Regarding footnote 4, I have a close family member who fits the latter group well. He worked for a non-profit, and as one of the few white men on the staff, the woke scolds made his work life more and more miserable, and then they finally got him fired for "misconduct" that was much more about politics than anything. As time went on, he got angrier and angrier, and eventually anti-woke became basically the only thing he cared about. A lifelong Democrat, he ended up voting for Trump. I tried to tell him that was a big mistake, since the Trump wasn't going to fix his problems, and would instead create much larger problems for the country, but he didn't listen.
So, in a way, the far left turned him into a Trumpist. But, he also had a choice. He could have opposed the far left while still voting for Harris (this is where I am on the political spectrum). And ultimately, he owns his choice. Still, I really wish his co-workers hadn't treated him like shit for years.
My God, this is one of the best articles I've ever read. I can't say enough about it, so I'm not sure I should even try or I'll be here all night.
Suffice it to say, I was one of the anti-Trump moderate liberals who dove into the "anti-woke" movement after Trump was defeated in 2020, newly energized by a desire to be one of the liberal analogs to the brave conservatives that took on MAGA and helped us kick Trump out of the White House. I wanted to clean up our side, too.
I detached from this movement for two reasons. For one, the ills of wokeness legitimately began to subside after around sometime in 2022 or so, after reaching peak absurdity in 2020 or 2021. People got sick of it, and largely began to recover from the pandemic-induced delirium and the moral panic triggered by the first Trump administration and the tragic death of George Floyd. The fever broke.
(Granted, we seemed to have a resurgence of problematic "woke" behavior on college campuses after October 7th. However that is arguably a separate issue which has bedeviled leftists for a long time, going back as far as Jesse Jackson being wooed by the PLO, and even the Islamic Revolution in 1979 Iran. And in any case this turned out to be mostly—big surprise—priveleged rich kids on a few elite campuses.)
But the other reason is that I became utterly disgusted by the pro-Trumpist audience that many of these anti-wokes were curating. Some of these people became the biggest purveyors of Trump-Russia denialism (how's that looking right about now?) and as you said, the idea that opposing wokeness eclipsed any and all concerns about what was happening on the American right was becoming disturbingly commonplace.
That something which was a purely cultural matter, addressible in myriad ways, was worth risking locking us in for another four years with an unimpeachable President who had already proven himself to be a traitor to the American republic and the free world in general, has to represent the most brain-dead lack of good judgement I have ever witnessed. It's a perfect example of the dangers of breathing your own fumes in a closed space for too long.
Not to mention, knowing that the transgender movement, with whatever problematic issues it might legitimately represent, played a big part in this, when transgendered people are around .6% of the population (in fact more like .2% when you define the term as we traditionally understand it), is particularly depressing. I'm not sure if the fact that—at least by one poll—Americans *perceive* the percentage of transgendered people to be around 21% (!!!) makes that better or worse.
I think the part of your article that really made me swoon with gratitude, though, was your pointing out that moderate liberals largely bit their tongues not because they weren't troubled by the excesses of wokeness, but because that concern paled in comparison to the dangers of Trump. That's why people like me started supporting many of the podcasters and Substackers branded "heterodox" *after* Trump had been dealt with (for the moment), because I assumed that these were mostly people who wouldn't fall victim to much of the anti-anti-Trump apologia out there. Many of them didn't, but unfortunately most of them seemed to.
Here I thought we were in this whole defending-liberalism thing together. That we all saw that extremism only begets more extremism, and that we needed to keep a level head to defend against threats from either side of the political spectrum. And yet the more these people started to dismissively wave away the threat of Trumpism, the more people like me started pulling my hair out and waving my arms around in disbelief, which just made it easier to brand *my* ilk as the hair-on-fire lunatics.
And then it was back to accusing people of TDS, while the same people were losing their simple minds over the bogus "Twitter Files" non-scandal. Because lord knows there can be no first Amendment rights with social media companies *voluntarily* receiving guidance from the federal government on moderation policies to deal with anti-vaxxers and hydrochloroquine hucksters in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.
Needless to say, I feel betrayed.
