There was a time when the left had respectability. Some of the figures, like John F. Kennedy, expressed a vision of hope, of unity, and of a shared national purpose. The left represented the working class.

For instance, the Welsh miners illustrated qualities of stamina, diligence, and involvement in community. It was a community that believed in causes greater than themselves and fought for genuine interventions that had concrete impacts on the lives of everyday people. The old left finally felt a grounded responsibility toward those people they professed to represent. It was determined not to avoid hard conversations but ready to be convinced. Change could only come about through discourse; the dissenting voice had to be heard and taken note of.

This is exactly how the present-day left unrecognizably transgresses what the old left stood for: real discourse and concrete progress has been replaced with something so empty and matrix moralistic as to be brittle and self-defeating.

The Death Cult: Christianity Without Christ

Most of today’s left, however, has morphed into something far more sinister—a sort of death cult. It’s like Christianity without Christ, focused solely on the body (the corpus) but devoid of the spirit. Because without the Resurrection, without transcendence, Christianity becomes simply about death. The core of the faith—Christ’s victory over death—is the heart, where meaning and, with it, renewal and hope lie. If there is no resurrection, it all devolves into empty ritual around suffering and decay.

God is Dead

Nietzsche warned us about what happens when God is declared dead. When belief fades, something must take its place, and in this case, wokeness has filled the void. It clings to the corpse of Christianity, taking with it the moral strictness and self-righteous judgment without redemptive grace. Wokeness is an obsession of categories and policing, much like witch hunts or inquisitions of old, but without that transcendental spirituality that can make such things meaningful—and redeeming. In this worldview, weakness is taken for goodness, as if suffering were some kind of inherent virtue in itself. But weakness is simply that—not goodness.

The holy ghost has left the machine, and it is now piloted by nihilists.

Wokeness posits victimhood as the highest moral condition, thus inverting the very idea of grace through suffering before it closely corresponds to early Christian ideas of persecution unto salvation. In the scriptures that form the New Testament, no figure exemplifies this better than the figure of Paul. After his conversion, the very fact of his suffering and persecution becomes central to his understanding of religious life. He interpreted his hardships as a condition for spiritual progress and grace; however, these trials were borne with the prospect of redemption.

Intersectionality has almost totally decoupled that structure from any road that could actually lead to redemption or transcendence. It gives suffering for suffering’s sake and victimhood for the sake of status, with no greater purpose. Superiority is claimed through perceived persecution in a frame that dismisses strength, resilience, and the attack on a higher ideal.

The term “mind virus” is not just accurate but fitting, as it spreads through memetic structure; in doing so, it promotes weakness and victimhood as the new virtues. But suffering without growth to learn from is empty. Weakness is not a surrogate for goodness.

Wokeness as Bourgeois Hypocrisy

While the old left was legitimately concerned with the standards of living for the working class, this new iteration is distinctly bourgeois. The people referred to as “tolerant” immediately put everyone into categories of strata, class, and sub-class—hence replicating the structural oppression they are presumed to work against. This becomes particularly disturbing in America because the USA is based on principles far above class structure and class prejudice. The very rigid social structure in Europe, and more particularly the class system deeply ingrained in English society, was left behind when America found its freedom.

The American Revolution didn’t just revolt against politics; it also revolted against remnants of feudalism and the aristocracy, where one’s destiny was determined by birth and lineage. From the very beginning, in its founding documents and ethos, America embraced the individual rising from his circumstances on merit, hard work, and personal liberty. An equality of opportunity, not a mandated equality of outcome, defined the American spirit. Yet, it is exactly this that wokeness brings back under a new veil of class fixation.

In their zeal to root out “oppression,” the woke movement has unwittingly revived one of the very things America sought to move away from—sorting every person by race, gender, sexuality, and perceived “privilege” into ever-narrowing classes of victimhood. Where England’s class system divided people by status, wokeness does so by inherent traits. It justifies identity politics for the sake of new division, thus recreating within America that very social system that America was forged in rebellion against.

Wokeness sets victimhood as the highest moral state, a perversion of grace through suffering. It reflects early Christian—and notably Pauline—thinking in which the persecution of believers leads to their ultimate salvation. This is a central part of the life story of the figure who, for many Christians, stands as an exemplar of faith, Paul. He felt that his sufferings were a portion of spiritual advancement and grace, though he was to bear them knowing that there was redemption on the other side.

