The 2024 election was a repudiation, among other things, of the secular theology sometimes known as the Great Awokening. It is that secular form of Calvinism which insisted that America exists in a constant state of oppression, that America is defined by its oppressiveness, that only a few elect activists can save the rest of us from our tendency towards misogyny, racism, fascism, and transphobia. Only they could deliver us from evil (and that they could do so through centering voices, allyship, equity, and through decentering accountability).
A majority of Americans rejected this electorally, because they don’t believe that their neighbors, their friends, their family, they themselves are any of these things. And they don’t believe that slips of language or insufficient levels of activist passion are signs and symptoms of a deep malevolence.
Beyond this fundamental rejection, many Americans also recognized that this social religion provided amazing cover for the mediating structures of the American empire to practice expansion and coercion abroad. The CIA and BlackRock both touted their diversity initiatives. So did the FBI, so did Big Tech. So did the Democratic Party, even as it laundered money to defense contractors in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Rainbow flags and black squares were ways for elites who wanted only to practice self-enrichment to promote themselves as good. At a basic level, it is really that simple. Most Americans felt that the new social religion, the new theology, was dehumanizing, restrictive, and debasing. But moreover, that it enabled corruption and was a useful tool for the worst kinds of elites.
Most Americans felt that the new social religion, the new theology, was dehumanizing, restrictive, and debasing.
Ironically, even while the Great Awokening became an invisible social church for liberals, its practices and intellectual principles were never liberal; they were always illiberal. They were never about democracy, but about re-envisioning America as a country run by a board of ethical experts, by various committees for public safety—a Jacobin America. Accordingly, there is the US magazine of that name, founded by a self-avowed socialist.
Because of this, woke progressives do not consider the results of the election persuasive. Democracy, in fact, is not to be trusted, because it lets in the evil “isms”. If anything, the wrong, the bad people did too much voting. There are even many rank-and-file members of the Invisible Church of Social Justice so committed that they will not notice when the elites abandon this church which the non-elites never joined. Though the Great Awokening was defeated electorally, its roots, and the grasp it has on thought and socialization, still run very deep through academia and through the arts.
During COVID, theater (my field) was among the last to give up “safety” (and, in fact, you can still find mask-mandatory theater around town). Following this pattern, I think we’re going to see a parallel development with social justice theology in the arts in 2025 and beyond: writers and directors and actors, teachers, editors, musicians, artists will be among the last to catch up and realize that a literal voting majority of Americans, aka their audiences, find their beliefs and practices to be obsolete and absurd.
The fear of cancellation, social abandonment, and exile still runs deep in New York City theater and the arts, as it does in traditionally liberal cities and in colleges and college towns. While the easy buttons of social liquidation no longer work the way they used to, plenty of people, particularly young people, still want to press them—still press them instinctively—to cancel any suspected Trump voters. Many younger people only know how to socially disappear peers or mentors who disagree with them; they have never needed to practice conversation across ideological lines, debate, suspended disbelief. Illiberal tendencies have become normal in the last ten years; this will not go away easily: the language, the social practices, are too embedded in American life (and again, acutely, in the arts and performing arts).
Illiberal tendencies have become normal in the last ten years; this will not go away easily: the language, the social practices, are too embedded in American life (and again, acutely, in the arts and performing arts).
I’ve experienced this firsthand: many of my friends expressed shock and concern that I published articles that made clear that I wouldn’t vote for Kamala. Even more so, that I was mildly optimistic about Trump. Their shock did not originate from disagreement with me (in fact, they admitted expressly that they agreed)—rather, they were shocked because they knew that I was risking censure, losing collaborators and funding; they were also worried in some cases that I was putting them at social risk.
Like with COVID, however, when I lost collaborators who couldn’t believe that I was doing unmasked, unvaxxed theater, I didn’t want to dissemble or hide—I didn’t want to pretend to vote for a president and party who I felt were, or had become, synonymous with the war machine, with corporate rent extraction, and with the most insidious elite pretensions. Let the chips fall where they may.
Despite these tensions—and while the consequences of this approach are still unfolding, for me, as a writer, director, and producer—unlike in the COVID era, I have more evidence (and hope) that there can be productive conversations between people who disagree, who potentially disagree, or who aren’t sure if they disagree. I think that underneath fading progressive fervor, the average churchgoer of the social justice religion feels a subtle sense of shame and anxiety and uncertainty about the practical effects of their secular religion. They are repressing enough disillusion and cognitive dissonance to (begin to) tolerate counterargument and alternate opinion.
In fact, even while progressives cling to the ideals of the Awokening, despite mounting evidence of its catastrophic failures (and the cynicism of many of the people who benefited from it financially), and even while many young people are still hoping for the progressive utopia that they were promised in high school and college, I don’t think they’re clinging with all that much tenacity. There’s room for dissent and freedom of thought, especially when identity and the party affiliation badges are put away, and some degree of post-Enlightenment universalism leaks back into civic life: when people can see people as people.
There’s room for dissent and freedom of thought, especially when identity and the party affiliation badges are put away, and some degree of post-Enlightenment universalism leaks back into civic life: when people can see people as people.
I’ve found in practice that you can persuade people that the most utopian move possible is to allow for social disagreement in good faith—that you can work together artistically in good faith even if you disagree (a banal, old fashioned idea that’s radical as we approach 2025). Nevertheless, if legitimate populist rebellion against elite manipulation, censorship, and warmongering takes a genuinely reactionary turn and if the response to woke illiberalism is “based” illiberalism, then the Great Awokening will roar back to life.
I’m not arguing, finally, that the basis for social, political and artistic organization should be programmatic, moderate centrism—but that the right way for populism to build on a political victory is to court disagreement, to question its own assumptions, to remain open to welcoming new ideas and discarding bad ones—in short, to practice all of the things that weren’t practiced during the Great Awokening.