You and I probably differ on a few things—you're a self-professed libertarian and I'm a pro-free-trade welfare-state advocate who wants to substantially raise taxes on the wealthy. I of course support people's personal liberties, but I am too collectivist in my thinking to call myself a libertarian.
Nonetheless, I happily subscribed to your feed after reading this, and I already have way too many subscriptions. Thank you *so so much* for being one of the sane and reasonable people who have their priorities straight, and for being able to express it clearly, eloquently, and convincingly in your writing.
Well, look at that—I ended up writing a novel after all. As if I hadn't told myself this was going to happen. Oh well.
Well damn, that's one of the nicest comments I've got on here. Thanks for the support and for resisting groupthink to try and stick up for the right ideas at the right times, which is hard and rare these days.
Of course, the Sean Hannity's of the world are much more directly responsible for the outrages of Trump's ascension than the irritating, overly-woke scolds, and deserve more blame. But moral responsibility, much like yammering on Substack and Twitter, has limited real-world utility in politics. The most important task we face in this democracy is how to persuade whatever slice of the electorate that is persuadable to turn away from the dark side. To me, it seems incontrovertible that (1) at least some Democrats went too far on several issues, including but limited to transgenderism, identity politics, immigration and "soft-on-crime-ism," (2) few, if any, Democrats of any stature publicly expressed disagreement, and (3) this enabled morally reprehensible scoundrels like Tucker Carlson to exaggerate, distort and shamelessly demagogue these issues, clearly with substantial success at the ballot box. Therefore, while we can hope that Trump's, Musk's and others' despicable conduct will be enough to convince voters that these woke issues were a sideshow, in order to improve our chances of winning, we still need to continue to pressure the overly woke to tone it down, and for responsible Democrats to demonstrate through clear words and actions that they do not agree with the loudest, most extreme and whiniest among us, as Seth Moulton and Buttigieg have started to do.
The Dems I associate with regarded the more self-righteous woke worldviews as silly. There was overreach (e.g. firing university professors), but, as a percent of the American population, the damage was small
Most of woke addressed real world issues of basic respect for humanity
Consider DEIA. I am disabled and I appreciate ramps to get over the curb and self opening doors.
I don’t want the country to go back to the “meritocracy” that I remember from the 1950’s. Back then, Black people couldn’t get decent jobs in unions. Merit came down to being a White, abled, male. Except not Hungarian or Polish men who were considered stupid
Nor do I want women to be sexually harassed in the workplace like they were in the good old days
Yeah, some of the DEI training I sat through was cringeworthy. However ham-handed it may have been, it drew a line in the sand for what was acceptable behavior. It’s hard to have a productive workforce if some employees find a noose in their locker
On your other piece, I wrote that I also chose to blunt my criticism of the Left, but now that I think about it that wasn't true. I constantly complained that Democrats were taking things way too far. At the time, I remember that the usual answer was, "why are you complaining about us when the right is so much worse?" My response was that I had given up on anyone in my former party being persuadable. I criticized the Left because I wanted the only game in town to stay that way. We complain about liberals because we no longer consider Republicans to be responsive to reason. Hanania clearly understands that, but he voted for Trump anyway.
This was my take and remains that way. You simply can't reason with people strongly motivated by amygdala activation, they are not subject to reason. All you can do is hope to rein in the excesses of your own side and those still interested in at least some reason, and hope that you prevent pushing more people in the middle or leaning, away.
Thank you. Great piece. I somewhat disagree with your ultimate conclusion, because I think we DID have an obligation to shut down more of the woke nonsense and make it known generally there was widespread disapproval, but I appreciate your reasoning. Yes, MAGA was and is far worse and more dangerous. But why hand them easy weapons and grievances? You KNOW they get excited about emotional culture war grievances, so why provide ammunition? At least make it harder for them, to the extent possible. My view on this probably aligned closest with Bill Maher, and he took a lot of shit for criticizing his own side too much, but I think it would've been effective if more people had followed that lead.
I’m not responsible for my fellow adult Americans to make correct decisions for themselves. What a weird idea? Almost an abusive idea of ‘you made me hurt myself’?
It's funny how every time I run into a group of liberals doing something they suddenly stop being liberals and start becoming secret double agents for some clandestine organization.
Yet they can sit there in full view of the public for years and never does a Liberal show up and go "Wait a minute... these aren't real Liberals!"
