Woke-Proof Your Life: A Handbook on Escaping Modern, Political Madness and Shielding Yourself and Your Family by Living a More Self-Sufficient, Fulfilling Life

by Teresa Mull

Americans are burned out, on edge, and nostalgic for the time before bullying progressives turned every aspect of our lives into a radical social cause. This book provides practical, woke-proof ways in which the silenced majority--which feels disoriented, if not overmatched--can finally stand up and restore America's values and culture. If you're emerging from the paralyzed slumber of the 24/7 doomsday news cycle, reflexive consumerism, and omnipresent identity politics, this book is for you.

In a single century, America has moved from a rural, agricultural, family-centered society to one that is urban, corporate, and hyper-individualistic. Yet, despite all our technology and material wealth, we're left with higher rates of depression and greater alienation than our parents' or grandparents' generations ever experienced.

We are awakening to the fact that we are up to our eyeballs in labels, pronouns, microaggressions, triggers, TikToks, and guilt trips. We have less free time, more debt, and more anxiety than ever before. We are being cowed, coerced, and canceled by tech giants, media conglomerates, and billion-dollar, multinational megacorps that are forcing us to support the progressive movements du jour. It's made us miserable, and we need a break.

But how? Where do we go, and how exactly do we get our lives and freedom back? In an invigorating and highly relatable style, Teresa Mull

The actual definition of woke (Brace yourself!)How to avoid "toxic empathy" -- approving immoral behavior so you'll be likedSix ways to be truly NORMAL (Non-woke Ordinary Rational Moral All-American Leaders)Six major woke weapons to beware of and how to disarm themTips on growing in faith, educating children, and cultivating communityThree tenets to focus on when you feel trapped in the maze of woke cultureIn an upbeat way, you will discover that you don't need to become a survivalist prepper, live off-grid, or learn to tan beaver pelts. Somewhere between Amish buggy rides and Pride parades, there's a healthy, middle-ground approach to regaining the good old days and providing yourself and your family with a wholesome, nurturing, faith-enriching lifestyle and future.

Woke-Proof Your Life provides the blueprint that traditional-minded Americans are looking for to regain their peace of mind, health, and happiness and to reorient our country toward the bright future we envisioned before progressive radicals torpedoed our traditional culture with conflict, division, and confusion. Woke-Proof is brimming with simple, practical steps you can take to resist the pervasive, woke mob and reclaim your life with changes that will improve your physical, mental, and spiritual well-being -- all while benefiting the society and natural world we share.

Filled with inspiring, first-person narratives and expert advice from the saints and secular sources, Woke-Proof Your Life makes winning the culture war as exciting and enjoyable as it is crucial to saving our civilization.

Genres: Nonfiction

294 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 15, 2023

Reviews

[Mandi Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teresa Mull’s “Woke-Proof Your Life” is a refreshing, inspiring little book for those of us exhausted by bullying progressives.

Have you noticed this phenomenon? How, often, even mentioning the word “WOKE” around left-of-center folks suddenly triggers reactions akin to waving garlic in front of thirsty vampires? You are immediately confronted with hissing, screeching, and blood curdling attacks in which you called names (you MAGA extremist!) and accused of being every despicable “ism” in our current lexicon. Don’t even try to explain to progressives that WOKE is a word that handily encompasses an insidious Cultural Marxism developed by communist Antonio Gramsci and promoted by activist Rudi Dutschke as the “long march through the institutions” to subvert Western culture. Don’t bother with explanations about how WOKE policies are antithetical to principles of the Judeo-Christian Bible and the American Constitution. YOU HAVE ALREADY BEEN CANCELLED! The progressive WOKESTERS have no desire to listen as they taste your blood and chant, “what are your sources, Conspiracy Theorist?”

It’s time to protect yourself from these unhappy people. You can’t change them, but you can avoid becoming their victims. Neither do you have to play their “everything is a radical social cause” game anymore. Teresa Mull uses humor, wise quotations, and handy life hacks to teach how to eliminate WOKE culture from your life. We, the silenced majority, have healthy alternatives to this modern political madness. This short book shows how to take our lives and freedoms back in order to rebuild our traditional culture. Enjoy the read all you Happy Warriors!

[Christian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was in a local Catholic bookstore that I had felt had been good at avoiding all of this dominionist culture war whining, when I saw this book proudly displayed. My initial reaction was how I react to all of this right now; sorrow. I feel as though I am mourning the Church and how it has been taken over by political opportunists, drifting as far into reactionary politics as the rest of the political right. But then I decided to read it and see just how bad it was.

