Wokelandia!

The following program is recorded content created by Truth Network.

If you want to learn more about Truth Network, you can go to truthnetwork.com. I don't think I've ever done a show since I started radio in 2007, where I'm actually suggesting to you something that you should buy somebody for Christmas. So I think this is going to be a first today. And it's a card game. Don't we all love card games? And it's nice and easy.

Three to 10 players takes 20 to 60 minutes. At the same time, incredible worldview training and just cultural training. The game is called Wokelandia.

That's the name of the game. Joseph Backholm is back, senior fellow at the Family Research Council. Although we're not really talking FRC stuff today, Joseph, we're talking about Wokelandia. Welcome back. Merry Christmas. How are you? Merry Christmas to you, Steve. Good to see you. This is hilarious.

I love the idea. This is literally for those of you on Facebook Live and Rumble, you can see it. This is literally a card game boxed and everything. Wokelandia card game.

May the biggest victim win. So let's do the genesis of the card game first. We're actually going to play a little bit.

We're going to get into the card game later during the show. We're also going to do some just general education about wokeness. But how did this whole idea start of Wokelandia?

It's a great idea. Well, we all are observing an increasingly crazy world. And this really started as a text thread with my brother and one of our good friends from childhood. We're just kind of constantly dialoguing about the news of the day and what's going on in the world. And we see, you know, the the oppression Olympics and we know that there's oppression categories and people are, you know, who's at the top of the pyramid today.

And it really started a handful of years ago in Florida because the Muslim community, we know, a protected class was objecting to a bunch of curriculum in the local school district that the LGBT community was putting in there. And we were wondering who's going to win this, right? Because the wokeness is defined in part by the idea that you do not consider the argument being made to determine whether it's a good argument or a bad argument. You just consider who's making the argument. And the most oppressed person is right in this framework. Right.

And so we have two oppressed categories who's going to win this. And out of that, we started wondering if there are rules to wokeness that are discernible, that you could write down like in a game that we can hear. Here's like the constitution of wokeness.

Right. What are the rules? And over many months of conversation, we decided, yes, there are some rules.

Yes, they are discernible. As we began to write them down for ourselves, we realized, hey, we could actually turn this into a game and people can play this because this is the world that we live in. Most of us haven't like organized it in a way that we that we've thought about. But we recognize these rules everywhere we go.

So out of that, we now have a game called Wokelandia. And that's the thing about it is you didn't sit down and just come up with all this stuff out ex nihilo. This is all basically things that you can go out there and find whether you watch libs of TikTok or just pay attention if you go to CNN or whatever. It's out there.

It's all over the place. And so before we get into kind of nuts and bolts of the game, we've got all the different cards I want you to explain it to everybody. And we're going to try to be as virtuous as we can. And we actually do have some virtue cards, but unfortunately for a certain portion of the game, they're actually worthless.

Things like honesty and perseverance and empathy. So we'll talk about that as well. But but why is this such an important topic?

I mean, it's a great idea to use a game platform. You can have fun. You can joke around. But this is actually a pretty serious topic.

It is a serious topic. And the purpose of this is to is to make a serious point, because we all live in this world. And you mentioned that I'm a senior fellow for biblical worldview at Family Research Council is my other life when I'm not making games. That's most of my life.

And I spend a lot of time thinking about the ideas that are floating around in the ether, in the in the ocean that we swim in. There are competing worldviews. Scripture has made that clear.

Right. The worldview that that we are pushing against has changed radically in the last 20 years. The sexual revolution has dramatically changed the way people see each other, the way that we interact with each other and the things that we value. And so this is an attempt to help us discern the the worldview that we're living in so we can recognize, OK, why do they care more about the color of that person's skin than the content of their character? Because that is something that this worldview requires. That truth is no longer determined by whether something is right or wrong, true or false.

It's an old evaluation. It's an old epistemology. Now it's if it makes me happy, then it's true.

If it makes me sad, then it's not true. And we have very different understandings of how we how we get to truth. And so this is an attempt to organize the rules that we all kind of are aware of, but in a in a fashion that we can really wrap our head around. And then the word woke itself, I mean, really only kind of came into the common vernacular just a few years ago. I mean, that's right.

The the concept is old as scripture. But but the word woke really start 2010, 2020, especially with BLM. And then and then, you know, when you look it up, it's basically, hey, you're politically and socially aware. Well, I'm politically and socially aware, but I'm not woke.