You are conflating the right into a single group that includes MAGA, normie Republicans, and a wide swath of voters without strong political or ideological affiliations. You are correct that MAGA is wholly responsible for their own unhinged attitudes. But Trump did not win because he was a broadly popular figure. He won because that broader group who did not like Trump and MAGA very much decided that they disliked the Democratic-party brand less than they disliked MAGA and Trump. And the left were very particular about whom they accepted as their allies, on constant alert for Crypto-Nazis (often imagining people were Nazis when they were not Nazis).
First, you're right that I was vague about who on the right went off the deep end. There are varying levels of crazy and not everyone there is equally crazy. But in my view, voting for Trump qualifies as taking the plunge, even if it's only because you saw him as the lesser of two evils. That choice reflects some combination of warped priorities and broken reasoning, which are now producing horrible consequences, for which Trump voters may be blamed whether or not they were sometimes unfairly called Nazis.
Second, you are guilty of what you accuse. Was "the left" very particular about allies, and constantly calling everyone a Nazi? Or were a handful of vocal activists on social media doing that, while the actual Democratic candidate gladly reached out to everyone from Dick Cheney to Jeff Flake? That's the asymmetry I'm talking about: one side's crazy is on the fringe, while the other side's crazy is now President of the United States.
There is no GOOD reason for voting for Trump. Nor do I accept the attitude that the “customer is always right,” whether that concerns sales of goods and services or it concerns politics. But understanding people’s attitudes is a critical part of the business of politics and the Democrats have failed terribly at this over the last three presidential cycles. And Nazis for progressives play an analogous role as urban crime for conservative suburbanites. And Blues did not except reasonable warnings about the possibility of losing shares of hispanic and black voters on social issues. There is plenty that Blue to need to reflect on to keep their own house in order. I voted Blue this time. You are close to losing me, too. *Addendum: I should note that YOU are not a problem. These discussions are helpful.
I just think that topic was well worn during the lame duck period, and that it's a big, telling jump to go from that to now interpreting each new story of Trump's wrongdoings with "ugh, see what the left did?" like certain Substack circles are doing. And that it's a double standard to blame the left for (for example) calling people Nazis too liberally, but not Elon for trolling them with a Nazi salute, and many on the right behaving in obviously racist ways. The right's behavior habitually excused by the left's provocation, but never in reverse, so they are grading the two sides on a different curve.
Not sure what you mean. Epistemology is a whole complex field of philosophy and I'm not sure why I my guess at an abstract word puzzle makes me more or less serious.
Yeah, I am in a bubble alright. I live in Seattle and run into relativists and progressives all the damn time. I really need more poorly worded activist lingo thrown in my face.
1. Free speech is good, not just as a legal requirement but as a social value. Free association is part of that and it's fine to block people or launch boycotts or pick the social media with your preferred content moderation policies. But there's a difference between banning slurs on social media (fine) and shouting down speakers you don't like in person (bad) or overbroad definitions of misinformation (dangerous). And cancel culture went overboard in ways that had an unhealthy chilling effect on civic discourse. It made people constantly walk on eggshells and made our society more anxious and worse. There are valid debates to be had on a lot of these issues and we need the ability to have them freely without weaponized group shaming on anyone who arguably did an -ism.
2. Much of what woke emphasizes seems like performative efforts to show how progressive and inclusive the speaker is, even if trivial or impractical at scale, rather than substantive efforts to materially help disadvantaged people. Latinx. Lengthening the acronym to LGBTQIAXYZ++. Asking obviously cis people what their preferred pronouns are. Concern about manspreading. Etc.
3. White men do not need to adopt a general tone of meek, apologetic deference in all discussions about race and gender. They don't always need to follow the lead of women and people of color. I am not *only* here to listen and learn, but to contribute and participate in the discussion. Sometimes women and people of color are wrong and yes, I do get to say so.
4. Conflating subjective value judgments with objective science - like the CDC infusing it's recommendations for vaccine rollout with considerations of equity, which resulted in slower rollouts and more death. Similarly, centering egalitarian concerns in everything as opposed to many competing values like efficiency, liberty, meritocracy or rival conceptions of justice, etc.
