Establishment types were clucking about the news of Andrew Sullivan leaving his post at NY Magazine. He wrote a typically long winded farewell column, stating that he was being pushed out by the new woke rabble. Whether or not that is true is hard to know, as Sullivan is prone to exaggeration and hysteria, but it was accepted as true by so-called conservatives and the “old style” liberals. It was another ominous sign that the woke revolution is consolidating power.

The details of his case are not all that important, as it lines up with other incidents involving less creative story tellers. The New York Times has been dealing with a public revolt by the woke young staffers. These are mostly emotional young women of various flavors, who start sobbing whenever they hear a discouraging word. Collectively they become a storm of shrieking harpies that manages to get its way. These tantrums are now being spun as the new ideological revolution.

The incident itself offers some insight into how left-wing politics has evolved over the last decade. Sullivan is a competent and productive writer, but his insights are just banal liberal boilerplate. His act was always derivative. He is a reboot of Truman Capote or maybe the literary Liberace. He is a professional homosexual, who says harsh things about normal Americans, but in a flamboyant and flippant style. The establishment subversive always puts style over substance.

Nowadays, the outrageous gay guy act is the leisure suit of public performance. It’s not just out of style, it makes everyone stare at their shoes. In fact, gay males are now totally out of fashion on the Left. They have been replaced in the catalog with hairy Jewish guys in sundresses. In fact, the wide array of imaginary sexual identities has displaced suburban white girl feminism too. In order to get in the Progressive catalog, you better have at least two things going wrong for you.

The Sullivan incident and other similar happenings during this phase of the revolution puts the lie to the whole coalition of the fringes thing. If there was really an intelligence behind this stuff, playing four-dimensional political chess, they would not be swapping out the gays for guys in lady’s underwear. Feminists are also financially and organizationally strong. In reality, it is the old Progressive hatred of tradition manifesting itself as a quest for the novel and bizarre.

That’s the thing about the cultural revolution that gets missed. The communist revolution was serious about remaking society. They wanted to strip it down to the foundation stones and start fresh. They were even willing to tear up the foundation if they thought it necessary. The liberal democratic revolution is more like a redecorating party.  They are willing to make superficial changes, but only in the areas that people see. Sullivan was replaced by a new set of drapes and a transgender garden gnome.

The superficiality of this revolution may have been exposed by the maker of an energy drink last week. When he found out his females were going bonkers over the BLM stuff, he fired them. The Red Bull story may turn out to be an amusing turning point in the revolution. You can be sure lots of other corporate executives are looking at that story and wondering if that is not the right course. Just tell these harpies no and show them the door. The rest will pipe down in a hurry.

That was always the truth of feminism. All the bellowing about the patriarchy and male chauvinism was just a desperate cry for a firm hand. College men cruised the women’s studies department for a reason. It was where you could find the six who desperately wanted to hear she was a nine. Professional feminism was just the same thing, but the women were rapidly approaching the wall. Still, the firm hand worked just as well and it may turn out to be the antidote the woke pandemic.

This is the paradox of the cultural revolution. The Bolsheviks could carry on without liberals, monarchist and other types of socialists fighting with them for control. Once they eliminated their rivals, they set about creating their society. The same was true of the Maoists and Khmer Rouge. The old school radicals did not need the constant struggle to justify their existence. They just needed the specter of it to focus the attention of the revolution away from the failings of the revolution.

The modern radical cannot exist without the thing it is claiming as an enemy and it seeks to destroy. Black identity movements are entirety dependent on whites tolerating and indulging them. The old feminist line about a woman needing a man like a fish needs a bicycle was always just a coping mechanism. Feminism can only exist in the presence of normal males. Cultural Marxism is just the over indulged third child that endlessly acts out to get attention from her parents.

This suggests the revolution will continue until it gets the back of the hand. It will not be happy to dominate the institutions and push its opposition to the fringes. In fact, the further it pushes its opposition into the shadows, the angrier it will get, as what it wants is the confrontation. Starved of that confrontation it will grow increasingly berserk as it tries to flush out the opposition. It will endlessly provoke and harass until it gets the back of the hand it so desperately needs.

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