The Psychology of Woke - Part III
How and When Boys and Men Got Left Behind - Sam Ray © 2023 - Counter-Narcissist Intelligence
As noted in Part I & Part II, to be truly awake, one must know that, “wokeism” is the American oligarch party’s latest shiny new victim-blaming vehicle to replace their old worn out scary boogeymen of “politically correct,” “liberal” and “progressive.” Additionally, these terms have been falsely and consistently conflated for many years with authoritarianism, communism and fascism, which is ironic because the last thing authoritarian communist or fascist leaders want is their people being woke to their systemic injustice.
These types of “conservative” common misperceptions also prove an anti-woke lack of education or willful ignorance, with communism and fascism being the two authoritarian extremes on opposite ends of the political spectrum. It is Political Science 101 that Communism is when “The Left” goes too far and Fascism is when “The Right” goes too far.
This kind of false conflation is another main tool the selfishly powerful use to blame victims and deflect attention away from their own “mind virus” of narcissism they have aggressively gaslit and infected the Republican Party with, as proven by the fact that professional Republicans are now clearly a quasi-fascist and sociopathic political operation no longer interested in fair elections, democracy, truth or reality. They are now just about grifting and gaining and maintaining power. Too much? Ask Kevin McCarthy about George Santos.
What the anti-woke never want reasonable people under their spell to realize is that for true wokeism to succeed, it requires a free, fair and open-minded democratic country, because that is the only kind of country where all human rights can be respected and there can be systemic justice for all.
In contrast, since the anti-woke believe their lives, opinions and beliefs are superior to any other citizen’s rights, their end game is an authoritarian system where their most powerful leader is their cult of personality ruler and strongman father figure. What a strange coincidence wokeism’s tolerance doesn’t function in dictatorship while anti-wokeism’s intolerance requires it.
One thing for sure is we cannot let the reachable have any illusions about the inevitable end of American democracy road the anti-woke are on. Right now it seems that a priority needs to be firmly but gently waking up the unaware who do not understand the consequences and trauma of the anti-woke policies being implemented. I say gently because demanding any spellbound to suddenly become woke is the authoritarianism they have been told to expect from us, so will unsurprisingly react badly to most confrontational approaches. It was not the woke who made so many men so fragile but it is likely only the empathy of wokeism that can heal them.
In the upcoming Psychological Lens in Parts IV & V, the priorities and best approaches from a psychological perspective will be outlined in more detail. We are almost there but we need to lay a bit more foundational context by answering the often asked and unanswered key question of, “How and when did boys and men get left behind?”
Central to the key stated beliefs of anti-wokeism is that boys and men are victims because they are not allowed to be masculine, and that many are in crises because they are being told their maleness is toxic masculinity that must stop. They claim boys and men are angry and depressed because they cannot be themselves, and are worried that they are going to be emasculated or get “canceled.” What most men who buy into this narrative miss is that they are being gaslit and groomed by a right-wing narcissist’s “real man” toxic masculinity litmus test.
What is happening behind the curtain is pathological narcissists are declaring themselves “Alpha males” and “free speech absolutists” because narcissists by definition refuse to ever be held accountable for any of their own malignantly selfish behaviors or toxic words that reveal they are real life villains, emotional vampires, predators, parasites and/or group cancers, many mistakenly think only exist on TV or in the movies.
If we peek ahead further behind the psychological scenes, a standard narcissist weapon of manipulation is to consistently hunt for the insecurities of people and gaslight them into feeling like they are “victims.” There is no doubt that all but the most secure men would feel attacked, angry and a bit insecure if someone told them they were being emasculated by someone or something. The reality is the “anti-woke” “Alpha males” are really just fishing for and grooming unsuspecting men with their own personal microtargeted toxic brew of disordered narcissism. In pop psychology, this kind of narcissist’s minion is called a flying monkey.
If the grooming holds, the flying monkey men will irrationally fear they may be canceled for what they believe are normal “socially conservative” opinions, but if your opinion is always about undeservedly taking away the rights of others and never your own, then your “opinions” are racism, bigotry, misogyny, greed or narcissism, not conservatism.
It is exactly this type of ridiculously ignorant “mind virus” that makes these men more angry, toxic, less self-aware and narcissistic. They are told they are entitled to perpetuate the patriarchy and everyone they want to dominate should not fight back, or they are being mean to these poor innocent conservative men.
Of course these childish beliefs of entitlement cause more women and fair-minded men to reject them as good or even reasonable people, which predictably makes them even angrier when they cannot get a date and/or have no real friends, and thus keep responding with ever increasing pain and anger in the form of toxic masculinity.
This is obviously a vicious cycle created by the anti-woke that infects and triggers reasonable men with the insecurity of losing their masculinity if they do not react quickly in a macho way. The dynamic is similar to how Marty McFly in Back to the Future could be manipulated into fighting by any villain questioning his manhood by them saying, “Are you chicken?”
However, the grooming and gaslighting of boys and men with anti-wokism would not be working as well as it has been if there were not some underlying truth chords being struck about the way a fair amount of decent men have felt.
Hidden in their surface machismo is that many men around the globe are confused and hurting from a rapidly changing world they feel is passing them by and dismissing them as men. Anti-woke groomers play on every man’s machismo by telling them it is all the fault of the woke that they are falling behind, and only anti-wokeness will help them regain their past “glory” or what they are “owed.” It is certainly a seductive message to have someone to blame for all your problems.
