In his novel 1984, a template for our times, author George Orwell famously said, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
Never was that prediction more accurate than this month, when Google’s Gemini AI chatbot was asked for a photo of George Washington, and produced the tall, handsome black man seen above. True, George Washington was tall, and some thought handsome. Also true, some freed blacks in the North fought for the rebels in the Revolutionary War. But I don’t think any of them were present when the Committee of Five (depicted below?) drafted the Declaration of Independence.
Ditto when the Post asked AI to “create an image of a pope.” Instead of providing an image of one of the 266 pontiffs in history — all white men — Gemini offered up photos of “a Southeast Asian woman and a black man wearing holy vestments.”
For a company whose original motto was “Don’t Be Evil,” it was an epic Woke fail. Acquired by Alphabet in 2015, Google changed its slogan to “Do the Right Thing.”
And by the lights of Woke ideology, correcting the racial makeup of historic figures — perhaps to meet a racial quota among the famous? — is in their view the right thing to do. The guy in charge of the Gemini project— Jack Krawczyk — is a card-carrying member of the Woke police, maybe its chief. He called President Biden’s inaugural address “one of the greatest ever” because it alleged “systematic racism.” And he once explained on Twitter, “White privilege is f---ing real. Don't be an a---hole and act guilty about it – do your part in recognizing bias at all levels of egregious.”
So it’s likely that the anti-white mindset of Google’s mostly white staff had something to do with what information it fed into the Gemini AI chatbot.
What’s more interesting is the backlash that followed. First, Alphabet stock plummeted $70 billion in value. And then, Google CEO Sundar Pichai issued a statement that the company is temporarily halting its Gemini image generator. “I know that some of its responses have offended our users and shown bias – to be clear, that's completely unacceptable and we got it wrong.” Yep and they’re “working around the clock to address these issues. We're already seeing a substantial improvement.”
At least for the short term, the Woke will always try to banish white males from history. But it was encouraging to me that there was so much backlash. Hurrah, our history still matters to most Americans, at least among those who have learned of it.
There is no question these are fraught times, when the government is targeting civilians — parents, Catholics, pro-lifers — not for crimes but for political thought. The FBI has told Blaze Media investigative reporter Steve Baker to self-surrender by Friday for his Jan 6 reporting. Not for his activism on that day, but for his reporting!
But a growing number of Americans, insisting they are still liberal (see Susan Neiman’s Left is Not Woke), have turned against the Far Left Woke agenda, which can roughly be described as: Allowing biological males to destroy women’s sports, after injuring them. Teaching white children they are forever colonizers, and black kids they are perpetual victims. Grooming the young with cringe-worthy pornography. Removing children from their parents’ care if they refuse to mutilate them in transgender hysteria. Hiring for racial and gender identity instead of merit. Leaving wide open our borders. Defunding the police. Taking away our gas stoves.
Even PBS noticed.
Clinton campaign maestro James Carville worried about all of this before the 2022 elections, “Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it. It’s hard to talk to anybody today – and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party – who doesn’t say this. But they don’t want to say it out loud.” The Red Wave that was expected in 2022 turned into a Purple Puddle, so it’s hard to know if Carville was just stirring the base.
One thing is clear: as the conservative media landscape grows (while the mainstream media shrinks) the guardians of Woke have opened themselves to widespread mockery.
Users on X had a field day reminding her that the most famous words in the Declaration of Independence are “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” One wag at The Federalist headlined, “If This Is ‘Christian Nationalism,’ Sign Me Up!”
And when the Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz sat down for a one-on-one with Chaya Raichik, the author of the Libs of TikTok account on X, whom Taylor has targeted, doxxed, and hounded, she came off looking like an uninformed fool.
Raichik pulled up images of gay oral sex from controversial book Gender Queer to show Lorenz, who was left speechless for a moment, before defending the content.
To the images of oral sex in a children’s book. Lorenz cried “taken out of context.”
Raichik: “So, should this picture of a b***job be in elementary schools?”
The voices of sanity have responded, brilliantly, by using the very tools of the Enlightenment — critical thinking, what they called pursuit of knowledge by reason — which the Left disdains. Christopher Rufo has done much work to expose the rot at the center of the Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion industries. Recognizing his contribution, Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him as one of a new slate of trustees at the New College of Florida. This week Rufo issued the college’s new mission statement. No more “platitudes and bromides,” he wrote on Substack.
At New College of Florida, our mission is to revive the great tradition of the classical liberal arts and to cultivate good citizens, artists, academics, entrepreneurs, and statesmen.
The founders of New College envisioned a community of scholars, modeled on the University of Oxford, that would provide students with a “classical liberal arts education” and pass down “the learning of our civilization in the classical tradition.” In our era of stifling academic orthodoxy, this task is more urgent than ever.
At New College, our unwavering commitment is to rediscover the deepest purpose of education and to give students a foundation of logos, human reason, and techne, the applied arts. Our distinguished faculty and student body, while advancing a diversity of opinions, hold a shared commitment to liberal principles—free speech, open debate, colorblind equality—all oriented to the pursuit of the highest good.
Let us be unapologetic: We are a public university, open to all, in which exceptional students of any background can participate in the great tradition of the West. Our calling is to provide a liberal arts education befitting free men and women, and a free society. While others are caught in the fray of ideology, we look up: to the true, the good, and the beautiful.
We create students who will move the Earth.
With the media class descending into ignorance, with bots ridiculing our history, we can only hope that what used to be called, in political terms, “the good common sense of the American people” will prevail. As Abraham Lincoln famously said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” To which I say, Let us pray.
Another excellent article Johanna! God bless the common man/woman and thank God for common sense! We are slowly winning back our country, inch by inch! Never, ever give up! Stand for what is right and rail against the evil that is all around us.
The pictures of The Pope!! When did resources move from educational to indoctrination? How can we as a people ever come together and fight for an aggressor if we don’t know our history and love our country—two things that are not taking place for our youth!
Why would any white male join the military to fight for a country that demeans him? How do we get mainstream media and our Big D elected officials ( our VP🥲) to set aside the Woke agenda and start critically thinking?