5. Begging unsettled questions, or playing semantic word games on areas where the left has been talking to itself (ex: "racism is prejudice + power, so black people can't be racist") and then trying to "educate" people who simply disagree or are using a common-parlance definition that's not objectively worse.
I could go on. Maybe that'll be a future post. You're right, though, that most of these issues are more nuisances than serious threats, whereas Trump is actually evil and dangerous and a vastly bigger problem.
My comment was sarcastic, because I don't know who are you trying to convince . Trying to get conservatives to care about veganism using the suffering of animals is like trying to persuade Trump to give money by showing him pictures of dead children . Maga won't trust you and don't care. Wokeness is illiberal bullying and enables corruption to undermine meritocracy. And it has been rising for 20 years, for a lot of people the only thing they can do against it is vote for Trump of AFD. Trump and Musk have barely been part of the discourse in contrast. It shouldn't be political even, people like you politicize it when you try to silence people because of the consequences, like media refusing to tell the race of crime perpetrators unless they are white because it might increase racism(and actually ending up increasing it instead). There are reasonable people who are anti woke and still vote leftist parties,idk why it has to be a sacred cow that noone can criticise without tarnishing their reputation, lying to people constantly radicalizes them.
Yes they are and they are responsible for following them along the way.
Liberalism is right-wing ideology.
Youre pro-capitalism, pro-imperialism and anti-communist. Your political candidates and representatives support the same wars and the same police state that the “conservatives” do,you even have picked up their immigration and austerity policies for yourselves.
Regarding footnote 4, I have a close family member who fits the latter group well. He worked for a non-profit, and as one of the few white men on the staff, the woke scolds made his work life more and more miserable, and then they finally got him fired for "misconduct" that was much more about politics than anything. As time went on, he got angrier and angrier, and eventually anti-woke became basically the only thing he cared about. A lifelong Democrat, he ended up voting for Trump. I tried to tell him that was a big mistake, since the Trump wasn't going to fix his problems, and would instead create much larger problems for the country, but he didn't listen.
So, in a way, the far left turned him into a Trumpist. But, he also had a choice. He could have opposed the far left while still voting for Harris (this is where I am on the political spectrum). And ultimately, he owns his choice. Still, I really wish his co-workers hadn't treated him like shit for years.
My God, this is one of the best articles I've ever read. I can't say enough about it, so I'm not sure I should even try or I'll be here all night.
Suffice it to say, I was one of the anti-Trump moderate liberals who dove into the "anti-woke" movement after Trump was defeated in 2020, newly energized by a desire to be one of the liberal analogs to the brave conservatives that took on MAGA and helped us kick Trump out of the White House. I wanted to clean up our side, too.
I detached from this movement for two reasons. For one, the ills of wokeness legitimately began to subside after around sometime in 2022 or so, after reaching peak absurdity in 2020 or 2021. People got sick of it, and largely began to recover from the pandemic-induced delirium and the moral panic triggered by the first Trump administration and the tragic death of George Floyd. The fever broke.
(Granted, we seemed to have a resurgence of problematic "woke" behavior on college campuses after October 7th. However that is arguably a separate issue which has bedeviled leftists for a long time, going back as far as Jesse Jackson being wooed by the PLO, and even the Islamic Revolution in 1979 Iran. And in any case this turned out to be mostly—big surprise—priveleged rich kids on a few elite campuses.)
But the other reason is that I became utterly disgusted by the pro-Trumpist audience that many of these anti-wokes were curating. Some of these people became the biggest purveyors of Trump-Russia denialism (how's that looking right about now?) and as you said, the idea that opposing wokeness eclipsed any and all concerns about what was happening on the American right was becoming disturbingly commonplace.
That something which was a purely cultural matter, addressible in myriad ways, was worth risking locking us in for another four years with an unimpeachable President who had already proven himself to be a traitor to the American republic and the free world in general, has to represent the most brain-dead lack of good judgement I have ever witnessed. It's a perfect example of the dangers of breathing your own fumes in a closed space for too long.
Not to mention, knowing that the transgender movement, with whatever problematic issues it might legitimately represent, played a big part in this, when transgendered people are around .6% of the population (in fact more like .2% when you define the term as we traditionally understand it), is particularly depressing. I'm not sure if the fact that—at least by one poll—Americans *perceive* the percentage of transgendered people to be around 21% (!!!) makes that better or worse.