So how do you find it? Well, I think I think originally wokeness was intended to be a compliment. Right. When you say that you were woke, I have been awakened to the systemic injustices.

I think that's where it came from. I used to be unaware of since systemic injustice. I am now aware I have awakened to these things that I used to not just didn't realize how racist America is and how racist I am and how racist you are and how racist everybody. I have to acknowledge the fact that because of my skin color, in this case, quite white, that I literally am unable to see it and fully understand it. But I'm at least trying.

Right. Which means I woke up from my ally. I'm an ally, which is an LGBTQ term. But I woke up from my ignorance or anti-racist, which is right. But the ignorance is not an excuse that you're actually never were interested in figuring it out. So you really can't win.

You're morally guilty even if you're ignorant. Right. Yeah. So that's the challenge.

And so this phrase gets thrown all over the place. Being woke. We'll talk about how it's showing up in politics and culture, especially in your school. I talked about that yesterday with a bunch of transgender stories, but we're going to continue to talk about that. We'll dive into Wokelandia, the card game Wokelandia.

You can get it for Christmas in time for Christmas. Wokelandia.com is the website here with Joseph back home. We're going to pick it up there where you're actually going to play a little bit, too. I hope you'll play along. This is Steve Noble on The Steve Noble Show.

We'll be right back. Today, Mark, you know, did you ever see a movie? I don't think Robert Downey Jr. did blackface for the whole movie.

They were making a Vietnam War movie. I have heard about that. Oh, you couldn't.

You couldn't do that. Welcome back. Wokelandia is the name of the game. Wokelandia.com OK. Wokelandia.com a truly woke card game reading from the website. Wokelandia is an educational fun with friends battle between the oppressors and the oppressed.

The first person with 100 oppression points wins. Your identity is the most important thing, of course. Good thing that can change.

There you go. If you have the wrong identity, sorry, white people don't give up. You can still virtue signal your way to victory.

That's called being an ally. But don't say the wrong thing. Microaggression, a truly woke card game. Wokelandia. Joseph back home is here today.

Here's a senior fellow with Family Research Council. But that's not why you're here today. But that that all kind of feeds into it. You and I have been swimming in the cultural conversation for a while now and then just deciding, hey, that maybe there's an actual game here. And the game is fun, but it's also educational. Is that the main goal, would you say?

Because you were playing with young people, too. The goal is completely educational, is to help people become aware of things that they only understand kind of vaguely. Yeah.

And help it be concrete. This is the rules that we have done our very, very best to make the rules of this game the actual rules of wokeness in the world that we're living in. So you'll recognize that the first thing that happens in the game is you get your race card. It's the most important part of your identity in Wokelandia. And it's the only part of your identity that cannot change. Why that is, is is not clearly understood. But those are the rules in Wokelandia.

But there's not there's no danger. So there's not a Rachel Dolezal card where I can be like again to be Rachel Dolezal has been banished from Wokelandia. Why can she not identify as black when Rachel Levine can identify as female? There's no coherent reconciliation of those positions. Those just are. So we have recognized what the rules are in Wokelandia.

We're obviously not trying to defend them. We're trying to explain them. So after you get your racial identity and you get various points based on your racial, which racial identity you have, and we generally understood what those categories are, then you will be assigned. There's a religion category. There's a class category. There's a sexual orientation category. There's a politics category where you can be either woke, conservative, of course, the worst thing you can be in the game.

You can be a Democrat, which isn't quite as good as being woke, but it's certainly better than being conservative. There's gender, male, female, non-binary. Right. And so you have different points for each category, for each specific identity you have within these categories.

And all these things, even though we're chuckling here and there, all of this should be eerily familiar to everybody listening to us. Right. I mean, because being a landlord is, of course, bad because you're exploiting people for their human rights. Housing.

Right. So it's bad to be a landlord. It's good to be a renter.

It's good to be an illegal immigrant in Wokelandia. It's bad to be a big business owner unless, another thing about that, you can be a good, being a big business owner is good once you are woke. If you have the woke identity. Right. So if you're like Tim Cook from Apple, you're good.

If you're Elon Musk, you're increasingly bad. Right. Or if you're Donald Trump. Right. You have the wrong politics. Being a big business owner makes you a bad person.

If you have the right politics, suddenly it's an asset. And that's all reflected in the game. Of course.

