If you simply understand “woke” as a synonym for “stupid and crazy” you won’t go far wrong. 

The latest illustration can be found in the absurd and offensive opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics, which involved a parody of the Last Supper, with transsexuals, drag queens, exposed testicles and a fat, blue-painted semi-clad man apparently intended to represent Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.  

After a storm of international protest, the organizers have issued a weak we’re-sorry-if-you-were-offended apology. They say they were shocked that anyone was bothered by what they say was a testament to inclusion.

But its biggest sin was not blasphemy. It was that it stunk on ice, as most such efforts do.

Though American news media tried to spin the uproar as coming from a few right-wing religious nuts, the truth is lots of people were offended, and not just in America. The backlash in France,  Italy, Britain, and elsewhere, from both religious and non-religious, was tremendous.

There were efforts to defend the debacle, but the truth is revealed by the airbrushing that followed, as the sponsors initiated a massive takedown effort, using copyright claims to get videos of the ceremony struck from services like YouTube and X.  If they thought their work was good, why would they hide it?

Well, because it stunk.  And – and this is the most important part – it was designed to stink. Lousy culture like this is a power statement (“look what we can get away with!”) and also a convenient benchmark:  One needs little in the way of talent to produce such an exhibition. Chutzpah will do.

Why was it designed to stink? Again, power. A friend pointed out that the only good recent Olympic opening ceremonies were in Sochi, Russia, and in Beijing. Those governments, whatever their many flaws, wanted to present a positive message about their nations and their cultures to the world. They wanted to portray themselves as rising powers, full of cultural vigor.

Ceremonies like the Paris opener, on the other hand, are intended to do just the opposite. They are intended to mock and denigrate the underlying Western culture, which even atheists like Richard Dawkins admit is Christian. This, we’re told, is “brave.”  Or they pretend surprise that anyone is offended, but as the French say, “ils sont toujours au courant,” meaning “they’re always aware.”

And, as we all know, they’d never mock Islam in a spirit of “inclusion.” There will be no blue-painted obese Prophet Muhammads. Partly that’s out of fear – unlike Christians, Muslims tend to respond to mockery with violence aimed at the mockers – and partly it comes from the belief that mocking non-Western culture is somehow racist.

But there’s more than just anti-Christian bigotry here. As Eric S. Raymond tweeted:  “What was on display here wasn’t anti-Christianity, it was a compulsion to defecate all over any source of meaning and value in favor of a depraved narcissism. . . .  We have let the mentally ill game our tolerance for too long. It’s time to start stuffing them back into asylums.”

Or as another commented:  “The opening ceremony was peak Hunger Games capital aesthetic.”

The uglification of public culture is real, and happens all over. Public architecture is usually ugly, public statuary is almost always hideous, and public spectacles like this one are generally somewhere between insipid and terrible – or, as here, a combination of the two.

Occasionally, there’s a backlash.  But the people who produce these things aren’t performing for the public – they’re performing for each other. So long as the “in” crowd likes it, they’ll still get work, and social position, and all the rewards.  

That can change. As one of my professors used to say, even a flatworm is smart enough to turn away from pain. But will the public make it change? You get more of what you reward, and less of what you punish. Will an example be made?