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A review by connoras
Wake Up: Why the World Has Gone Nuts by Piers Morgan
3.0
Well, this was surprisingly good. Not the most well written - Piers has a love for adjectives and adverbs that would make Strunk and White weep - but the content is interesting and emotive, and, in today's world of cancellation and censorship, the message is absolutely necessary.
I used to hate Piers Morgan with a passion... I was, I now realise, "woke". I've spent the last 2 years educating myself, confronting my own deeply held beliefs (some more shallow than I care to admit), and listening to arguments from the whole of the political spectrum instead of just the left. I used to hate Piers Morgan because *occasionally* I'd hear he said something that conflicted with something I believed. I didn't listen to his argument, or even consider listening to him; instead, I labelled him a bigot and shut him out. How childish.
My recent re-education could not avoid the so-called "culture war", and the identity politics that fuels it. I very quickly realised the woke mob is crazy. The problem is definitely not all liberals, but the far-left radical "liberals", who embrace Marxist ideas without the faintest notion of what they actually mean, the consequences and costs of such ideologies, or the fascist tendencies that come part and parcel.
I would never have read this book if I hadn't seen so many YouTube clips of Piers on GMB arguing with left-wing crazies... and winning (winning, at least, to rational ears; to the woke he is simply too privileged / straight / cis / white / male to understand that they are "right"). Piers isn't always right, and he'll be the first to admit it; he's as fallible as the next man. But he is brave enough to say what the silent majority wish they could say. If someone is talking bullshit he'll call them out on it, whether it's Benjamin Butterworth (an obnoxious little twerp) talking nonsense about the million and one gender identities that are supposedly valid "because compassion" (oh, the irony), or Matt Hancock's outright lies about the incompetent handling of the Covid pandemic by the UK govt. The way he argues is often abrasive and redolent of bullying, and he admits this is sometimes the case, but when you're often arguing against people with entrenched, harmful ideas, often disingenuous, who refuse to see reason or be challenged and hurl accusations of bigotry for daring to have an opinion that differs with theirs, one can understand why things get heated.
Anyway, this book is about two things really: woke bullshit, and coronavirus. Piers hoped that with the world facing a global pandemic, people would learn to be kinder and more compassionate and dispense with the vicious intolerance of woke culture; sadly it has exacerbated beyond recognition - and that's with the book ending before the second half of 2020!
Apparently it's acceptable now to say that "white = evil"; how people do not see this for what it is - RACISM - is beyond me; and for people fighting for racial equality to resort to racism is hypocritical, unproductive, and simply not justifiable. Yes, I accept that I am privileged (though I use that word grudgingly now) as a straight white male, but no, I do not accept that I am inherently evil, responsible for the sins of European colonisers, and must renounce my whiteness and strive to be "less white" - f*ck off. If we were all to be held accountable for the slaving of our ancestors, not one person alive would be left without a bill.
Most of these woke fools live in progressive, liberal, tolerant societies where discrimination is illegal. They don't know how lucky they are. There are many countries where slavery is ongoing, racism is genuinely systemic, being gay or trans is punishable by death, and being female gives you less rights than livestock. Oh, and shouting and screaming how oppressed you are is likely to see you disappeared overnight to a forced labour camp or a hole in the ground. The West isn't perfect, but it is (in my opinion) the best we've got right now.
And so ends my barely-review, mostly-rant of Wake Up. Read it: you might learn something.
EDIT: P.S. I absolutely have the right to say this because FREE SPEECH IS AWESOME :)
I used to hate Piers Morgan with a passion... I was, I now realise, "woke". I've spent the last 2 years educating myself, confronting my own deeply held beliefs (some more shallow than I care to admit), and listening to arguments from the whole of the political spectrum instead of just the left. I used to hate Piers Morgan because *occasionally* I'd hear he said something that conflicted with something I believed. I didn't listen to his argument, or even consider listening to him; instead, I labelled him a bigot and shut him out. How childish.
My recent re-education could not avoid the so-called "culture war", and the identity politics that fuels it. I very quickly realised the woke mob is crazy. The problem is definitely not all liberals, but the far-left radical "liberals", who embrace Marxist ideas without the faintest notion of what they actually mean, the consequences and costs of such ideologies, or the fascist tendencies that come part and parcel.
I would never have read this book if I hadn't seen so many YouTube clips of Piers on GMB arguing with left-wing crazies... and winning (winning, at least, to rational ears; to the woke he is simply too privileged / straight / cis / white / male to understand that they are "right"). Piers isn't always right, and he'll be the first to admit it; he's as fallible as the next man. But he is brave enough to say what the silent majority wish they could say. If someone is talking bullshit he'll call them out on it, whether it's Benjamin Butterworth (an obnoxious little twerp) talking nonsense about the million and one gender identities that are supposedly valid "because compassion" (oh, the irony), or Matt Hancock's outright lies about the incompetent handling of the Covid pandemic by the UK govt. The way he argues is often abrasive and redolent of bullying, and he admits this is sometimes the case, but when you're often arguing against people with entrenched, harmful ideas, often disingenuous, who refuse to see reason or be challenged and hurl accusations of bigotry for daring to have an opinion that differs with theirs, one can understand why things get heated.
Anyway, this book is about two things really: woke bullshit, and coronavirus. Piers hoped that with the world facing a global pandemic, people would learn to be kinder and more compassionate and dispense with the vicious intolerance of woke culture; sadly it has exacerbated beyond recognition - and that's with the book ending before the second half of 2020!
Apparently it's acceptable now to say that "white = evil"; how people do not see this for what it is - RACISM - is beyond me; and for people fighting for racial equality to resort to racism is hypocritical, unproductive, and simply not justifiable. Yes, I accept that I am privileged (though I use that word grudgingly now) as a straight white male, but no, I do not accept that I am inherently evil, responsible for the sins of European colonisers, and must renounce my whiteness and strive to be "less white" - f*ck off. If we were all to be held accountable for the slaving of our ancestors, not one person alive would be left without a bill.
Most of these woke fools live in progressive, liberal, tolerant societies where discrimination is illegal. They don't know how lucky they are. There are many countries where slavery is ongoing, racism is genuinely systemic, being gay or trans is punishable by death, and being female gives you less rights than livestock. Oh, and shouting and screaming how oppressed you are is likely to see you disappeared overnight to a forced labour camp or a hole in the ground. The West isn't perfect, but it is (in my opinion) the best we've got right now.
And so ends my barely-review, mostly-rant of Wake Up. Read it: you might learn something.
EDIT: P.S. I absolutely have the right to say this because FREE SPEECH IS AWESOME :)