I think the part of your article that really made me swoon with gratitude, though, was your pointing out that moderate liberals largely bit their tongues not because they weren't troubled by the excesses of wokeness, but because that concern paled in comparison to the dangers of Trump. That's why people like me started supporting many of the podcasters and Substackers branded "heterodox" *after* Trump had been dealt with (for the moment), because I assumed that these were mostly people who wouldn't fall victim to much of the anti-anti-Trump apologia out there. Many of them didn't, but unfortunately most of them seemed to.
Here I thought we were in this whole defending-liberalism thing together. That we all saw that extremism only begets more extremism, and that we needed to keep a level head to defend against threats from either side of the political spectrum. And yet the more these people started to dismissively wave away the threat of Trumpism, the more people like me started pulling my hair out and waving my arms around in disbelief, which just made it easier to brand *my* ilk as the hair-on-fire lunatics.
And then it was back to accusing people of TDS, while the same people were losing their simple minds over the bogus "Twitter Files" non-scandal. Because lord knows there can be no first Amendment rights with social media companies *voluntarily* receiving guidance from the federal government on moderation policies to deal with anti-vaxxers and hydrochloroquine hucksters in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.
Needless to say, I feel betrayed.
You and I probably differ on a few things—you're a self-professed libertarian and I'm a pro-free-trade welfare-state advocate who wants to substantially raise taxes on the wealthy. I of course support people's personal liberties, but I am too collectivist in my thinking to call myself a libertarian.
Nonetheless, I happily subscribed to your feed after reading this, and I already have way too many subscriptions. Thank you *so so much* for being one of the sane and reasonable people who have their priorities straight, and for being able to express it clearly, eloquently, and convincingly in your writing.
Well, look at that—I ended up writing a novel after all. As if I hadn't told myself this was going to happen. Oh well.
Gotta go restack this now.
Well damn, that's one of the nicest comments I've got on here. Thanks for the support and for resisting groupthink to try and stick up for the right ideas at the right times, which is hard and rare these days.
Of course, the Sean Hannity's of the world are much more directly responsible for the outrages of Trump's ascension than the irritating, overly-woke scolds, and deserve more blame. But moral responsibility, much like yammering on Substack and Twitter, has limited real-world utility in politics. The most important task we face in this democracy is how to persuade whatever slice of the electorate that is persuadable to turn away from the dark side. To me, it seems incontrovertible that (1) at least some Democrats went too far on several issues, including but limited to transgenderism, identity politics, immigration and "soft-on-crime-ism," (2) few, if any, Democrats of any stature publicly expressed disagreement, and (3) this enabled morally reprehensible scoundrels like Tucker Carlson to exaggerate, distort and shamelessly demagogue these issues, clearly with substantial success at the ballot box. Therefore, while we can hope that Trump's, Musk's and others' despicable conduct will be enough to convince voters that these woke issues were a sideshow, in order to improve our chances of winning, we still need to continue to pressure the overly woke to tone it down, and for responsible Democrats to demonstrate through clear words and actions that they do not agree with the loudest, most extreme and whiniest among us, as Seth Moulton and Buttigieg have started to do.
The Dems I associate with regarded the more self-righteous woke worldviews as silly. There was overreach (e.g. firing university professors), but, as a percent of the American population, the damage was small
Most of woke addressed real world issues of basic respect for humanity
Consider DEIA. I am disabled and I appreciate ramps to get over the curb and self opening doors.
I don’t want the country to go back to the “meritocracy” that I remember from the 1950’s. Back then, Black people couldn’t get decent jobs in unions. Merit came down to being a White, abled, male. Except not Hungarian or Polish men who were considered stupid
Nor do I want women to be sexually harassed in the workplace like they were in the good old days
Yeah, some of the DEI training I sat through was cringeworthy. However ham-handed it may have been, it drew a line in the sand for what was acceptable behavior. It’s hard to have a productive workforce if some employees find a noose in their locker
Agreed completely. You may like part 2 of my series on DEI here: https://open.substack.com/pub/exasperatedalien/p/a-level-playing-field-is-the-equality?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=ksl93
FWIW RE your footnote #2, I like to refer to myself as a “con-prog”.
