When someone, something, or a cause is running out of air, the reflexive over-action is often the exact opposite of the effective action needed to rectify or to relieve the situation.
Such seems to be the case with the various woke crusades and progressive causes as the air slips out of the balloons that had held them above any remonstrance, retribution, or rebukes that would have scuttled lesser supported and coddled indulgences.
Woke, DEI, BLM, LGBwhatever, the climate cult, ad nauseum – all the instantly recognizable crusades and alphabet monikers that have lorded it over the rest of society for years are finding their reach shrinking more every day, their funding evaporating, and the respect with which the immediacy of their demands is indulged vaporized.
Most have responded by being even louder and more aggressively hysterical in the face of waning public appetite and approval for their message and antics.
Everyone is pretty much over all of them. We want normal, rational, civilized, and decent back.
The holdouts are tough as nuts though, nuts being the oeprative word as I found out today.
Most of you are familiar with the well-established race-baiting grievance hustler Nina Turner, former Ohio state senator and Bernie bro.
The most extraordinary exchange happened on X after Turner begged California Democrats NOT to take the bait and redistrict the state as a quid pro quo to Texas.
Personally, I thought it was a pretty eloquent ask.
This is not ok.
California retaliating is not ok.
Whichever state responds to California is not ok.
This is an acceleration of the erosion of democracy and someone in the DNC needs to have the backbone to call it out and start organizing a general strike. https://t.co/GGXJnqf6qc
— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) August 20, 2025
The trouble started when Gavin Newsom’s communications director, a guy named Izzy Gardon, and obviously very invested in the whole gerrymandering scheme, piped up in her comments with what seemed like a wholly innocuous query about, well, whaddaya want us to do instead?
Well, all hell broke loose over?
KUMBAYA
All I can say is WHUT
Yesterday, @GavinNewsom’s comms director @iGardon made an extremely ignorant, anti-Black comment in response to a post of mine regarding redistricting.
As someone who has taught Black history, I want to educate folks on, not only why this comment is offensive, but how it… pic.twitter.com/Hkh4b7Ow1O
— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) August 22, 2025
…As someone who has taught Black history, I want to educate folks on, not only why this comment is offensive, but how it encapsulates liberals in this moment.
Kum ba yah, in the Gullah dialect of coastal South Carolina and Georgia, translates to “come by here,” a heartfelt plea to God to come to the aid of those in need.
During the civil rights movement, those marching from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights for Black Americans sang Kumbaya while marching.
This is the type of historical context that continues to be erased right now with the race to the bottom voter disenfranchisement fight…
As someone who sang ‘Kumbaya’ around Girl Scout campfires for years as both a Scout and a leader, am I supposed to feel shamed by the fond memories now?
Since when are we not allowed to use ‘kumbaya’ as we always have?
I thought the Gullah origin story was interesting, but it’s not confirmed according to Merriam-Webster, most probably coming from the old spiritual, which was first transcribed and recorded in 1926.
…Whatever the precise origins of the spiritual, it is not implausible that the phrase come by here/kumbaya was originally taken from a Gullah speaker, or someone in contact with Gullah, as has been claimed according to Winick…
Nowhere does it say the term is exclusively reserved for the use of a selective minority, nor that it is ‘anti-black’ to use it as it has been for the past at least sixty years, I’m aware of. I’m sure longer.
In fact, there’s a whole article about how it came to be part of the American – AMERICAN – lexicon.
…The earliest known recording of the song was also included in the archive’s first holdings, having been collected in Georgia by Gordon himself in 1926. This version of the spiritual song is sung by H. Wylie in Gullah, a Creole dialect spoken on the islands off South Carolina and Georgia. Gordon had also collected other spirituals with the “come by here” or “come by yuh” refrain, but the cylinders have since been lost or broken so whether they are versions of the same song can’t be verified.
…Although the lyrics and melody of “Kumbaya” haven’t changed all that much since its first known versions, perceptions of the tune certainly have. While the song started out as spiritual, in the years following its widespread popularity, it took on new meanings.
“Kumbaya” became a protest song during the 1960s. In 1965, the congregation of the Zion Methodist Church in Marion, Alabama, sang “Come By Here” in support of the civil rights movement. One year later, students in Gary, Indiana, adapted the lyrics to protest corruption in the city: “Gary’s troubled, my Lord, Kumbaya.” In 1980, crowds in Middletown, Pennsylvania, sang the tune at a candlelight vigil marking the one year anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident.
…“Kumbaya” has become shorthand for a naïve and ineffectual approach to matters that require a firmer hand, with the phrase kumbaya moment usually being used cynically. The song is particularly used to this effect in the spheres of business and politics. In 2015, President Barack Obama referenced the song when speaking about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, saying the differences between his handling of the issue and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuon’s “can’t be reduced to somehow a matter of let’s all hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya.’ ”
From a heartfelt spiritual, to a children’s campfire song, to a powerful protest anthem, to a derisive phrase, “Kumbaya” is certainly a bit of a musical chameleon.
But Ms Turner has declared it hers because a lily white staffer of Gavin Newsom’s used it in a disagreement with her. She’s offended.
This isn’t an anti-black comment. Lol.
Biggest reach I’ve ever seen. It’s a very common phrase.
And he’s correct. You are wrong about the redistricting thing.
— Michael (@Socdem_Michael) August 22, 2025
Turner was sticking to her ‘you’re a racist’ guns and, in the most craven, progressive, virtue-signaling, soy-boy fashion possible, Izzy the Squishy caved.
Absolutely incredible. Apologize right now, pic.twitter.com/gpreKxQPVN
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) August 21, 2025
And then blinked the Xweet. Wiped it from the face of the earth.
HOLY CRAP
How mortifying. What a spineless weenie.
What a progressive male (Dr. Drew just called it the ‘performative male‘ syndrome on Ingraham’s show, like, carrying tote bags to attract progressive wymmins.).
Particularly when…well, again…sheesh.
He just can’t stop trashing the civil rights movement, he’s a menace https://t.co/9xqsAG4G8Y pic.twitter.com/P0DKc705NV
— Damin Toell (@damintoell) August 22, 2025
Here’s a thought – give the racism a rest, why doncha?
Just give the whole perpetually aggrieved victim-class grift a rest.
You don’t get to pull words out of thin air and declare them ‘yours’ anymore so that you have something to be offended by. Worse, when you choose a faux offense over something so commonplace, so everyday vernacular for everyone, and declare it suddenly ‘off-limits’? That its formerly common usage is now ‘anti-black’ when it so obviously is not?
Why, one might think you were trying to manufacture an injury where none existed.
Like, you were full of it or something.
There are enough serious wrongs in this world without inventing more out of whole cloth simply because no one is paying attention to selective screeds anymore.
No one has time for that, and we no longer have to pretend we do.
This sorry BS is Exhibit A of why we’re not.
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