There was a bizarre three paragraph moment when I started this book where I thought I may have been in for a less miserable time than I expected. Teresa Mull, Heartland Institute policy advisor, pointed out that woke was a term that nobody seemed to have a definition for and clarified the importance of defining the term. This may be a low bar, but it was surprisingly refreshing anyway to see her clear it. Maybe this would be a more nuanced discussion than I expected. Okay, let’s look at her definition of woke:

Wokeness (noun): a sociopolitcial ideology characterized by the manipulation of noble goals
(such as equity, inclusion, social justice, and environmental stewardship) by tyrannical, left-
wing zealots for the purpose of controlling and destroying American society.
Woke (adj.): 1. Alert for ways in which noble goals can be manipulated for the tyrannical control
and destruction of American society.
2. Having features of wokeness, i.e., radical left-wing ideologies (redistribution of wealth, racial
segregation); wealthy elitist architects; noble goals that serve as smokescreens for self-serving
outcomes; bullying tactics (censorship, cancelation); virtue signaling, fearmongering.

Oh no!

I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain what the problem is here, but if your baseline is that your political opponents desire to do evil and are just pretending to have noble goals then you are never going to be able to engage with them and their ideas, nor even understand them. There is no consideration that they may be mistaken or misguided, or simply disagree with you; no, they are evil and they desire no less than the total destruction of America. I expected to get there eventually, but I did not expect it to be so soon. We are still only one page in!

Okay, who are they, and what do they want? Mull splits society into two main groups; Wokes and NORMALS. You, dear reader, are a NORMAL. You are too smart and discerning to fall for this woke lie, too faithful to be led astray, too patriotic to want any harm to befall beautiful America. And you’re looking great too, did you lose some weight? The Wokes are everything the NORMALS are not. They are using only the pretense of compassion in order to spread ideas carefully created in order to destroy america. They are evil, yes, but also weak and misled. The real enemy is a small group of puppet masters working behind the scenes to destroy America. This will remind some of you of the conspiracy theory of cultural marxism, or postmodern neo marxism (which have a root in Nazi conspiracy Kulturbolschewismus or cultural bolshevism). Essentially, the idea is that at some point during the Cold War, the marxists plotting to destroy America from within realized they couldn’t do it with a class framework anymore so they took over academia and entertainment and pushed a social justice framework in its place. Mull never does us the favour of outlining who is behind this conspiracy, but she does refer to what she calls cultural leftism, and she is firm that wokes are just pretending to care about social justice in order to destroy america, so I think it’s safe to say that it’s the same conspiracy theory.

Furthering this similarity, Mull does define what she wants to demonstrate in her book which is the following:

The sexual revolution led to godlessness
Godlessness led to self absorption
Self Absorption led to boredom and softness amplified by technology, covid [lockdowns], and screen time
This led to a mentally compromised society which wokeness took advantage of
The only solution is separation; remove yourself from the internet, homeschool your kids so you can raise them to be non-woke (or put them in private or charter schools), become independently employed through a side-hustle, move to a republican town in a republican state, have non-woke friends. Do not move to a city, but if you must then make it a republican one.

In order to argue this Mull mostly uses non sequiturs and falsely relates unrelated statistics through proximity. I mean proximity on the page. Mull will mention two different things next to each other as though to imply a causative relation when she hasn’t even demonstrated a correlative one. The most common version of this will be to mention that society is more woke than ever and then mention that it's more anxious and depressed than ever. She will not bother to demonstrate a link between these as that link is assumed. In one particularly egregious example Mull mentions that Christianity in American society is at an all time low, and then states that there is a school teacher in Canada with size Z artificial breasts allowed to teach children. I guess the implication being that if America becomes more non-Christian then they will wind up like godless Canada and our implied degeneracy. This is again not demonstrated or even argued beyond stating both things next to one another as though that argues the point. Even the potential harm of this teacher is only implied to the reader. This, I would argue, has a two fold purpose. First, she doesn’t have to argue anything because your brain does the work for her, and second, she has plausible deniability. She could, if she wanted, argue that she was merely mentioning to non-related things. Plausible deniability is an important tool in the book in general as a lot of the more unpleasant conclusions are not stated at all, but implied.

The other way Mull deceives the reader is through outright lying. This may seem like a more provocative claim, but I believe that I can demonstrate it. In the segment on the climate crisis Mull argues that the term climate change evolved from global warming when they realized that the globe wasn’t warming. So there’s one big problem with this: It’s not true. First of all, the globe is warming. The last ten years have been the warmest on record, each being warmer than the one before. Second of all, they didn’t change the term unless they are the Bush Administration because that’s who changed it. The Bush administration, who fought hard to reduce concern over climate change, insisted on that terminology because it sounded less frightening. But you’re saying, sure she’s wrong, she’s usually wrong, but that doesn’t make her a liar! Here’s why I think she knows she’s wrong. She doesn’t cite a source. Throughout the book she cites most of her claims. When she’s throwing a series of unrelated statistics she always cites them. Sometimes those citations are awful, or used poorly, but they exist, But when she claims that the name climate change exists because the world isn’t warming? No source. Not one.