Those are the rules of the game. How often do you, and paying attention to the culture, doing what you do with FRC, what I do, how often, how pervasive is this whole notion of Wokelandia in terms of its actual practice in the culture? It's everywhere. You cannot avoid it. And that's what I think will become clear as people learn this, play this.

They are already playing the game of Wokelandia. We understand that there are certain things you cannot say or you will be banished out or darkness. Right. Everybody recognizes that there are heresy trials.

If you do not use preferred pronouns when requested, you will be, again, banished out or darkness. Right. They recognize the rules of Wokelandia already. We know that it's more valuable to be transgender than it is to be male. Being male is inherently suspect.

Being transgender is inherently good in Wokelandia. Right. And so we're just assigning points to it in a way that's more clearly and obviously articulated. But that's exactly how life is in the real world. Just ask the Biden administration. Right. Exactly right. Here's a real world example. And this is what, when you go through all the different cards and we'll get into this, you're going to find things that you could actually go find out happening in the culture, happening in politics, happening in school rooms, happening in the boardrooms.

It's all over the place. But here's Elon Musk two days ago. My pronouns are prosecute and Fauci.

Okay. That's his little tweet. My pronouns are prosecute and Fauci. And of course, all of the transgender people that are engaged in Twitter, and all of the allies are absolutely outraged because he's taking something that's theirs using the pronoun identification and applying it to his now emerging right wing ideology. So they're remarkably offended by that because he just is using somethings out there in the culture and he applies it to a different subject.

But you can't do that in Wokelandia. That's a complete violation, especially for a white heterosexual guy that's got a lot of money. Yeah. You're not supposed to laugh at things that they take deadly serious. And that is a, from a movement standpoint, it's a great way to disarm a bully is to laugh at him.

And that's been studied in, that's happened. Mockery has been a very effective tool of kind of underground subversive movements, specifically in communist regimes for a very long time. They'll post cartoons of the fearless leader they're all supposed to worship.

And that's a way of like agitating this disrespect in acknowledging this underground opposition. Right. Because we're going to laugh at you. Therefore, we're not scared of you when we're laughing at you. And so, but they are highly offended when we laugh at something like their identity and the idea that we can claim and declare our own truth, our own identity. Which is why Wokelandia has declared war on, all out war, total war, on comedy, on comedians. Yeah.

Dave Chappelle is now just the worst. But you can't do that because everything has to be taken so seriously. My friend Forrest on Facebook, does a white male conservative, wealthy military Christian have to start with negative points? Of course. No, that's the worst identity that you have.

I mean, no, there is. And you can be a big business owner, evangelical Christian, white male, right? You cannot win the game. There are ways to change. There are wild cards in the game. And as the game plays, you can change your identity. So if that happens to be the identity that you are dealt, you can end up swapping with the Native American trans lesbian. Right. And then you have suddenly improved your lot in life very quickly.

And so that's that's one of the ways that you win the game. But you can be. And here's another thing, because of the the microaggressions. Right. It's a way to deduct points from your opponents, however, and that's a way of being offended. You do something in the game that I'm offended by.

However, when I am the white Christian evangelical male, I cannot be offended by you if you have more oppression points than I am. Right. Right.

Because it's not allowed in the rules of Oakland. That's why you cannot offend me. That's why you said at the beginning.

That's exactly what happens with the Muslims and this other group, because they're both down the intersectionality. Exactly. Rigo, if you're OK, if you're white, male, cis gendered. All right. You're the worst. You're the oppressor. Correct. Then you come down the scale.

This is what's got to understand out there. So if you have a white male who's homosexual. OK, now you're getting in the right direction.

That's better. But if you're a white, non cis gendered, but if you're a white, I guess, trans or non-binary and you identify, I'm trying to think of another one, but the more subsets you can identify with. So if you're a black female lesbian Muslim, that's like off the charts.

Very good. Because you got all these different minority status. The best thing you can be in this game is trans because it trumps everything. It gives you the most oppression points.

That's the best single identity group that you can be affiliated with these days. Which is pretty true. Right.

Which is why Wolklandia is based on the reality that we're living in. That's the value of it. It's fun. You have to check yourself a little bit because I know my flesh is involved in any game. So we'll talk about that, too, and then we'll actually get into the game. And you can get it on Amazon.

And you can get it on Amazon. So there you can go. You can help Jeff Bezos, which is also probably a problem. We'll be right back. I see it as Jeff Bezos is helping us. Yes. Welcome back.

