Woke Art

I am on a trip and was in Portland, Maine, which has a well-regarded art museum.  Nice collection of French Impressionists, Winslow Homer, etc.  Art museums have become hotbeds of woke ideology.  The staffs of these institutions are divorced from economic reality–they live off government funds and donations from rich people who actually had to work for their money.  This particular art museum had painting label after label that spouted ignorant whacked ideology.  What is particularly astounding  is the lack of historical knowledge.  A lot was made of how European “colonists” oppressed the indigenous people.  As is typical of humans everywhere, Native Americans routinely genocided each other–tribes engaged in the wholesale slaughter of other tribes and constantly fought over territory.  Pretending that these were some nature-loving pacificists is just dead wrong.  They were typical human beings–violent and prone to conflict.  What they weren’t was particularly inventive or technologically savvy, so when Europeans showed up, they were simply outclassed in the unfortunate art of war.  How native Americans were treated is indefensible, but pretending like it was something unique and that there wasn’t mass slaughter and territorial appropriation already going on in the Americas is dumb.  A more accurate description would be that native Americans used to slaughter each other and then Europeans showed up and did a better job of it.  As I said, typical human behavior for every race, every ethnicity, inhabitants of all parts of the globe.

The other thing notable about Portland is that it is kind of a hipster, young person’s downtown; and the completely frivolous, purposeless vibe of a significant subset of the current younger generations was on full display.  Sad really, to live such meaningless lives, with no real contribution to improving the overall lot of humanity.  No wonder there is so much anxiety, depression, and general poor mental health in this age group.