The big winner of this week’s US midterm elections was anti-woke politician Ron DeSantis.
The Republican governor is a fierce critic of the nonsense politics that has taken over the Left, at the expense of real issues they once stood for.
DeSantis, 44, won a sweeping victory in his home state of Florida, leading his Democratic rival by a 20 point margin. He announced: “Florida is the state where woke goes to die.”
It’s proof that everyday Americans - along with the rest of us - have a pain in their face with “liberal” ideology that has infected Left-wing politics internationally like a plague. It has ruined what was, until recent years, a vital voice of the people.
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Such “progressive” parties used to represent the working class, but they don’t speak for us now. Except to speak down to us.
What I hear from the elite left is painful, pompous preaching about non-issues by people who don’t seem to know how privileged they are, to have time to think about this stuff in the first place.
Radical allies in academia, across snobby media and big business - the three pillars of propaganda - are the corrosive influence.
But in the real world, most of us have more to be getting on with in our daily lives than - say - the battle for menopause leave.
Or to get mortally offended over rental bikes with female names and an app that informs users: “You are riding Mary”.
The grievance-seeking knows no limit. It can be deeply patronising to those it purports to defend. It cares nothing for the widening wealth inequality that means this generations’ prospects are far worse than their parents.
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan told the Dail this week that women and gay people suffer more from climate change.
Those in the left here in Ireland are going to have to get back to what’s right if they want to succeed in the next election.
People finally see through the sanctimony. Woke is a weaponised movement built on stifling political correctness, enfeebling victimhood culture and segregating identity politics that makes everything about race, gender or sexuality.
The unsettling part is it's the Left pushing this righteous, humourless, agenda. But anyone who truly values freedom wouldn't buy into it.
As Barack Obama said: “This idea of purity and being politically woke - you should get over that quickly.”
The world is a different place to what it was in 2016, when Trump’s election sparked a mass hysteria of witch hunts, cancellations, offence culture and surveillance society.
We had nothing to get exercised about in a non-emergency, so we had to create dramas. While the culture war was playing out, and while we were clapping ourselves on the back for advances on marriage equality and abortion, the housing crisis was destroying unseen lives in the background.
Since then, there’s been a pandemic, a war - and now a cost-of-living crisis that will focus voters’ minds more than anything else in decades. Energy bills and grocery prices are becoming unaffordable even for those on decent wages.
What we care about now is more fundamental - jobs, money, houses, family. Those important things traditionally regarded as conservative values. Bread and butter issues, literally.
This is why old-school lefties Sinn Fein continues to trounce all the other parties in the polls.
In recent years, SF has made a distinct move away from identity issues and have zoned in exclusively on economic and social concerns.
Leader Mary Lou McDonald made her position on woke known when she told broadcaster Matt Cooper last year that she “was not convinced by cancel culture” as it was “too absolutist.”
Anyone with a brief knowledge of history is aware that inflations cause political revolutions. And that in times of economic straits, voters move right culturally and left economically. Time to ditch already-resolved woke issues and get real.
Jennifer Aniston's anguish over fertility
It took courage for Jennifer Aniston to say with such finality of her fertility struggle: “That ship has sailed.”
The American actress, 53, was not afraid to reveal a vulnerability by frankly talking about one of the most profound issues for women.
It was strong, honest and relatable admission of a personal failure. It showed an acceptance of a huge loss in her life. There was no self-pity, but a twinge of pain in her regret at not freezing her eggs.
She was too focused on her career to imagine she would ever want to have kids in future. Her attempts at IVF didn’t work.
The desire to have a child - when it hits you - is the deepest instinct.
Jen is nearly a decade older than me, but we’re both members of Generation X. Women of our vintage were encouraged to climb the corporate ladder and put kids on the back burner.
By the time many my age group got around to it, it was too late. Nearly half of college-educated women born between 1968 and 1979 don’t have children.
Plenty are happy with this decision, but plenty too suffered the anguish of never becoming a mother. Work and kids are tough to juggle, but they’re not mutually exclusive.
I often think Gen X got it the wrong way round. If we had to choose, I wonder would women have been better off having their babies first, and throwing themselves into careers after.
Beer price increase is a sore pint
Ireland has a line and this is it: the price of a pint. The electricity goes up by 30%, fuel prices spiral and grocery price inflation hits record highs. Breakfast rolls cost €7 - and yet we struggle on regardless.
I was surprised people didn’t take to the streets over the sky-high lecky bills.
This week, village shop owner Flora Crowe got a Bord Gais bill for €20,000.
But when Heineken goes up by 25cent, that’s the end.
Heineken told Irish publicans cost increases on certain draught kegs forced them to raise the price of a pint, which means customers will pay more.
Bar owner Noel Anderson called it: “a huge kick in the balls” for publicans.
The Irish will take almost anything, but tell us we’ve to pay more for booze and we lose it. We’re attached to it like babies to bottles.
It was the same in the pandemic. We mildly accepted the longest lockdown in the free world, once we could hole ourselves up at home and drink our heads off.
The only time it got touchy was when some expert suggested banning alcohol. Panic set in - the idea was quietly shelved and no one spoke of it again.
It was summed up in a sign I saw at a pub hatch in Dublin, while getting a takeaway pint during restrictions: “Alcohol - the glue holding this sh*tshow together.”
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