Originally published at: Kal Penn resurrects House MD to cure the "Woke Mind Virus" | Boing Boing
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The “woke mind virus”, commonly referred to as either “empathy” or “rational thought”.
Now seems like a good time to review the entire series of House M.D.
Erm, it is a thing, isn’t it? A respectable thing that the right is trying to co-opt as a pejorative.
ETA: like CRT.
Polysemy: the meaning of the word depends on context.
If the context is an African-American person, then it means “the state of being fully aware how fucked up it is for PoC in America, and that it’s not a mistake or a coincidence.”
If the context is pretty much anyone in the media or on the political right, it means “anything and everything which I mildly dislike is an existential threat and I can’t define it because as far as I’m concerned it doesn’t actually mean anything.”
Which means jlw is right, in most contexts that you’ll see the word now. When they use it, it is a pejorative. That they don’t know what it means is irrelevant, because they don’t care.
And, yes, it is without a doubt the result of a concerted effort to take away the Left’s ability to even discuss anything by diluting and poisoning the words to describe the situation, because some of these evil fuckers are capable of learning, and they learned from Orwell.
And doing a fine job of it. That’s the challenge. They use effective tactics to froth folks up.