It's Steve Noble. Wolklandia.com is the website. Wolklandia.com, a truly woke card game.

Wolklandia is an educational. Remember that. Fun with friends battle between the oppressors and the oppressed. The first person with. Oh, I noticed what you did there.

PERSXN. The first. Excellent job, Joseph. The first person with 100 oppression points wins. Your identity is the most important thing, of course. Good thing that can change if you have the wrong identity.

Sorry, white people. Don't give up. You can still virtue signal your way to victory.

That's called being an ally. But don't say the wrong thing. Microaggression.

OK, so there's a lot to learn here and then we're going to get into the game. But what area of life right now in the culture, Joseph, do you think is is Wolklandia? Wokeness is most pervasive, most dangerous. Well, where is it most pervasive? It's hard to pick one area. One example we see this is, you know, who is in leadership of our country right now?

A couple of really amazing stories that kind of illustrate how Wolklandia plays itself out. Sam Brinton is is identifies as non-binary. Right. Whatever that means is President Biden's nuclear waste czar. He's in charge of our nuclear waste program who's been arrested now for apparently being a serial luggage thief twice.

He just kind of rolls down. Well, he's been arrested twice. So how many times has he actually done it? Right. I'm guessing at least dozens.

If you've been caught twice now doing this. Yeah. This is probably a habit this guy had coming across the board. He also has, you know, he has lots of pictures.

You guys know what this guy looks like because he's bald, but he wears his green and red lipstick and he dresses like a woman, high heels, very masculine looking just. And that's the reason he's in head of the nuclear program. Right. And that's that's the Wolklandia part of this.

There are certainly hundreds of people in America more qualified for that job. What does Wolklandia value? Does it does it value competency? Does it value character? Does it value capacity, responsibility, all of those things?

No. The reason he has this job is because he checks the right gender. He checks the right boxes, all those identity categories. Right. We saw this. We just celebrated the election in. Well, we as a country of of the first Gen Z congressman, black guy from Orlando.

Right. Who goes to Washington, D.C. as a newly elected congressman can't rent an apartment because by his own admission, he has really bad credit. So we have now elected a guy and we celebrated roundly the election of a guy who can't pay his own bills. He can't keep his word to his creditors. He doesn't have the impulse control to say, I can't afford that.

Therefore, I'm not going to buy it. Right. But he's now in charge of it right partially of spending trillions of dollars with the federal government. Right. Yes.

And so Wolklandia, that's one way when you say, where is it most pervasive? It's we as voters, we as a country, we value the right things. Now, is it great that he's young and black?

That can be fine if he also has great character and good discipline. I'm going with MLK. So those are the things we should care about. But we don't because we're so distracted by immigrant, lesbian, black, whatever that other category is. Those are the things that matter to us.

Carine Jean-Pierre reminds us of it every day. Right. She's a lesbian, black immigrant. Representation matters. She's not particularly bright.

She's not very good at answering questions, but she has this job because she checks all these categories. Right. That's how Wolklandia operates in the way that we are being governed. Right. Exactly. Right. It requires us to value things that are superficial, superficial, and devalue things that are actually really, really important. Well, Rachel Levine, which you mentioned earlier, I mentioned Rachel Levine yesterday, dealing with the health of the nation who's transgendered himself and is advocating for transgender rights extended down to teenagers, which is why I've talked about that yesterday as well.

Chloe Cole, who had her breasts removed at 15, and now she's de-transitioning. And this is somebody in the White House in the West Wing that's actually advocating for this. And the reason he's got the job is because he checks off a few of those boxes. And so, but what we're touching on there, and then let's get into the game finally, is meritocracy. And meritocracy is a white man's game. If we're just going to look at, now watch, we'll see what happens in the spring with the Supreme Court case dealing with affirmative action. But meritocracy is whoever's the best person gets the job. But that's a distinctly white thing. That's woke-ism. There it is again. But I think it's most dangerous with our kids' generation, your kids, my kids, because they're just being inculcated in it, indoctrinated in it.

They don't even know it. It seems virtuous, which thus virtue signaling, trying to make yourself look good. It seems virtuous to love your neighbor as yourself. We know as Christ followers, that's our call.

