Living The Truth

In 1978, Czech dissident Vaclav Havel published, via samizdat, an essay entitled, The Power Of The Powerless.  In 1968, a futile attempt to "put a human face" on socialism in Czechoslovakia, was crushed by Soviet tanks, and a wave of repression occurred to ensure it never happened again.  Havel and others attempted to build resistance to the communist apparatus.  In his essay, Havel describes what he characterizes as a "post totalitarian system", one that relies on a:

. . . labyrinth of influence, repression, fear, and self-censorship which swallows up everyone within it.

In other words, something like the society the Woke are trying to build right now in America.

Havel gives us a parable, the story of the greengrocer who places in his shop the sign, Workers Of The World, Unite!  Does he do so because he believes in the slogan?  No, he does so as a sign of his submission to and humiliation by the regime because it is too dangerous not to.  From the regime's perspective it is even more powerful because those who disagree with it must publicly demonstrate their support.  The individual living within such a system must live a lie to survive.  Havel proposes that the only path towards restoring a free society is for the individual to refuse to live the lie and that by living the truth on a day to day basis to differentiate themselves from the mandated culture.  Havel's argument is complex and goes on to explain how it is possible to exploit the cracks in the system, live the truth, and still possibly survive.  

Havel himself was jailed several months after The Power of the Powerless was published clandestinely, serving four years in prison.  He survived living the truth and, in 1989, became the last President of Czechoslovakia and, in 1992, the first President of the Czech Republic.

With that in mind, I ask you watch the 10-minute video embedded below.  It came to my attention through a piece by Rod Dreher, author of the just-released Live Not By Lies.  It was published in the American Conservative, an online magazine and one which features many authors I do not care for.  However, I follow Dreher on twitter so I can get notice of his articles, finding him credible and thoughtful.

The video, posted on October 27, is by Jody Shaw, an administrative assistant at Smith College in Northhampton, MA as well as being a graduate of the school and a self-described liberal.  She's also "sick and tired of enduring what she describes as “harassment, discrimination, and hostility” in the workplace at Smith, because she is white" and Ms Shaw speaks up not just on her own behalf but on behalf of many others who have spoken with her but fear speaking publicly.  She is resisting the poison that Critical Race Theory and the Woke are trying to inject into our society.

Stopping the hysterical stampede towards totalitarianism will take the work of many brave people like Jody Shaw.

Ms Shaw, claims that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination based on race illegal, protects her.  She's right, but unfortunately, the increasingly progressive-oriented legal academics and civil rights groups do not agree with her, arguing that White people are not protected by the Civil Rights Act despite its clear language.  A little back history is important here.  In 2009, when Eric Holder became Attorney General in the Obama administration, he hired about 100 new lawyers for the Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice.  A later Inspector General report on that hiring process chastised Holder for hiring those lawyers exclusively from a select group of civil rights organizations, including the NAACP and LaRaza, which take the position that the anti-discrimination provisions of the Act do not apply to Whites, while rejecting many other qualified candidates with similar credentials, but without similar views.

It is also appropriate to note that, as I write this, the California Democratic Party is spearheading an effort to repeal the anti-discrimination clauses in that state's constitution.

Every time I think of the courage of a Havel or a Jody Shaw I become more outraged at the moral inversion currently underway in large parts of our society, and one specific example comes to mind.  Angela Davis is someone of whom I've written before, a violent and evil person.  Since this post in January 2019 with the eruption of the Woke this year she has regained a great deal of public prominence being featured on the cover of Vanity Fair which contains a fawning and disgraceful agit-prop interview of Davis by movie director Ava Duverney, as well as two glowing articles in the New York Times during October.

Angela Davis is a communist.  She opposes human rights.  And, when approached in the 1970s seeking her support in seeking the release of dissident Czechs like Vaclav Havel, her response was "They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison".  Those involved in her public rehabilitation show their true colors.  For more on the noxious Davis read this piece.

The Woke want you to believe that it is Angela Davis who lacks power and privilege, even as she has been showered with decades of appointments in academia and celebrated as a political and fashion icon, while it is those like Jody Shaw, fearing the loss of jobs and careers for speaking out, who wield the power and privilege.  When you are asked to believe that you are being asked to live the lie.  Will you decide to live the truth?

UPDATE: If you want to know what it is like living in the Woke version of America, ask Tiffany Riley, recently fired as a high school principal in the Mount Ascutney School District in Vermont.  The District Board fired here because back in June she wrote:

I firmly believe that Black Lives Matter, but I DO NOT agree with the coercive measures taken to get to this point across; some of which are falsified in an attempt to prove a point. While I want to get behind BLM, I do not think people should be made to feel they have to choose black race over human race. While I understand the urgency to feel compelled to advocate for black lives, what about our fellow law enforcement? What about all others who advocate for and demand equity for all? Just because I don’t walk around with a BLM sign should not mean I am a racist.

In the peculiar logic of the Woke, one of the Board members said the most convincing moment for her was in a phone conversation with Riley.  When the Board member accused Riley of being a racist, it was the fact that Riley rejected this accusation that was the most damning fact. 

This reasoning, so common on the Woke, evokes a scene from the magnificent German film, The Lives of Others, in which the interrogator from the communist Stasi secret police of East Germany questions a prisoner:

Q.  You think we imprison people on a whim?

A.  No.

Q.  If you think our humanistic system capable of it, that alone would justify your arrest.

In an October 15 statement, Riley asserted:

“I did not know that talking about ‘all lives’ was ‘code’ for opposing the nonviolent messages of the Black Lives Matter movement. Black lives have always mattered to me, which is why I had been leading equity training in the school.”

These examples point out that the Woke are just as much a danger to traditional liberal Democrats as they are to those on the right.  There are many who believe in opposing racism and seeking justice in society who fail to realize that the Woke and their allies like BLM and Antifa are racist and oppose equal justice for all in society.

This is Your Future under the Woke and the Democratic party, none of whose leading figures have objected to this insanity so antithetical to basic American values.   Absolute adherence is demanded to every single aspect of woke theology or you will be branded a heretic.