The most confusing possible label, just to throw em for a loop :)
On your other piece, I wrote that I also chose to blunt my criticism of the Left, but now that I think about it that wasn't true. I constantly complained that Democrats were taking things way too far. At the time, I remember that the usual answer was, "why are you complaining about us when the right is so much worse?" My response was that I had given up on anyone in my former party being persuadable. I criticized the Left because I wanted the only game in town to stay that way. We complain about liberals because we no longer consider Republicans to be responsive to reason. Hanania clearly understands that, but he voted for Trump anyway.
This was my take and remains that way. You simply can't reason with people strongly motivated by amygdala activation, they are not subject to reason. All you can do is hope to rein in the excesses of your own side and those still interested in at least some reason, and hope that you prevent pushing more people in the middle or leaning, away.
Thank you. Great piece. I somewhat disagree with your ultimate conclusion, because I think we DID have an obligation to shut down more of the woke nonsense and make it known generally there was widespread disapproval, but I appreciate your reasoning. Yes, MAGA was and is far worse and more dangerous. But why hand them easy weapons and grievances? You KNOW they get excited about emotional culture war grievances, so why provide ammunition? At least make it harder for them, to the extent possible. My view on this probably aligned closest with Bill Maher, and he took a lot of shit for criticizing his own side too much, but I think it would've been effective if more people had followed that lead.
I’m not responsible for my fellow adult Americans to make correct decisions for themselves. What a weird idea? Almost an abusive idea of ‘you made me hurt myself’?
Fantastic read. I’ve given up trying to debate MAGAts - I can explain something to them, but I can’t help them understand it.
How do you do a standing ovation on Substack? Brilliant piece!
“Liberals have investigated themselves and have decided that they are not to blame… again.”
More like libertarians refereeing a fight between two groups that broadly don't share their values.
It's funny how every time I run into a group of liberals doing something they suddenly stop being liberals and start becoming secret double agents for some clandestine organization.
Yet they can sit there in full view of the public for years and never does a Liberal show up and go "Wait a minute... these aren't real Liberals!"
You are conflating the right into a single group that includes MAGA, normie Republicans, and a wide swath of voters without strong political or ideological affiliations. You are correct that MAGA is wholly responsible for their own unhinged attitudes. But Trump did not win because he was a broadly popular figure. He won because that broader group who did not like Trump and MAGA very much decided that they disliked the Democratic-party brand less than they disliked MAGA and Trump. And the left were very particular about whom they accepted as their allies, on constant alert for Crypto-Nazis (often imagining people were Nazis when they were not Nazis).
First, you're right that I was vague about who on the right went off the deep end. There are varying levels of crazy and not everyone there is equally crazy. But in my view, voting for Trump qualifies as taking the plunge, even if it's only because you saw him as the lesser of two evils. That choice reflects some combination of warped priorities and broken reasoning, which are now producing horrible consequences, for which Trump voters may be blamed whether or not they were sometimes unfairly called Nazis.
Second, you are guilty of what you accuse. Was "the left" very particular about allies, and constantly calling everyone a Nazi? Or were a handful of vocal activists on social media doing that, while the actual Democratic candidate gladly reached out to everyone from Dick Cheney to Jeff Flake? That's the asymmetry I'm talking about: one side's crazy is on the fringe, while the other side's crazy is now President of the United States.
There is no GOOD reason for voting for Trump. Nor do I accept the attitude that the “customer is always right,” whether that concerns sales of goods and services or it concerns politics. But understanding people’s attitudes is a critical part of the business of politics and the Democrats have failed terribly at this over the last three presidential cycles. And Nazis for progressives play an analogous role as urban crime for conservative suburbanites. And Blues did not except reasonable warnings about the possibility of losing shares of hispanic and black voters on social issues. There is plenty that Blue to need to reflect on to keep their own house in order. I voted Blue this time. You are close to losing me, too. *Addendum: I should note that YOU are not a problem. These discussions are helpful.