But this is Satan that's twisted the whole thing. And critical race theorists will say, and this is written many times in kind of the diversity, equity, and inclusion curriculum, that objectivity, the fact that we evaluate the truthfulness of something, irrespective of who it is that is communicating the idea, that itself is evidence of whiteness that would tell us. So the point there is, do not dispassionately evaluate an idea for truthfulness or lack of truthfulness. You may not do that. That is racist evaluation.

You have to consider the identity of the speaker to determine whether it is true or not, which is a completely unbiblical epistemology. It's one of the things that we're trying to teach in all of this. With the game. Yeah. Wokelandia.com. All right.

How do I get started? I got to get my idea. The first thing that you do is you get... We actually have the game out here.

We have the game. The first thing that you do is you're dealt your race card. Everybody in the card gets a race card. You turn it over immediately. Right.

Oh, dang. Well, I was dealt black. I got white. You are white.

So obviously I am winning already. All right. Here it says on the card, oppressor, right?

With the crossbones, skull and crossbones. Yes. You know who else was white?

Hitler. Oh, great. So you are white. That's a minus 20. Mine is the black race card.

And it says, you're not a slave anymore, but you still have to vote Democrat. All right. There you go.

All right. So your card is a plus 30. Mine is a minus 20. You're minus 20.

For obvious reasons. Of course, the purpose of the game is to get to 100 oppression points. I am now, by virtue of this identity... Way ahead of me. ...50 points ahead of me. Right? 50 points ahead of me.

And so over the course of the game... Well, I'm not going to say that's not fair. In every term, you are going to take one additional identity card. Another identity card. Right. And then you have these action cards and you're going to start with four of those. Okay. Your virtue signals, your microaggressions, or it also allows you to steal identities if you need to. Right?

This is great. Okay. And so you will play first, take another identity card and you will add that because you're not just black, you are black and what? Oh, gender. Gender question mark. You're white. Oh, you're a non-binary. That's good.

I'm non-binary. That's good. So you're white.

Bonus points if you're a newborn also is an X on her X birth certificate. Okay. That's right.

So I'm non-binary, white non-binary. So that's good. So that's plus 30. So now you're in the positive. Now I'm in the positive. Now I have plus 10 points.

Now you actually have oppression points, right? Okay, good. All right. And so then this allows you to virtue signal the other cards that you have. And I would just pick one?

Yeah. Or can I choose one? You can play two cards every turn.

Are there rules? All right. So I'm going to do a virtue signal card. That's plus 10. And that will help you.

I apologize for being white. That's plus 10. So I just put that one down? That's right. And then on the scorecard here, you would, and typically we use coins because you were plus 10 with an identity.

Oh, yeah. I was plus 10. Then you get 10 more. So now you're- Oh, now I'm at plus 20. Plus 20, right? And so I get to play another card? You get to play two cards every turn.

I can't use microaggression. That's a negative. Okay, wild. Cancel culture. Okay. Skip five turns or skip one turn and say- And you would play that on me. Oh, I'd play that. That's how you, on your opponent.

Okay. So you're going to play this on me. I'm going to play that on you. I'm a victim of cancel culture, which tells me that I either have to skip the next five turns, which is of course very problematic. That's bad. Or I can only skip one turn if I say, I'm sorry for what I've done.

I realize now the harm that I've caused to the marginalized, I will do better in the future. So I say that with sincerity, which allows me to skip only one turn. Oh, yeah. So there's only two of us. Oh, that's good.

Well played, Joseph. Yep. Good job. Okay. It's your turn. It isn't because you just canceled me. Oh, I canceled you. So I get another turn. That's right.

That's so good. I canceled you. I go again.

Upper hand. Oh, now I'm gender female. So that's another plus.

Okay. Well, you have- Or does that have to cancel out? In this case, yeah, you can only have one card. Oh, I'm going non-binary. You want to be- Just a female.

It is better than a female. So you just discard that. And then I would pick another action card.

You got to start every turn with four action cards. Okay. So that's another negative one. Let's do this. All right. I got a virtue card.

Okay. Now, the problem with this, the virtue card sounds good to me. It's integrity, but it's worth nothing. Well- What's up with that?

Plus zero. But when you play it, it can be worth a lot because virtue cards, though they are most of the time virtue is worthless in Wokelandia, the moment you become woke, your virtue is suddenly worth points. So if you acquire virtue cards, you just hope that you get the right identity, the political identity.

Yeah. If you pull the woke card a little bit later, suddenly you have this treasure trove of points. Can I throw another wild card at you? Well, you can.

