When the Hyper-Righteousness Era Began

 It was the spring of 2015 and we were living on East Burnside in Portland, at the apartment building with the parking garage below it and the rooftop lounge, just down the street from the Hawaiian restaurant where we ordered takeover at least once a week.

We didn't have cable television at the time. We got our television over the air, so we watched lots of PBS like reruns of Ric Steeves European travel shows. I got my news mostly from Reddit, which I didn't think of as particularly political.

That the time that the guy famous for having won the Decathlon at the Montreal Olympics 1976, and who was on then on the cereal boxes for his feat, announced to the world that he was in fact a woman, and would henceforth go by a different name befitting his womanhood.

I had felt for long time that we had been living in an extended version of the 1980s, that just kept going on and on, but at that moment,  I knew for certain we had turned a page of history. We were in uncharted waters. I felt queasy and weird, the way the 1970s felt, I remembered thinking. Then within months we had Charleston shooting, followed by the Confederate flag issue, and almost simultaneously we had the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage. 

We also had the producer of the Celebrity Apprentice on NBC, Donald Trump, announcing he was running for President, which was a great comedic sideshow, until the polls came out that showed him with solid support. Nevertheless we knew he would wash out by the Iowa caucuses, and drop out after New Hampshire by the latest.

Those were the Great Days of Woke, when the Woke Train was gathering steam. It was a fake train, one that existed only in Virtual Reality as a simulacrum, but nevertheless it felt real enough within the virtual reality world to serve our needs for momentum through cultural time, towards progress.

The train was at full speed by the time Trump was elected, and the team around Hillary, with the full knowledge of Obama and Biden, set about manufacturing phony evidence, and going through the painfully easy process of "leaking" it their press lackeys, in order to create the grounds for a real investigation that could keep Trump from taking office, even though Hillary herself had manufactured it all with her allies. 

It was among the worst crimes in American political history, the epitome of everything associated with dictatorships and fascism. By the brilliance of their Postmodern awareness of the Law of Irony, the coup plotters put forth the message that they were acting to combat fascism, and that anyone who hated fascism (which itself need never be defined with a meaning) would rally behind them. 

And that's exactly what the Woke did, having turned off their discernment in order to feel comfortable among the quiet ongoing applause of social media, even the reactions they imagined getting from their celebrity crushes, who would say "you are truly one of us, the good and enlightened people."

Now that virtual reality railroad has run its course. Its physics were always self-contradictory. The virtual reality experience is running into walls and tottering towards the top of staircases. Those of us Beyond the Woke are hoping to Wake the Woke from their delusions of believing their virtual railroad is a real one.

May God help us.