WHEN WILL THE WOKE GO FULL CALIGULA?

The other day, I was scrolling through Twitter when I happened upon this particular tweet, directed against the former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss:

“Imagine if @bariweiss offered 10% of the defense she gives white supremacy to all the antifascist, Jewish-allied, Black and brown women of color she has made a career putting in danger,” it said. “NYT staff of color felt so unsafe around her that she had to resign.”

Something about this tweet struck me instantly: it was completely insane.

Remember: If you interpret “woke” as a synonym for “crazy and stupid” — or, increasingly, “crazy, stupid, and vicious” — you’ll seldom go far wrong.

Plus:

It is worth inquiring into the nature of this madness. When I read that attack on Bari Weiss, what sprang to mind was Albert Camus’ play Caligula, a retelling of the well-known tale of the deranged third emperor of Rome. In the play, the initially benign ruler suffers an existential crisis. Realizing that he alone wields absolute power, he decides to follow the logic of that power to its ultimate conclusion. “It’s just because no one dares to follow up his ideas to the end that nothing is achieved,” he says. “All that’s needed is to be logical right through, at all costs.”

This logic leads Caligula to believe that he is beyond good and evil. Thus, he is free to choose evil. So he does; nothing, after all, can stop him. He initiates a reign of terror over his subjects, rapes the women of the nobility, randomly orders executions, declares himself a god, kills his wife, and in the end invites his own assassination.

Rereading Caligula while writing this piece, I was shocked by the extent to which Camus had anticipated the Woke phenomenon.

Like I said, crazy, stupid, and vicious.