It's hard being the victim of you. I might never actually get to play if there's only two of us. This is tough. All right. I'm going to use that one.

There's the wild card. Oh, well, you can steal my identity. This allows you to steal my identity. Which would be great because your identity- Except the race card. Here's the deal. Oh, I can't- Remember- Oh, that's right. In Wokelandia, race is the one thing that you can't just trade because you want to. I can't all of a sudden be glad. The only way to get a race card is to steal the entire identity.

And it might be early in the game. Now, again, everybody, before you jump to conclusions here, you have to remember the number one point of Wokelandia is just to educate you as to what's going on out there. So you can change all kinds of stuff. You can change your gender. You can be non-binary and get all kinds of points. But if all of a sudden you want to try to, if you're white and you want to pull a Rachel Dolezal and start saying you're black, that's a line you can't cross right now in Wokelandia.

You cannot do that because you're actually violating another rule of being wokeness. Because that is racist. Yeah, that's totally racist. That's called appropriation. You can appropriate gender and it's transgender. You cannot appropriate race. Again, there's no logical distinction between the- Got it.

Those are just what the rules are. Okay. So it's my turn now finally.

Over. Do you get to go? Yeah. Now I think I actually get to go. All right.

And then I would, of course, I'd start by taking an identity card. All right. What'd you get? Well, a class. I am a small business owner, which is of course negative 10. That's got to be a negative. I'm just a poor version of Elon Musk. Wow.

Right? Brutal. As a small business owner. So that's a negative one. So I lose 10 points from my identity for being a small business owner. Wow.

Okay. So in Wokelandia right now, I'm up 20. What are you at?

You're at 20? So we're tired. Correct. I will virtue signal.

My military unit skipped artillery training to work on proper pronoun usage instead. Boom. So I get 10 points for that. That's going to help.

We'll be right back. And your fellow with the Family Research Council, which is how we met. And then of course you had good training from this back at when you used to live in Washington.

That's right. When you went to the college campus and identified yourself as what? What did you identify yourself as?

A six foot five Chinese woman. And then you asked students to react to that proclamation. And how did they handle that? They were very accepting.

Kind. Because you can't possibly disagree with somebody's identity. Correct. And yeah.

You can't. And that's one of the things that this game, you know, it exposes. It's something that we at this point understand that a defining characteristic of Wokeness is the willingness to let each individual define truth for themselves, especially as to their own identity. That I know who I am and what I am and you as a good and decent person just agree. I want the best for you based on your definitions of whatever. But except there's still a line in the sand, because if that same woke person's friend decided that what was best for them was to become a heroin addict, then they're probably going to say, that's not a good. So there's always a line somewhere, but the line's gotten pushed out to such an extreme level.

Short of shooting yourself up with heroin, I'm not going to tell you anything bad for you. Now, hey, I'm not a pedophile. I'm a maps. I'm a minor attracted person because we can't tell somebody there's something wrong with the fact that they happen to be attracted to minors.

I mean, it's so bizarre, which is the whole point of Wokelandia. So we're actually in the middle of playing the game a little bit here on the air. What was your last card?

You got the wild card. Well, I had a virtue signal. Oh, you had a virtue signal. Yes. I was going to get 10 points because my military unit skipped artillery training to work on proper pronoun usage instead. So that is of course very good.

Now that sounds ridiculous, but that's actually what's happening in our military. Totally. Yep. Yeah. Okay. All right. But you can get another one.

You can play another one. Yes. And now. How many points do you have? You're at plus 30.

Correct. I'm at plus 20. Well, yes, I am.

Now I'm at plus 30. And now I'm also going to have a virtue signal because I called for a tax hike on someone else, of course. Oh, so that's. It's also. You get points for that. Yeah.

I mean, for taxing people. Okay. You get. Okay. That makes sense.

As long as it's not you. Right. That makes sense. Okay.

Yeah. So I have to get my two action cards last time. I got to pick an identity card. Pick another identity card. Let's see.

Now right now. You are a non-binary white person. Right.

So non-binary is plus 30, but race is white and that's a minus 20. That's a problem. Okay. Here we go. Class. Okay.

Minus 10. Just another oppressive capitalist pig in training because I'm a small business owner. You are also a small business owner. Both of us are.

