Many states, one country. We are united! God bless America, land that I love. You too, right? We’re all in this together! …One nation? Not according to the left. “I fucking hate America B. I hate Barstool, I hate pickup trucks, I hate country music, I hate Chik-fil-a, I hate Disney, I hate Vineyard Vines, I hate Taylor Swift. I want to life a life as far removed from any of these things as possible.” America B? Are we not one nation… under God… indivisible… with liberty and justice for all? No!
What is @LanaMaoRey is talking about? Maybe @TheMonkeyJungle got it: “Bringing blankets to the movie theater is such a white trash I mean ‘America B’ thing.” “America B” is a product of political hipsters, who would’ve been content 20 years ago reading Pitchfork and listening to The Strokes and Animal Collective.
The New Political Correctness—or “Woke 1”—cannot be laughed off. Beyond all the people whose lives were ruined and have yet to recover from that period, it’s hard to believe something like this chart was ever proposed as anything but parody. Strong work ethic, being able to read, communication, rugged individualism, justice, competition, holidays, religion, planning for the future, history, family, and an emphasis on the scientific method. This was all called “harmful,” even “dangerous.” What?
Why didn’t liberals and leftists slow down and recalibrate after Donald Trump’s stunning victory in 2024? The guy won twice and out of order. The politics of 2020 were soundly rejected, and they remain unpopular, but according to Evan Barker, the left is going harder and faster than ever. The former Democratic super fundraiser recently wrote a book, Nothing Left, about her dizzying 15-year ride through the American progressive movement. Born with a genetic lung disorder, Barker was galvanized by Barack Obama and enthusiastically voted for him weeks after turning 18; by the time the Affordable Care Act passed in 2012, she was well into her career working for the Democratic Party as a highly-skilled fundraiser. She didn’t Occupy (too busy working), but she was sympathetic to the left despite initially supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016. As Barker continued to work for candidates and organizations in favor of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the temperature started to rise, but she was with it, she didn’t mind—she was down to “ponder her whiteness.”
But when leftists completely abandoned healthcare and any kind of economic reform in 2020 and 2024, Barker no longer recognized the party she spent years working for. She checked out when her boss insisted she go through DEI training because she told a black woman to do her job; she refused, but stayed on until the birth of her son in the summer of 2022. “I was no longer working for the same Democratic Party I had dedicated my life to in 2008. I was no longer helping the progressive movement I first found when I worked on Brent Welder’s campaign. This new iteration was very different. It seemed to have one, singular goal: punish all white people and demean anyone who wasn’t ‘oppressed.’” Barker goes on to write, “The Left has been run, almost entirely, by brown and black millennial girl bosses. These numbers are nowhere near reflective of the demographics of the United States. In fact, they are completely skewed, inverted versions of reality.”
This is how you get associates of Zohran Mamdani tweeting about how much they hate dogs without considering how off-the-wall insane it sounds to most people. Barker provides some sobering statistics: “Later, to check my sanity and my recollection of that time, I made a list of the top twenty groups in progressive politics. I found that between the years of 2018 and 2024, 85 percent of them had non-white leaders. Forty percent of the executive directors were black, 75 percent were women, and 15 percent of the leaders were white. Only a single organization out of twenty was represented by a white male.”
Like America A/B, calling the New Political Correctness “Woke 1” betrays an obliviousness to reality and a delusional belief in an ideology that the country doesn’t want. There will be no “Woke 2,” even if AOC does reach The White House someday. She’s not an idiot like many of her progressive peers, something Barker confirms from behind the scenes (“She’s one to watch.”)
The litany of absurdities brought about by the New Political Correctness is practically inexhaustible, and at a certain point, all you can do is laugh. Ever since Donald Trump won a second non-consecutive presidential term, the news has read like something out of Cum Town or The Howard Stern Show: Orthodox Jews climbing out of secret tunnels in Manhattan, Somali scammers in Minnesota backed by ultra-liberal white women wearing hijabs, elected officials like Jasmine Crockett defending Karmelo Anthony murdering Austin Metcalf because he “disrespected” him, Europeans defending Pakistani rape gangs as a “cultural misunderstanding,” Kamala Harris supporters screaming at babies in strollers. Why is this happening?
Nothing Left is the only 2024 post-mortem worth reading. The other big books—Uncharted by Chris Wipple; Fight by Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes; 2024 by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, Isaac Arnsdorf—range from bland to brainwashed. You can see it in Barker’s account of a superfluous and superficial 2024 DNC, glazed over (or on) by all the other books. When security passes are most important than economic policy—or any policy, besides “joy”—you know there’s nothing left. Ah! Well, it’s a good title and a great book. I hope more people from inside the left come out of the cult and tell us what’s going on. Who can defend what she describes in this book?
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NARCFILM