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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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even a connection to wokeness-writ-large seems strained

No, I think it’s very easy to place the blame squarely on wokism, especially given this detail:

The museum to the accomplishments and hardships of my ancestors had been "renovated". It now celebrated the fictitious diversity my town has always had.

Museum curators are 94% Democratic, and the newer generation seems quite gung-ho on inserting racial diversity everywhere. The New York Tenement Museum made the news a few years ago when it altered its core principles to change its focus from the Italian and Jewish families who actually lived there to celebrate a black Black family who didn’t. The Art Institute of Chicago made headlines around the same time for firing its entire staff of unpaid, highly educated volunteer docents because they were too white and hiring (and paying) a younger, more diverse crowd in their place (something several other museums also did, but without the attendant fanfare). In the city closest to my own hometown, the history museum has started replacing its old displays on the history of the area. With the changes, a first time visitor could be forgiven for thinking that the area’s history went 1) Native Americans, 2) Genocide, 3) Civil Rights, and 4) Immigration (2000–present), without anything of note in between. It’s a deliberate assault on the heritage of the people who actually built the city and made the area what it is today, and it’s entirely due to the wokeness of the museum staff.

I didn't mean that there was no wokeness in museums, just that the "memorials being forgotten about in renovations" thing doesn't necessarily/inherently seem like an effect of it. As per my anecdote, I've seen the same thing happen for no political reason at all, just because the bureaucrats who oversaw some alteration or other to a building or organization didn't care to preserve them in the switchover. (I do not say this to exonerate them. Frankly, all else being equal, the thoughtless lack of respect appalls me more than any deliberate attempt at damnatio memoriae. Actively wanting to destroy the legacy of your enemies is at least an understandable human emotion.)

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design..."

Which is to say there's a pattern here. Sure, sometimes things happen by accident. But when the "accidents" all point in the same direction, and aren't corrected either before the fact or after the fact even when warning or complaint is given, there's good reason to believe they're not accidents.