The recent outbreak of toxic wokeness — the statue-topplings, the beatings, the arsons, and the Sovietic attempts to cancel mainstream opinions — really has nothing to do with George Floyd’s death. To say otherwise is to fool oneself.
But nor has all of this occurred in a vacuum.
The nation has watched the professional Left riot and “occupy” on many previous occasions, but it’s a bit different this time. The underlying reason seems to be the coronavirus.
Forced idleness and fear, combined with the government’s generous response, has had multiple effects at the same time. For bad actors, it has temporarily freed them from financial obligations. For them, it’s like being on campus again. They have nothing better to do than turn out in mobs in numbers that may not have been possible in ordinary times.
The mobs’ larger-than-life presence, along with the same lack of exposure to real life that the virus has brought everyone, is also emboldening less violent but more influential people. It is no coincidence that journalists in the largest and formerly most trusted publications have increasingly embraced “God Damn America” as their credo. Just 12 years ago, it was viewed as a horrific insult to mention that President Barack Obama’s pastor preached just such a sentiment. The woke-ists are trying to make Jeremiah Wright into the mainstream.
The coronavirus has turned all of America into a college campus — basically, everything except for the learning and the sports. This is placing great stress on people, making ordinary folks feel very helpless, and it is obviously deepening political divisions needlessly.
What the nation needs right now is something to unite black and white, sane liberal and sane conservative. Fortunately, just in time for Independence Day, the announcement came down that baseball would be returning later this month.
This almost didn’t happen. Baseball had a chance to make its appeal to a much larger audience, and if not for squabbles between the owners and players, it could have had a grateful nation’s undivided attention for weeks already by now.
But fine, at least there will be a season. It will be considerably shorter than usual, but that was always to be expected. And unfortunately, there have been some terrible rule changes. The designated hitter rule will be adopted in the National League, not just this year but next year as well. And extra innings will begin with a base runner planted on second, to avoid lengthy games.
Even so, baseball gives people something to look forward to. The widespread availability of games over the internet will help people turn their thoughts away from inane, vicious, extremist political ideas. It will give them a break from all the stress of lockdowns, mask mandates, and the instant racialization of everyone’s minor grievances.
Finally, a chance to reconnect with family and friends, across races and creeds, across political divides over something that doesn’t involve burning buildings, distributing guns to minors, or seceding from the United States.
By now, the New York Times’s editors have probably found a way to decry Mom and apple pie as hopelessly racist since the year 1600. But baseball? They wouldn’t dare.