She also lies by omission. A lot. If I was working for the heartland institute maybe I would briefly mention that in my climate change segment seeing as how they have denied climate change since day one, alongside denial of cigarettes causing cancer. This seems extra concerning when you realize that her argument was that climate activists want to make money and kill poor people, which seems odd since climate activists aren’t the ones fighting to cover up the results of cigarette smoke or a climate crisis that will disproportionately affect the global poor. She also doesn’t mention that the Catholic Church, of which she counts herself a member, does believe in Climate Change and views it as an existential threat. They also officially believe in evolution and the safety and efficacy of vaccines, viewing it as the duty of every Catholic to get vaccinated as fast as possible. It’s not that she has to agree with every position of the Catholic Church, but since she does like to use religion as a cudgel it would be more honest to admit that she does not see eye to eye with her religious order on many of these matters. Sometimes believing in climate change is a difference of opinion, and sometimes it’s a sign that you’re an evil person who wants to exterminate the poor. Mull’s solution to this murkiness is to never acknowledge that those she views as being on the good side could believe these things as well. So Mull is using spurious conclusions and outright fabrications to convince you of the danger of these “woke” ideas in order to convince you to stop ever talking about them and to surround yourself with people who won’t. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Mull knowingly wants her readers to remain ignorant, and that like a cult leader she will encourage them to separate themselves from those who will bring it up.

Hypocrisy doesn’t generally bother me. It’s a moral failing, and one we all have. It does not mean that a person is lying or even wrong, just that they have failed at living by their ideology. But Mull certainly cares about hypocrisy, she uses it as her main argument that no one believes in climate change, and so I feel like I have to point out how often she does the things she accuses her opponents of doing. The woke will cancel you and boycott you over the slightest disagreement, while mull has a list of companies you should boycott for being woke including dove for trying to say women don’t have to shave their armpits and an ice cream company for the crime of being enjoyed by someone she doesn’t like. The woke will refuse to have a civilized discussion, but also you should never discuss these matters with them. The woke want to ban books and ideas but also we need to make sure our kids are home schooled so they’re never exposed to certain ideas. The list goes on. Everything Mull accuses the woke of is something she openly does and encourages the reader to do. The only difference as far as I can tell is that she believes (or at least pretends to believe) that she’s the good guy and they’re the bad guy. Everything can be justified by who is already good and who isn’t. Your actions don’t make you evil, you just are.

The truth is that I could write an essay on this book. I know this because I started one. I had an outline, a thesis, and even started looking up resources to read to properly discredit her points. I guess there’s worse ways to get angry, but once I calmed down I remembered that I have a full time job that I’m already behind on. I do not have time for this. And I don’t expect anyone wants to read my paper on why this one obscure reactionary text is bad. I’ve already written too much anyway. So I will try to keep this short (I say after having already written 2000 words); This is one of the most hateful and deceitful books I’ve ever read. I didn’t get into all the ways she twists facts to make America somehow both the most accepting country ever and also too accepting. She never mentions slavery, housing discrimination, job discrimination, or Jim Crow when complaining about DEI. She LGBTQ people for their own suicide rates ignoring how much those go down the moment one adult affirms them. She lies, obfuscates, and obscures in the hope that no one notices that this whole book is just arguing for a new version of white flight. It’s a book that uses Christianity as a tool to argue for its ultra-nationalistic separatist politics. I suggested earlier that she is often guilty of doing everything she accuses her opponents of. I’d like to go a step further and return to that definition she shared of woke; a sociopolitcial ideology characterized by the manipulation of noble goals by tyrannical, left-wing zealots for the purpose of controlling and destroying American society. Are the “woke” the ones doing this or is it the wealthy think-tank policy advisor using Christianity and patriotism in order to instruct her audience to avoid certain ideas because they’re evil and ban them before they can “destroy america.” The woke aren’t the ones trying to destroy and control America, Mull and her ilk are. The call was coming from inside the house all along.

[Shelly]

Awful! Zero stars! The first half of this book reads as if it's a rant that the author thought would make a great book. Like the author, I am a conservative Christian but I was shocked by some of the claims that she made in this book. While I agreed with strong faith in God, family oriented, being neighborly, supporting our country; the rest of the book read like a conspiracy theory. Now that I'm finished reading this I was going to throw it in the trash, but since I'm partially woke, I will recycle it. Here are a few examples from the book below...

Wokeness(noun): a sociopolitical ideology characterized by the manipulation of noble goals..... by tyrannical, left-wing zealots for the purpose of controlling and destroying American society

Conservative Christians are NORMAL...Non-Woke, Ordinary, Rational, Moral, American Leader

NORMAL's cannot allow the woke to use us to their satanic ends

The Woke are climate change czars while NORMAL's are weather realists

"Climate change" is yet another avenue by which the woke choreographs a culture of fear and control. Once you're afraid, you'll do what they say

Fossil fuel technology is the greatest thing ever to happen to mankind

The [climate change crowd's] whole plan is to reduce the population. ...that is why they deny energy to poor people, they're threatening our food supply. They would like to rid the planet of the poor among us.

The woke playbook is: isolate, alienate, divide, and conquer