How do you imagine the woke beast? It is rough, surely, and slouches towards some unprofitable venue, so not Bethlehem.

I think of it as something ravenous but episodic in its appetites, a sort of Polyphemus for hire. It gorges in a destructive frenzy and then retreats to some dank corner to belch and sleep and slobber. Then forgetfulness spreads its enervating fog and the Zeitgeist enjoins us to put it all behind us because, after all, what difference at this point does it make™?

I thought about the habits of the woke beast this week when the popular cartoonist and social commentator Scott Adams found himself caught in its masticating maw. When it comes to practitioners of his craft and sullen art, few can be more innocuous than Scott Adams. He is best known as the creator of Dilbert, a comic casualty of modern office bureaucracy. Adams also runs a subscription video podcast in which he drinks coffee and comments on current events. It was a 30- or 40-second bit of the latter that awakened the woke beast.
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Adams notes that he had been in the habit of identifying as black because he wanted to do what he could to help black people. A recent poll from Rasmussen changed his mind. To the question “Is it OK to be white” nearly half the black respondents answered “no, it is not OK to be white” or said they were uncertain.

Adams was taken aback by the results of this poll. Among other things, it suggested that racism was not a white monopoly, as we have been taught to believe. Adams reasoned, then that means that a large percentage of black people are racist.

Ergo, he revised his earlier position. Now, instead of identifying as black and doing what he could to help black people, he advises whites to withdraw. Of course, you should be “friendly,” he stressed. But “based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people.”

Oh, the howls of outrage that comment elicited!