They just don't work any more, those baseless accusations that anyone we disagree with is a racist, misogynist, fascist. After being invoked en masse and in vain for the better part of the past decade, their power to shock and awe is finally gone. All that's left is a weak whimper. Good fucking riddance.

The problem with accusations like that is that they eventually have to be backed by proof or they'll bounce like a rubber check. And when even the most mundane political or moral positions were able to earn one of those *ist-y labels, the entire enterprise of throwing them around was bound to go bankrupt. And now it has.

Whatever controversy calling the peak of DEI might have garnered two years ago is certainly gone now. Being professionally offended by every little thing, seeing micro-aggressions around every corner, and rendering the entire world through a narrow oppressed/oppressor lens is back to the niche disposition once more.

This particular preference falsification, where people just go along with what's in vogue to keep their head down, has left the zeitgeist. For a hot minute, it really did seem like everyone was immersed in critical-theory thinking and the rest of the woke orthodoxies. But that was shadows on the wall, distorted to thrice their size from the angle of the light. 

Now the angle has changed, so the shadows have shrunk. That big scary mob that once was has been reduced to near impotence in most arenas, including the biggest of all, the US presidential election. That's a win for everyone whether they like Donald Trump or not.