of our beautiful country.”

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Commentary: The Truth vs. Woke Fascism in Georgia

Michigan Star Staff

During World War II, General Dwight Eisenhower liked to remind his troops of the adage, “plans seldom survive initial contact with the enemy.” Today, the corollary is that the truth seldom survives initial contact with woke fascism.

Woke fascism—the unholy alliance between the Democratic-controlled national government, corporate leftist media, Big Tech, and globalist corporations loyal to profits over our republic—is now attacking the state of Georgia for wanting to ensure that elections in the Peach State are free, fair, and accurate.

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