Woke Politics' Third Act

Every Shakespearean play has and follows a five-act structure.  The first act is the exposition, in which the characters and their circumstances are laid to bear.  The second act introduces the play's rising action, in which the conflicts between the characters begin to unfold across the plot's narrative structure.  The third act is the climax, where at some point the conflicts laid to bear come to a head, the crisis unfolds, the great battle is fought, or the lead character makes a decision that will forever bear on his fate.  The fourth act is the penultimate falling action, where the third act's events' effects take form and visit themselves upon the protagonist.  The fifth act is the resolution, in which all that was or will be is seen before the audience's eyes and the protagonist is laid to rest in the bed of his making, or sails to victory.  

To conceptualize political discourse in our time as drama is fitting.  But, unlike a Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, Othello, Hamlet, or Macbeth, the drama before us is not singular -- even if loosely linear.  If the "drama" in general were to be plotted, it might look like overlapping connected lines on a scatter plot; with figures from one story line appearing in the next, and the next, and the next. The tale would still be filled with sound and fury, told by an idiot, signifying nothing; though it would lack the cogency and beauty that may have been had on the stage.  Even still, in some form, the plot structure remains. 

Here, I am referring to the plot structure of "woke" politics -- a sphere of political discourse which is most appropriately analogized to drama since, after all, most of it is fictional, all of it is narrative based, none of it is particularly referential to the facts of any individual case with fidelity, and it is unambiguously archetypal in nature.  At the risk of proceeding without adequate foundation for any one of those claims, let's move right to the point: woke politics is more drama than it is truth, and like drama, it is bound to a structure, and the structure to which it is bound entered its third act with Jusse Sommelett. 

It means something that Sommelett faked a hate crime; his motive is as meaningful as his actions were stupid and ill conceived.  The obvious question of "why?" yields an equally obvious answer, and a less obvious one.  The obvious answer was that he thought that being the victim of a hate crime would boost his profile.  He's got an overlapping set of identities that place him in a discrete intersectional minority; gay AND black... to be sure.  He is also an actor, whose proclivity for narcissism is exceeded only by his hubris and stupidity.  Pity, really.   (Of course the real victims are those who are actual victims of hate crimes, each of whom now bears the additional stigma of having to overcome the doubt this disgusting facade of a man perpetrated.  But, for our purposes, they are not part of the drama.  Only participants in this particular drama merit my attention here.) 

(More tomorrow.  Tonight, I tire.  This is not the most important thing I am doing, but wanted to get the foundation of this out.) 

you think its going to be that important, huh?  I've hated this story from the first I heard it.  Celebrities in peril, ugh.  I don't know... are there really going to be two sides in conflict?  I mean, do you thinks there's going to a lot of support for Smollett?

Smollett is the judas who betrayed woke politics; the tragedy beckons. 

I disagree. Smollett is the natural course of woke politics when the game is a mad scramble up the oppression ladder. There is not a single current person running on the left with the exception of Bernie Sanders who would think twice about manufacturing oppression from identity groups. 

gosh.  Ok, let's try:

can't he just be cute stupid manipulative young narcissist who gets a year for fucking up and never gets a job again? 

or:

can't we all just agree not care?

or:

Woke was a pretentious name anyway and labels aren't that helpful.  Woke implies a consciousness and  so denies the un-woke credit for being conscious but then everybody has their own notion of what being woke implies so the label only serves one function: separation.  I probably agree with most of the politics of "woke" but then I guess I don't just  feel the need to join the club.  If liberals want to improve upon the critique of social elitism maybe the end of woke politics offers an opportunity to improve the brand.

I propose maybe the consequences of the Fall of Woke aren't so dire.  What do you suppose the consequences are?

Oh, quite the condemnation, greyp  What about John Hickenlooper?  What about Pete Buttigieg?

also, doesn't it seem that our present culture's taste for climax tends to move later than Shakespeare's middle?  I've read the better half of Shakespeare and often found that fifth act lacking in suspense [ "De nails, de arm, de ilbow"]

I only saw one white male in the running at the time.

I see.  So  what you saw and what was true were two different things.

Are you saying that because Sanders is a white male he is incapable of manufacturing oppression?  

Thx, greyp. Another tangential post from yet another white supremacist. Too racist to keep a job at the National Review is quite racist. Now he’s a naturalized citizen oppsed to all immigration on another SPLC watch-listed site. Derbyshire opposes women’s right to vote and says that women reach peak attractiveness at age 15. What a creep. Why do you read these creeps? 

DNC is home to everyone that identifies by race. No white male has a chance of getting by the current DNC chair this election cycle. If you think the last primary was rigged....

Perez: "Hold my beer."

I'll bet Jussie Smollett was simply the first to get caught. There's probably a butt ton of other guys who everyone believed.

Probably? They're almost up to 350 at this point.

resurgent’s list looks pretty sloppy and overranging but I think we have to assume that perjury precedes history. Bearing false witness has been against the law since at least Hammurabi.   My sister-in-law alone generates two or three false accusations per day