THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE/ James McElroy-
At a park in New York City, I witnessed something odd. A group of women silently formed a circle in the middle of a large lawn. Their all-black outfits contrasted with the surrounding summer pastels, and they ignored the adjacent sun bathers as they began to kneel and slowly chant. They repeated a three word matin. The most striking feature of this scene was its familiarity. Any half-decent anthropologist would label this a religious ritual.
Yet, few are willing to explicitly describe these events as part of a religion. The women may have been kneeling in a circle while chanting, but they repeated the words “black lives matter.” Politics obscures the obvious. Wokeness is a religion, and conservatives must act as if large parts of our institutions are run by this cult.
Americans are united in their disgust at what happened to George Floyd. Everyone agrees: A minor run-in with the police should never lead to death. Yet, the past two weeks do not actually seem connected to the events in Minneapolis. Most East Coast yuppies would have trouble placing Minneapolis on a map. Does it really make sense to gather in a mass crowd during a pandemic because of something that happened a half-continent away? It does when you recognize that it’s a religious movement. Continue reading…