Wokeness, however, has decoupled this schema from any real avenue to transcendence or salvation; it posits suffering for the sake of suffering, and victimhood for the sake of being a victim, with no ulterior motive. In this perverse paradigm, moral supremacy is declared through supposed victimization; true strength, resilience, or the pursuit of a higher ideal is spurned. The mind virus propagates via this memetic structure, trumpeting weakness and victimhood as the new virtues. But suffering sans growth is meaningless, and weakness cannot replace goodness.

The Death of Nietzsche’s God & Revivalism

The very famous proclamation by Nietzsche that “God is dead” can be echoed here. For many years, Christianity in the West had been disarmed as a cultural influence, benign and vacuous.

However, today wokeness has filled the void, taking the most awful parts of Christian history—witch hunts and inquisitions—and running with them zealously. This vicious left-wing aberration finds resonance with the dark chapters that preceded it. That it does so without the spiritual balance that Christianity brought those chapters may be signs of a revival of faith today, but the corrosive ideology has left its mark.

Wokeness, as Nietzsche might observe of the dead God, leaves a spiritual vacuum filled by a cult of victimhood, judgment, and puritanism morality without redemption nor transcendence. The ghost has left the machine and is now driven on by those most psychopathically inspired.

Psychological Implications: Rebellion Against Nature

Psychologically, what is occurring is a rebellion against nature and order; it is projection of the chaotic feminine. Carl Jung observed that “the anima, when personified, is a chaotic element, the seductress, the harbinger of irrationality.” The chaotic element, in this concept, symbolizes the force that is emotional and unrestrained, often destructive.

Wokeness mirrors this chaotic force, which brings about disruption, in attacking tradition and natural order for forces of irrational progress under irrational dogma.

Such chaotic attitudes are in perpetual motion to immolate beauty. The compulsion to destroy, therefore, is essentially an unconscious urge to rid oneself of structure and harmony. It is destruction as an end in itself, for no purpose of renewal, a meaningless chaos.

War on Common Sense and Nature

Wokeness, at its root, wages war against common sense and nature. Fundamental to it is a denial of nature herself and a command that reality shall at all times conform to the claims of the ideology in question.

The basic truths about biology, gender, and human nature are uppers to be replaced with the diktats of a new ideological dogma. There can be no common sense in this battle. Even what you regard as the most basic truths are to be dealt with only so far as they can serve the purpose of this ruling ideology.

This war against nature is not just unsustainable; it is unrealistic. It erodes trust, undermines community, and fuels division, all in the name of an impossible utopia.

Art as the Bellwether of Culture

Art is the canary in the coal mine of culture. As the saying goes, “Art is upstream from culture, and culture is upstream from politics.” If we neglect art, they will control the discourse. They will also control history. “He who controls the past dictates the future, and the past is controlled by those who control the present.” It must be won back.

The left’s attack on art and beauty is an attack on the future. By deconstructing beauty, wokeness tears apart the very thing that lifts us, that calls us to ideals.

Cultural irrelevance and obliviousness to the arts have long plagued conservatives, and this needs to change. Without this engagement with art and culture, we abandon the future to be defined by whoever can seize it and remake it in their own image. Fine art is a barometer of society, and when it degenerates into political agitation or mere ostentation of shallow values, the creative vitality along with the moral sense of that society is, in the end, lost. Beauty, creativity, and veracity are not luxuries. They are the basic building blocks of any civilization.

Conservatives have to understand that winning back the cultural space involves adhering to these values and leveraging them to motivate and uplift—not merely responding to what the left does. Culture is what determines the future of politics, society, and even governance. If we don’t understand it, we have no say in where our own society will head in its development.

For conservatives to have a shot at making a difference, however, they do need to work on not just keeping but also advancing a culture oriented towards artistic expression, intellectual depth, and beauty—energies that bind and uplift. Through beauty, truth, and art, we will be able to stand up against the forces of disintegration and chaos vested by wokeness to ensure that our society is based on much more significant values than fleeting ideologies.

If we want to control culture, we have to control art.

When we control art, we will pivot it back to beauty.

It was at this moment that she understood: “Beauty will save the world.”