So I'm white, small business owner, yet I'm non-binary. Right. So you're basically at zero with those. So that gives me a minus 10. But you have plus 10 because of the virtue signal. Right. Well, I was at plus 20. Now I'm back to plus 10. Trying to get to plus 100 to win. Right.

And right now you're at. All right. So now I get to play two cards. I'm going to play. Oh, these are.

What are all these negative cards? All right. An action. Oh, I can't. Trade all identity cards with one opponent. If you want to do that. Now, again, that's a card you might want to wait till later because there are five.

Small business owner. Which is better. But, but if I have five identity cards, my identity could improve. That could be awesome points for me. You've got to know when to play the card.

I mean, that's a valuable card. All right. So this one.

There's strategy involved. Oh, this. Okay. Here we go.

Microaggression. Do you play this one? Well, the thing is, you would play that on me and then I would lose points. But here's the problem. You have fewer oppression points than I do right now, which means in Wolklandia, you're not allowed to be offended by anything that I do, because at this table, you are the oppressor. Therefore, nothing.

Nothing that I do. Well, you can't get out of that hole. And that's a problem when you play with just two people.

So now what do I do? I can't play the swab. You cannot play a microaggression card.

Oh, that's a total bummer because I really like this one. This microaggression card says I'm offended. You ate at Chick-fil-A.

And to think, Joseph, we used to be friends. We did. Okay.

Until I ate at Chick-fil-A. So I'm stuck. I can't. So you could discard those. Yeah.

I mean, if you can't play, then you discard and discard. Take two more points. Take two more. Do I get to play those new ones or I got to wait till my next turn? Till your next turn.

Yeah. If you can't play. So I am also, I got to take another identity card. In this case, I became a male. I'm already black.

I'm already a small business owner. Now I am male. That, of course, is bad. That's not going to help. That cost me 10 points. 10 points. Right. Okay.

But I'm going to make up for it. Are you guys following the whole point here with Woklandia? Through this virtue signal. Through this virtue signal, my dad voted for Trump and now all my friends know he'll never meet his grandchild. Oh, so that's probably plus points.

Yeah. Cutting off your family from their grandchildren is what you must do if they voted for Trump in Woklandia. And then you publish that on social media and everybody gives you snaps and applauds.

And then I get plus 10 for that. Also, I wish my mom a happy birthing people's day. Oh, instead of birthday, you said happy birthing people's day. No, instead of... Or happy Mother's Day. Sorry. Yeah, there you go. See, I got to sharpen my skill.

Mother is a troublesome term in Woklandia. Grace and mercy on this one, but not next time. Okay.

You'll probably be canceled. Okay, good. All right. So now what do I do? Yeah. Now I get a new identity card.

You take another identity card. Let's see. Class minus 20. Darn.

What's your class? Now I'm a big business owner. Well, that's worse, so you'd probably just discard that one. Oh, that's good. Can I pick another one?

Being a small business owner is better than being a business owner. Can I pick another one? Just one per turn. Oh, rats. Okay. All right.

So I can't play a microaggression card, right? Correct. Because you're still... Ideally, there would be other people at the table who are... Can't do that one.

...less oppressed than you. Okay. All right. Here's this one. Yes.

Wild sneak attack. Steal or trade one identity card from another player. There you go. Can I do that? Yeah, you can.

Oh, so I definitely want... Although... But I'm still... You're still ahead of me in... Are you still ahead of me in identity?

What's that? I mean, your race card is... I mean, you're white and I'm black. There's a... Can I trade that?

Obviously, if you're going to steal an identity card, that's the one that you would want to take. Okay. And that dramatically improves your situation.

So we would do that right now? Yeah. So I give you a minus 20 because now... Now I... That dramatic... And so now I... So I add 30 to my score.

Yes. So I go from plus 10 to plus 40. And then I lose. And I now have just minus 40 plus those, so I'm basically at zero. Because all of a sudden you're white. Right, because now I'm now a white male small business owner, which is in Wokelandia is pretty bad. That's pretty bad. Okay, your turn. We'll do one more turn. I'm trying to virtue you, so go ahead. All right, I got it. Wokelandia.com, by the way.

Wokelandia.com. If you really want to spice up your Christmas holiday, that's probably a good way to do it. I mean, it's spicy. For sure spicy. Spicy in a good way or a bad way depends on who your family is. Yeah, that's true.

