(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
The Anti-Woke Death Spiral: How Trump’s Culture War Is Killing Conservatism [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-27
As MAGA doubles down on its “anti-woke” crusade, a deeper truth is emerging: the movement isn’t defeating wokeness—it’s destroying itself. This is what happens when a party governs by tantrum—when every policy becomes a protest and every protest becomes a grift.
This essay explores how Trumpism’s obsessive culture war has become an engine of self-cannibalization, devouring the very institutions it once claimed to defend. It’s satire, yes, but also a warning. The snake isn’t just eating its tail anymore—it’s choking on it.
Let us begin with the obvious: “woke” has lost all meaning—except as a political sneeze MAGA injects into every argument, no tissue required. Want to ban books? Say it’s to fight “wokeness.” Want to gut higher education? Call it “woke indoctrination.” Can’t define the term without sounding like a QVC conspiracy theorist with a flag pin? Doesn’t matter. Just repeat the word, louder, until it rhymes with liberty.
In Trump’s America, “anti-woke” has become the peanut butter to fascism’s jelly: cloying, sticky, and somehow on everything. But the more the movement clings to it, the more it cannibalizes itself. This isn’t strategy—it’s a cultural death spiral. And unless something changes, the crusade that was supposed to save American conservatism is becoming the anchor that finally drags it under.
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: Trump’s anti-woke crusade isn’t winning the future. It’s refusing to have one.
A Party Addicted to Enemies
The Republican Party has always needed a villain to sell its vision. McCarthy had communists. Nixon had hippies. Reagan had “welfare queens.” Bush had terrorists. Trump has…a drag queen reading to third graders and a rainbow on a beer can.
This would be funny if it weren’t so sad—and authoritarian.
In the MAGA age, “woke” is the new universal scapegoat: a catchall for anything slightly progressive, mildly inclusive, or remotely fact-based. But unlike the enemies of old, this one is both everywhere and nowhere. They can’t shut it down because they can’t even define it. And so, the campaign against it has become a carousel of moral panic, where they ban a book one week, then boycott a burrito the next.
But this approach has a flaw: eventually, you run out of things to hate before you run out of voters to lose.
And worse? Some of the things they’re attacking are themselves—or at least, things their base used to like. Chick-fil-A. Bud Light. Disney. Public libraries. NASCAR. The United States military.
The BROKE Blueprint: The Real Agenda Behind the Noise
The problem was never wokeness. The problem was always BROKE—an ideology so committed to collapsing the American experiment that it had to invent a cultural decoy to hide its noxious odor.
Let’s recap the BROKE formula, now mutating into Trump’s second-term platform:
B – Bankrupt Every Program That Helps Regular People
Whether it’s SNAP benefits, rail inspections, or public education, if it keeps a family fed or a town afloat, it’s on the chopping block, call it “entitlement reform,” and hope no one notices their water’s brown.
R – Rig the Rules
Gerrymander the maps, purge the voter rolls, pack the courts, and complain about “election integrity” while undermining it in real time.
O – Obstruct, Obfuscate, Outrage
When in doubt, turn congressional hearing rooms into a circus. Pull out the whiteboards. Scream about laptops. Anything but legislate.
K – Keep the Grift Going
Every donation link is a trap. Every campaign is a personal brand. From NFTs to fake elector slates, the MAGA business model is one big BOGO sale on democracy.
E – Erase the Evidence
If subpoenas aren’t ignored, they’re shredded. If documents aren’t handed over, they’re “classified.” Accountability is for the other guy.
Together, BROKE isn’t just a policy—it’s a condition. A state of mind. A desperate refusal to build anything, masked by a relentless desire to burn everything down. And the “anti-woke” campaign? It’s the glitter thrown on the ashes.
Ouroboros Conservatism: The Snake Is Now Biting Its Tail
The more the MAGA world expands the definition of “woke,” the fewer allies it keeps. Ask Ron DeSantis, who picked a fight with Disney and lost his dignity (and a few billion dollars in Florida tourism). Or the GOP boycotters who stormed out of Target and found themselves—surprise!—without school supplies or socks.
In their zeal to ban “woke” books, conservatives are banning their history, civics, and even the Bible in some cases. They’ve become so anti-institutional, they’re now attacking the very culture they once claimed to defend. If you believe the New Right, America itself is now too woke to save.
This happens when a movement defines itself solely by what it hates: eventually, it starts to hate everything. Including itself.
And the younger generations? They’re watching and walking. Because the GOP isn’t just losing cultural relevance—it’s losing demographic survival. No party can build a future on a platform of perpetual grievance, especially one so allergic to reality that it tries to erase the past.
Enter: ‘Dark Woke’—and MAGA’s Existential Fear
And then, like a flash of diamonds in a courtroom, she arrived.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett didn’t just clap back—she unveiled a new cultural operating system: Dark Woke. It wasn’t an apology. It wasn’t a policy. It was a moment. A message. A mirror. And MAGA? It didn’t like what it saw.
Dark Woke is not just about race, gender, or identity. It’s about power—and how that power makes you uncomfortable when it doesn’t flinch, bow, or explain itself. It knows the rules. It knows the facts. And it’s not here to make you feel safe.
Republicans claim they’re afraid of wokeness because it’s radical. But the truth? They fear it because it’s effective. It exposes hypocrisy with flair. It exposes the “culture war” as performance art. It dares to say: “I see your grievance—and I raise your receipts.”
And that’s what terrifies Trump’s New Rightists. Not some made-up Marxist takeover, but the possibility that people might start asking why the GOP is always yelling, always banning, always claiming victimhood from positions of unchecked privilege.
Conservatism’s Terminal Condition
Let’s be blunt: conservatism is running out of runway.
Trump’s anti-woke crusade may excite Fox News, but it doesn’t build coalitions. It doesn’t lower insulin prices. It doesn’t fix bridges. It doesn’t tell Gen Z why they should care about a party that mocks their pronouns while ignoring their rent.
Trump’s revival of this grievance-first, policy-last strategy might animate the base, but it also narrows it. If your entire vision for the future is “Stop the Woke,” you eventually have to answer the question: And then what?
The GOP doesn’t have an answer. Because it’s not governing, it’s performing — and outrage, self-righteousness, and decay.
But as any aging rocker or washed-up talk show host can tell you, performance without evolution leads to irrelevance. And irrelevance leads to defeat.
Final Verdict: Woke Didn’t Kill Conservatism—Conservatives Did
Let’s retire the myth that “wokeness” is killing America. The truth is far more ironic.
What’s killing America is the conservative movement itself—its refusal to adapt, its addiction to outrage, its inability to inspire anyone under 50 who isn’t on Truth Social.
“Anti-woke” isn’t a philosophy. It’s a tantrum. And tantrums don’t scale.
If the GOP continues down this path, clutching its BROKE agenda while lashing out at imaginary enemies, it won’t just lose the next election. It’ll lose its ability to function as a viable national party.
Because the future isn’t afraid of being “woke.”
The future’s afraid of being BROKE. In spirit. In vision. In truth.
And if the GOP keeps insisting that books, drag queens, and diversity are the problem, then it deserves what it’s building:
· An ideology with no future.
· A brand with no market.
A party that mistakes performative rage for permanence—and vanishes while screaming into a microphone.
~Dunneagin
🎧 Find Civics Unhinged on your favorite platform:
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/27/2335337/-The-Anti-Woke-Death-Spiral-How-Trump-s-Culture-War-Is-Killing-Conservatism?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
