The Power of Woke: How Leftist Ideology Is Undermining Our Society and Economy; Description of “Wokeness”; CNN Effectively Worthless After Parent Warner Bros Takes $9.1 Billion Writedown
The Power of Woke: How Leftist Ideology Is Undermining Our Society and Economy
“It’s an important part of society whether you like it or not,” lexicologist Tony Thorne, referring to ‘wokeness,’ told The New Yorker’s David Remnick in January. That’s an understatement.
“Wokeness is poisoning the Western workplace and constraining small and family businesses, midsized banks, and entrepreneurs while enriching powerful corporations and billionaires. It’s eating away at the capitalist ethos and killing the bottom-up modes of economic ordering and exchange that propelled the United States of America to prosperity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It’s infecting Gen Z and millennials, who, suffering high depression rates and prone to ‘quiet quitting,’ are not as well off as their parents and grandparents, and who feel isolated and alone even as they enjoy a technological connectivity that’s unprecedented in human history.
What, exactly, is wokeness, and how does it impact business and the wider society?
The term as it’s widely used today differs from earlier significations. ‘Woke,’ which plays on African American vernacular, once meant ‘awake to or ‘aware of’ social and racial injustices. The term expanded to encompass a wider array of causes from climate change, gun control, and LGTBQ rights to domestic violence, sexual harassment, and abortion.
Now, wielded by its opponents, it’s chiefly a pejorative dismissing the person or party it modifies. It’s the successor to ‘political correctness,’ a catchall idiom that ridicules a broad range of leftist hobbyhorses. Carl Rhodes submits, in Woke Capitalism, that ‘woke transmuted from being a political call for self-awareness through solidarity in the face of massive racial injustice, to being an identity marker for self-righteousness.’”
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Description of “Wokeness”
[Michael Rechtenwald was, as a university professor, renowned as one of the most knowledgeble teachers of Marxism and communism. He was a devout communist, in his own words. But his life took a big turn and he resigned from New York University as a professor before he was fired (terminated). Then he began reading Murray N. Rothbard and he became a follower of Austrian economics and a “Rothbard libertarianism”. Remember, he taught this “stuff” that he now understands by both intellect and actions against him, is sickness and anti-God. From being on the other side, he knows what they are doing. PLEASE read the words, below, of Dr. Rectenwald.
He spoke at an Austrian Economics Conference and at a Mises conference held in Birmingham, Alabama. He autographed my copies of his books. SEE, below his Birmingham, Alabama presentation, titled: “The Great Reset.” (video) - JRD]
The words of Michael Rectenwald:
“Wokness is analogous to the Christian encounter of being saved. Like being saved, being woke involves redressing transgressions through repentance and reformation. And, as the Christian is saved not by works but into works, so the newly converted social justice believes are woke not by works but into woke works.
For Christians, Christ crucified brings one's sins to mind, while also serving as a sacrifice for their absolution. Under social justice, the underprivileged do not absolve sins, but they do bring them to mind – as do other woke persons. Like the saved Christian, the social justice woke becomes penitent about previously unacknowledged sin, sin for which they must atone. Under social justice, sin is having acted carelessly from a position of privilege, without sufficient recognition or concern for those whose lack of privilege makes one's privilege possible. Under Christianity, sin is having transgressed against God, sometimes directly but often vis-a-vis others.
Setting aside, metaphysical, theological, and other claims of veracity, there are empirical differences between being saved and being woke. While wokeness begins with change on the level of the individual, it is not the individual that ultimately matters according to the social justice creed. The redemption of the peculiar person, the preservation of individual selfhood – this is not an issue.Wokeness is, after all, a group phenomenon – in the sense that one is ultimately woke for the world. Wokeness does not only or most importantly alter the individual, in order to be woke, one must not only awaken, but also demonstrate a collateral commitment to make reparations for social and political injustice – to help to make a better (more just) world.
The same cannot be said of being saved. Contrary to contemporary social justice Christianity, salvation does not play out on the level of the social group. One works out one's salvation individually, and not, as it were, federally. Salvation is personal, individual, singular – not collective. Under Christianity people are not saved due to their social identity. No one is moral or good because of their membership in a social identity category.