Of course the anti-woke argument is almost all political manipulation, but it plays so well on the insecurities of men. Realities like the percentage of men in college rapidly declining is a tangible prime example that men’s fears are not unfounded. Additionally, when asked, most middle and working class men attracted to anti-wokism say emotionally they feel unheard and unseen when not being “unfairly” judged for being the man they were taught to be. Tragically, a very real stat that shows male pain and trauma is the male suicide rate is said to be four times the rate of women.
Sadly, as with most anti-woke issues, the most woke among us tried warning about these kinds of male struggles many years ago, because many of us had heard experts say that men “are in crises,” educationally and socially, but clearly almost nobody did anything about it. However, we know for certain that lonely men in crisis or just in isolation (incels) are the favored recruiting and grooming grounds of the cults, conspiracy theorists, terrorists, narcissists and apparently coincidentally, the anti-woke.
Roughly 15-20 years ago, I heard a segment on NPR about how “we are leaving our boys behind” educationally and socially. They noted that great progress had been made for girls in terms of equality in sports and education.
The takeaway that struck me was how it had become perfectly normal for pretty girls in school to be super-smart students, play competitive sports and be very popular, but for boys, being a star athlete or good-looking were usually the only ways they could be popular. In stark contrast to girls, boys being super-smart students usually made them uncool and got them labeled geeks and nerds.
In other words, education somehow became socially discouraged for boys for at least a couple decades by being portrayed as unmanly and uncool. This cultural error has limited many men’s ability to gain greater knowledge, wisdom and emotional intelligence via education, which obviously makes them more fearful, insecure and less aware. This is the missing answer to how and when boys and men got left behind.
It is hard to see if the demonization of boys' education happened naturally but coincidentally, fearful, insecure and less aware is exactly the way the Republican Party likes their voters to be because most political studies conclude more people vote out of fear than out of hope. Regardless, this story of men being educationally discouraged often rings in my ears when I hear insecure men express ignorant fears and concerns about wokeism.
Indeed many men currently on the side of anti-wokism are there because they somehow think that their masculinity is under threat and being manly will get them canceled. The toxic narcissists among them are likely correct that they should be canceled but I can pretty much guarantee that the rest didn’t come to that threat conclusion on their own.
They have been repeatedly told by political grifters they have mistakenly trusted that this is what is going to happen to them in the same manipulative way trump tells his audiences, “When they are coming after me they are coming after you.” This is clearly a way for trump to trigger his followers into defending every attack on him as an attack on them.
We see anti-woke groomers consistently trying to poison the well the same way by portraying everything “woke” as an attack on all men, and how their version of masculinity must be defended at all costs, or “all is lost.” Their real goal is to get men so afraid and insecure that they mistakenly conflate and foolishly defend anti-woke narcissistic toxicity as masculinity.
For a few decades now, narcissistic oligarch outrage machines like Fox News’ recently fired #1 star Tucker Carlson has gaslit conservative men with lies, fear of change, loss of status, and by blaming victims with dishonest or half-truth versions of historical accountability.
There is no doubt Fox News programming has infected most of its viewers with an anti-woke “mind virus” long before they had any idea the word “woke” existed. Indeed “conservative media” followers have been groomed for decades that they will lose everything they hold dear unless they fight any progress their leaders once labeled “liberal,” “politically correct" then “progressive” and now “woke.”
Republicans aided by grifting church leaders and Carlson’s type of racist, bigoted and misogynist propaganda news have continued the merger of blind faith religion with blind faith in Republican politicians. Who knows how many millions of otherwise good people have been manipulated by the self-serving political and social poison of hate, fear and selfishness.
Thanks to the “blind faith” grooming by “conservative” religious, political and media, white men are now apparently so fragile that they are uncomfortable hearing about any history that shows white men were ever cruel, selfish or evil towards women and black, brown and LGBTQ+ folks. Too Much?
All signs indicate anti-woke Republicans in power are prioritizing implementing policies that say white men and boys should never have to hear anything that makes them uncomfortable about race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, including basic U.S. and world history. This political behavior sure sounds a lot like the kinds of things a narcissistically disordered, racist, bigoted, misogynist and authoritarian Disney villain would say and do, if one had control of an American state.
Sadly, daily news reports keep saying this, “conservative white men never do anything wrong” whitewashing of history and reality is being enshrined into education and government via law in all Republican controlled states, as is the “canceling” of women’s rights, black and brown and youth civil and voting rights and definitely “Don’t Say Gay” ever again. Remind me again who should be afraid of being canceled?
The endless Republican whitewashing of reality should make it crystal clear that it is one thing to say, “wokeism has gone too far” but it takes a real “mind virus” to be too fragile to hear anything negative your own kind or country has ever done, as does claiming to be libertarian while using “Big Government'' to cancel everyone else’s civil rights. Can you hear us Ron DeSanctemonious?
When someone like DeSanctemonious accuses those they cancel with “Big Government'' of attacking them and their followers with government, they reveal a specific kind of personality disorder spectrum at work. Indeed, these kinds of Orwellian words and actions have proven how the anti-wokeism “mind virus” is primarily composed of racism, sexism, bigotry, greed, insecurity and fear. Thus, psychology clearly leads us to the obvious conclusion that anti-wokism just like trumpism, is narcissism.
That concludes the Political Lens of Counter-Narcissist Intelligence’s The Psychology of Woke. If you found valuable information in this Psych-Poli lens, you can give tangible approval and support with a paid subscription, but all types of assistance are helpful and appreciated. Even just one click of the like button at the top helps each article get a higher listing priority. Thanks so much!
✨As usual, excellent read, Sam !✨
Best,
Harry