But for sure spicy. For some people, they're like, I'm not going to ruin my Christmas. I drew another identity card. But you might ruin your New Year's Day, so don't worry about it.

What'd you get? This also makes me white, there's a reason it's called, this is a male card. I became male.

I already am. There's a reason it's called toxic masculinity, but I am already male, so that changes nothing for me, so I just discard that. Now you've got to play two of your action cards, if you can. Two of my action cards, I actually, all I have is action cards, so in this case, I'm just going to steal one from you and see if I like it better.

You get to pick? One of your cards. Yeah, but you just don't show it to me. Oh, you don't, okay. Then I'll just take one.

All right, you get that one. And this is an action card. And this is good. And this is good, because- You're going to play that, aren't you? No, I actually can't now, because you are more oppressed than I am when you change my identity.

So I can no longer play these. I have that problem. You can't use that against me. That's good. I like that.

Yes. But I am. I can play this wild card, and I'm going to steal your gender. Oh, you're stealing- I'm going to become non-binary.

Oh, no. I was male, now I'm non-binary. So I'm losing a plus 30. So that's helpful. And I get a minus 10. So that takes me back to now I'm plus 40.

All right, so at this point you're ahead, because you're 40 and I'm 30. Yeah. All right.

So that's the deal. What's your hope with the game? Thanks for playing for a while.

Oh, no, thank you. My hope with the game is that, I mean, it is entertaining, but what we found is that people play this- Entertaining in a sad way. Light bulbs start to go on, because once you learn the rules of the card game, you recognize it in your life.

Has everybody seen and encountered it run up against the rules of Wolklandia? We've internalized them to some degree, but for the most part, it's unconscious. We're taking the unspoken rules and we're making them written rules that you have to learn to play this game.

And as soon as you learn those, you're just like, yes, this is actually the way I'm living. This is kind of messed up. Yeah, this is all over the place.

So for us as Christ followers, Joseph Backholm and Steve Noble, what's our response to living in Wolklandia in the 21st century? Well, the first part of this is recognizing that this is inherently a worldview, right? It's an epistemology. It places people's value in the wrong things.

We've discussed that earlier. The heart of the gospel is that the most important thing about you and me and everybody we ever encounter is not our race, is not our sexual orientation, is not our gender. It's the fact that we're made in the image of God. And because of that, the thing that is most important about you and me and every other person we'll ever encounter, we have in common and in Wolklandia, we're breaking ourselves.

The most important thing about me, depending on who you ask, is either my race, maybe my sexual orientation. But what that does is when my identity is rooted in those things or my gender, it makes me different than other people. The people that I encounter, they could be an other.

They could be somebody I have to be suspicious of, right? So wokeness, Wolklandia, critical theory is also a big part of this, and we haven't really mentioned that, but that's what is inherent in all of this. It's inherently divisive. The gospel comes in and it's inherently uniting, right?

Neither Jew nor Greek nor slave nor free, rich, poor, man, woman. We're all created in the image of God. We're all equally sinners. We're all equally in need of Jesus, but Jesus is equally available.

Which is why the gospel is the great unifier, because all of a sudden, everybody that is transformed by the power of the gospel is playing off the same sheet of music. We don't value each other based on all these cards. We value each other based purely on the fact that you're made in God's image, the Imago Dei, which gives you all the value you'll ever need, which is why Jesus chose to die on a cross for you. And as we set our mind on things above, not the things of earth, right?

We are male, female, black, white. I mean, we have perfect, we have occupations, right? And God gives us gifts and opportunities and all of those things to use for his glory and for his purposes.

But those are not where identity is rooted, and if our minds and our affections get distracted by those things, it gets distracted from the things that are ultimately more important and in many cases, pulls our heart and our affections to damnation, and that's really what we want to avoid. Yeah. I want an interesting opportunity to use something like Wokelandia to have a very easy on-ramp to the gospel.

That's right. Because the gospel is the solution for Wokelandia. It's the truth versus the lie, and what a great opportunity to utilize that in a way to have some laughs.

You probably need to be careful about who you're playing with. But it is the truth, okay? We need to deal with the truth as people of truth. Joseph, thanks for being here today. Merry Christmas, buddy. My pleasure.

Merry Christmas. Wokelandia.com is the website. Wokelandia.com. I put up the links today on Facebook Live, so check that out. This is Steve Noble on The Steve Noble Show. God willing, I'll talk to you again real soon, and like my dad always used to say, ever forward.