The opposite is the case under social justice. Membership in a subordinated, oppressed, social identity category confers high moral standing under the social justice creed. Such persons are deemed to be the ethical superiors of others – just as membership, confers guilt and low moral standing on members of dominant or privileged social identity categories. Under social justice, it is not what is done that matters, but who does it.
The figure of Jesus Christ, no matter what you believe about his historicity, did not address persons qua members of social groups. He addressed them as individuals whose group membership may have impacted their values and behaviors but were not determining of their moral status. He did not admonish his followers to attend to the social identity category of others, but rather that their social identity categories ultimately should come to be of no real importance. Jesus's call was not to classes or social identity categories as such, but to the individual soul. "God is no respecter of persons" is not a call to activism for a leveling the social order, but rather means that worldly status and importance – or social identity – makes no difference in the eyes of God. Yes, Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, then for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven. But he followed this by saying that all things are possible with God."
Beyond Woke, Introduction, pp. 7-9, Michael Rectenwald
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CNN Effectively Worthless After Parent Warner Bros Takes $9.1 Billion Writedown
“Two years ago market valuations and prevailing conditions for legacy media companies were quite different than they are today. This impairment acknowledges this and better aligns our carrying values with our future outlook.”
“What had been obvious ‘to the rest of us’ for years, is finally official: late last night, shares of Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent of CNN and TNT, crashed 10% to the lowest level on record after it reported dire results, which missed across the board and plunged across every income statement category.
.. but the biggest hit - and surprise - was the company's stunning $9.1 billion charge taken to write down the value of its traditional TV networks, such as CNN and TNT, which were acquired in 2022 when Warner Bros Discovery was created as part of its acquisition of WarnerMedia. The write down confirmed that legacy cable channels like CNN and TNT are no longer worth what they were when the $42 billion merger was completed. In fact, judging by the ongoing mass layoffs at the former, one can argue that CNN's value is now negative and will continue to be so until it stops hemorrhaging cash.
For the quarter, Warner Bros. reported a net loss of $10 billion, which included additional charges of $2.1 billion related to its merger. Revenue for the quarter fell 6.2% to $9.71 billion. Of note, the revenue collapse in the company's Networks segment, which includes CNN, just won't stop.”
“More importantly, the writedown reflects the continued exodus of viewers from cable networks like roaring propaganda dumpster fire CNN to streaming, taking with them the advertising sales and subscriber fees that supply most of the revenue for conventional TV. The changes have rippled across media. Disney, which announced third-quarter results earlier Wednesday, reported declines in linear television advertising sales and subscribers, sending the stock to a ten year low and once again confirming that once you go woke... well, everyone knows what happens next.
[Wokeness, from the pits... - JRD]
Warner Bros. has eliminated more than 2,000 positions over the past year and slashed 100 jobs at CNN last month. The company raised subscription prices for its Max streaming service in June.”
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Book: Beyond Woke
Amazon:
“A few short years ago, Michael Rectenwald was a Marxist professor at NYU, pursuing his career and contemplating becoming a Trotskyist, when the political climate on campus - victimology, cancel-culture, no-platforming, and political correctness run-amok - began to bother him. He responded by creating a Twitter handle, @AntiPCNYUProf (now @TheAntiPCProf), and began bashing campus excesses with humor and biting satire. Predictably, he was soon discovered and pushed out of his job.
Rectenwald struck back by publishing Springtime for Snowflakes, a memoir of his experiences in academia, which included criticism and analyses of the leftism now dominating campus culture. He followed that book with Google Archipelago,, which delves into the seeming enigma of why big business embraces far-left politics - hint: self-interest is involved - and the rapid growth of consumer/citizen surveillance. The foundation for a robust leftist totalitarianism is being carefully laid.
With this new volume, Rectenwald returns with his characteristic sharp wit and incisive analysis and continues to fine tune his critique of modern leftism. In Beyond Woke, he brings his unique perspective as an ex-Marxist and civil libertarian to bear on leftist culture, with its abandonment of traditional morality and emphasis on collective social identities - which are ironically increasingly atomized, as overwhelming centrifugal forces break up any previously stable social cohesion.
The revolution is here and it’s winning. Find out why, and how to combat it. Get Beyond Woke.”
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