I agree the left needs to strategically introspect about what went wrong in the election, including what about them is offputting to so many people. I wrote about that at greater length here: https://exasperatedalien.substack.com/p/move-past-the-progressive-v-moderate
I just think that topic was well worn during the lame duck period, and that it's a big, telling jump to go from that to now interpreting each new story of Trump's wrongdoings with "ugh, see what the left did?" like certain Substack circles are doing. And that it's a double standard to blame the left for (for example) calling people Nazis too liberally, but not Elon for trolling them with a Nazi salute, and many on the right behaving in obviously racist ways. The right's behavior habitually excused by the left's provocation, but never in reverse, so they are grading the two sides on a different curve.
What is truth? Answer that and then I will know if you’re serious.
Not sure what you mean. Epistemology is a whole complex field of philosophy and I'm not sure why I my guess at an abstract word puzzle makes me more or less serious.
You are not serious. Good bye.
Truly I'm devastated. What a loss. Enjoy your bubble.
Yeah, I am in a bubble alright. I live in Seattle and run into relativists and progressives all the damn time. I really need more poorly worded activist lingo thrown in my face.
I'm not a relativist just because I don't know what magic words you're looking for in response to "what is truth?"
Wokeness isn't a problem and we should do nothing about it because Trump is evil,but why are moderates annoyed by me
1. Free speech is good, not just as a legal requirement but as a social value. Free association is part of that and it's fine to block people or launch boycotts or pick the social media with your preferred content moderation policies. But there's a difference between banning slurs on social media (fine) and shouting down speakers you don't like in person (bad) or overbroad definitions of misinformation (dangerous). And cancel culture went overboard in ways that had an unhealthy chilling effect on civic discourse. It made people constantly walk on eggshells and made our society more anxious and worse. There are valid debates to be had on a lot of these issues and we need the ability to have them freely without weaponized group shaming on anyone who arguably did an -ism.
2. Much of what woke emphasizes seems like performative efforts to show how progressive and inclusive the speaker is, even if trivial or impractical at scale, rather than substantive efforts to materially help disadvantaged people. Latinx. Lengthening the acronym to LGBTQIAXYZ++. Asking obviously cis people what their preferred pronouns are. Concern about manspreading. Etc.
3. White men do not need to adopt a general tone of meek, apologetic deference in all discussions about race and gender. They don't always need to follow the lead of women and people of color. I am not *only* here to listen and learn, but to contribute and participate in the discussion. Sometimes women and people of color are wrong and yes, I do get to say so.
4. Conflating subjective value judgments with objective science - like the CDC infusing it's recommendations for vaccine rollout with considerations of equity, which resulted in slower rollouts and more death. Similarly, centering egalitarian concerns in everything as opposed to many competing values like efficiency, liberty, meritocracy or rival conceptions of justice, etc.
5. Begging unsettled questions, or playing semantic word games on areas where the left has been talking to itself (ex: "racism is prejudice + power, so black people can't be racist") and then trying to "educate" people who simply disagree or are using a common-parlance definition that's not objectively worse.
I could go on. Maybe that'll be a future post. You're right, though, that most of these issues are more nuisances than serious threats, whereas Trump is actually evil and dangerous and a vastly bigger problem.
My comment was sarcastic, because I don't know who are you trying to convince . Trying to get conservatives to care about veganism using the suffering of animals is like trying to persuade Trump to give money by showing him pictures of dead children . Maga won't trust you and don't care. Wokeness is illiberal bullying and enables corruption to undermine meritocracy. And it has been rising for 20 years, for a lot of people the only thing they can do against it is vote for Trump of AFD. Trump and Musk have barely been part of the discourse in contrast. It shouldn't be political even, people like you politicize it when you try to silence people because of the consequences, like media refusing to tell the race of crime perpetrators unless they are white because it might increase racism(and actually ending up increasing it instead). There are reasonable people who are anti woke and still vote leftist parties,idk why it has to be a sacred cow that noone can criticise without tarnishing their reputation, lying to people constantly radicalizes them.
Yes they are and they are responsible for following them along the way.
Liberalism is right-wing ideology.
Youre pro-capitalism, pro-imperialism and anti-communist. Your political candidates and representatives support the same wars and the same police state that the “conservatives” do,you even have picked up their immigration and austerity policies for yourselves.
No. Inbred hate and racism is.