A strange phenomenon has been observed across the world of American sports this week.
In celebration of soccer goals, NFL sacks and touchdowns, UFC fight victories and more, United States athletes have broken out in the 'Trump dance' - a hip-swaying, fist-pumping mimic of Donald Trump's iconic rally jive.
Newsweek has even compiled a list of players who've indulged the routine, to the approval of cheering fans.
As Clay Travis has mused at Outkick, "the birth of the woke sports era" began in 2016 with San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand for the national anthem. But it officially came to an end "when first the UFC fighter Jon Jones and later white and black players on the Detroit Lions, the Tennessee Titans and the Las Vegas Raiders all celebrated on the football field with their own versions of the Donald Trump YMCA dance."
.
The Trump dance is quite popular among professional athletes this week:pic.twitter.com/j4vpIZ8oAV
— Alex Salvi (@alexsalvinews) November 17, 2024
.
Non-woke Americans were told for years on end they are a despised and discredited minority. But in a twist of irony, via the secret ballot box, this illusion was at last shattered for all the world to see.
In truth, the Trump dance has very little to do with Donald Trump. It is a cultural clue that wokeness has mercifully begun its retreat from the public square and that normality is back in fashion.
Want further evidence that wokeness is on the retreat?
US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a veritable paragon of wokeness, recently removed her pronouns from her bio on X. For context, it was only two years ago that AOC apologised to her followers for neglecting to display the same pronouns on her social media accounts.
Some of America's largest newspapers have also begun to course-correct. The owner of the Los Angeles Times reportedly plans to fire the paper's entire editorial board, vowing that "ALL voices must be heard". The LA Times was joined by USA Today and The Washington Post in opting not to endorse a candidate for President this year, after all three backed Biden in 2020.
There have even been rumours that far-left ABC daytime talk show The View plans to bring on a panellist sympathetic to Donald Trump, though I'd personally put money on hell freezing over first.
In one of the more bizarre revelations in Big Media this week, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski discussed their recent visit to Mar-a-Lago in an effort to "restart communications" with President elect Donald Trump.
While at one level, I am heartened by this gesture of conciliation, I also share the cynicism of CNN's dissident-in-residence Scott Jennings, who questioned why "literal Hitler" is now being inundated with meeting requests from the Democrat elite.
.
xD83DxDD25 Scott Jennings schools the left for its Hitler narrative hypocrisy
— MRC NewsBusters (@newsbusters) November 19, 2024
"I did not expect Hitler to get so many meeting requests... all of the rhetoric, the fascism, the Hitler, the Nazi rally, it was all a bunch of BS."pic.twitter.com/Nby519ZA1s
.
The election itself was, of course, a repudiation of wokeness. Trump gained historic swings from demographics that traditionally favour the Democrat candidate, whether Black, Latino, Native American, young, suburban female, union, Jewish or Asian-American.
In an article released just months before the election, The Economist noted that "discussion and espousal of woke views peaked in America in the early 2020s and have declined markedly since". The magazine conducted a detailed analysis using measurable data to track the decline of wokeness, including:
In short, the re-election of Donald Trump is not some eleventh-hour victory over the dark forces of wokeness. It is evidence that wokeness keeled over and died some time ago - proof that the West has finally found its way back to civilisation after our gratuitous wilderness wanderings.
Hate Trump if you like, but don't hate what his Oval Office comeback represents.
History will look kindly on our culture's return to sanity.