Interesting as always! It occurs to be listening to this discussion, and maintaining the frame of “religion” on “wokeness”: that John and Glenn are trying to be reformers of the faith. Glenn, who disagrees with much of the “teachings,” is looking to change “dogma” and John, who mostly agrees with the “teachings” in general, is trying to reduce the fundamentalist fervor with which people are practicing the “faith.”
The anti-Woke movement seems very willing to pretend that many of the people on the anti-Woke side were willing to go along with an attempted coup. In measuring dangers to society, how can a group that is willing to suppress votes, terrorize immigrants by shipping them to cold climates, erecting barbed wire barriers, falsify historical facts, be ignored. The anti- Woke lose battles because they ignore the excesses happening in their own ranks.
DeSantis ran on an anti-Woke platform and has become a joke. Children in Florida are using online sources to overcome the biased history presented in Florida by sources like Prager U. Schools on Little Rock are defying an attempt by the Governor of Arkansas to ban AP African American history. People are fighting back. The anti-Woke are giving a moral victory to the Woke. The anti-Woke are now associated with a parent who had a child removed from a classroom because the parent was upset about a poster of an interracial couple holding hand in a classroom. The parent, seeing the poster which displayed only the hands of the couple, said the picture was indoctrination. The anti-Woke are authoritarians who will lose.
The University of North Carolina blocked Hannah-Nikole Jones from a teaching position. This was followed by Texas A&M refusing to honor a signed contract with a Black professor hired to develop a journalism department. The Board of Regents did not want the professor approved because they felt she endorsed DEI. The citizens of Texas had to pay the journalism professor $1 M to prevent a lawsuit. DeSantis has apparently destroyed one Florida college with professors and students fleeing the institution. The scale of damage done by the anti-Woke far exceeds the faults of the so-called Woke.
First off, I just listened to Coleman Hughes’ latest podcast on “the myth of left and right”. Highly recommend. You may not agree, but it is thought provoking.
But on to your comment, I think we are living through a time where there is a profound clash of visions of America. In the past, there was a culture clash, but mostly things were pretty live and let live. Now the power of government (and corporations) is being used to mandate those values, so it feels more desperate. I agree with you about the wrongs of todays conservative governors, like DeSantis, but I think you are wrong about anti-woke being worse. I think if you have a left leaning media diet you just never hear the outrageous stuff on the left.
For example, on the left (or the “woke”) youth gender transitions are a civil rights issue; there is no doubt as to the effectiveness of the medical treatment, no cultural implications, no trade offs. The media will tell you all day about the transphobia of not allowing “life saving gender affirming care” and the horrors of taking kids away from parents who allow this care for their kids. They don’t tell you about this being a (over)reaction the west coast states’ policies of allowing minors to receive hormones and even surgery even *without* parental consent and removal of children from their parents if they, for example, don’t use their kids’ preferred pronouns. There are plenty of outrageous positions among the “woke” and from my perspective, it’s really just a back and forth between extremes. Once you stake a side, you are unwilling to give an inch, even if it really makes sense to do so. Certainly in war, no one wants to point out the flaws on their “side”.
The media seems incentivized to turn us against each other. That isn’t how America *works*. America works on persuasion and consensus, the only thing division and battle leads to is more division and battle, more anger, more backlash. We have to start with ourselves, bring down the temperature, think more deeply, listen to each others concerns instead of just disregarding them and characterizing the person as hateful..
DeSatan is not hateful you think? No idea how the left allowed folks like you and Loury to hijack the term "woke" and re-brand it as anti-white, anti-straight, anti-Christian, anti-American. There is no hate on the left. The right is 100% misery, hatred, and ignorance. (Well let me put it another way you hate everyone that is not you. We just hate you). You want to lower the temperature put down your Bibles and your guns.
When did I say any of that? Why on earth would you hate me? You don’t know me. That is a seriously strong emotion for someone you don’t even know. Funny, you claim there is no hate on the left, then literally say you hate me.
You can tell a Nazi a mile away when you trot out that "it's ALL the MEDIA'S FAULT" horseshit. DeSatan slitting throats and throwing Fauci in the Potomac is not a media creation. Insane Clown "they are coming after you I'm just standing in the way" is not a media creation. Take ownership of what you are honey you are not fooling anyone.
Cool. You don’t think Fox News, or Breitbart or Alex Jones had anything to do with our current political landscape? Or did you just *assume* I was complaining about the “mainstream media”? For the record, I wasn’t. My beef is with the fact that we don’t even have a shared reality now. Clearly, in your little reality I’m a Nazi, which is frankly hilarious. It takes me back to college when I was called a “femiNazi” because I don’t think rape jokes were funny. Good times…
Conservatives attempted a coup and support the people involved in the coup. The media did not create the plan for the coup. The media did not force Prager U not elementary schools. There is no both sides do it.
Regarding transgender surgery in children
A recent article published in the Associated Press debunks a map circulating online claiming to show where it’s possible for toddlers to receive gender-affirming surgeries. It was clearly found to be completely false. Surgery under the age of 18 is very rare and is decided on a case by case basis. No toddler is receiving surgeries, nor any form of gender-affirming medical care for that matter.
The map in question actually belongs to transgender rights advocate, Erin Reed, and depicts the states that have the “worst active anti-trans laws” in red and the “safest states” with protections for transgender people in blue. Right-wing extremists took the map to start a disinformation campaign about safer states for transgender young people.
The fact check makes clear that gender affirming surgeries are NOT performed on children, and that, “In all cases, gender affirming surgeries are only performed after multiple discussions with both mental health providers and physicians (including endocrinologists and/or surgeons), to determine if surgery is the appropriate course of action.”
The media did not create the rightwing cult. The Woke are fighting back because we have no F’s left to give. We will not yield on voter suppression. We will not yield on Lost Cause history. We are suspicious of Conservative data suggesting an assault on innocent children. Conservatives are actually assaulting Black children by whitewashing history on a daily basis.
Edit to add:
I don’t pay attention to Coleman Hughes. Hughes is a young Conservative with an undergraduate degree from Columbia. I place him in the same category as Robin DiAngelo and Ibrim Kendi. If I hear they have put out something new %I may check it out, but I seek out better sources, so it may take months to get around to their article. There are better sources.
Okay, so you ask a question, I answer, you move the goal post. I said nothing about toddlers transitioning medically. Clearly that’s nonsense. I said “minor” — teenagers are a grey area, that we shouldn’t be afraid to admit *are* different than adults. You are so in your media bubble you don’t even understand what I’m talking about: *that* is my point, and my worry.
No, the NYT and MSNBC did not create a coup. Do you really believe Fox, Breitbart, and right wing talk radio had nothing to do with it? Because those are also *media*! And they didn’t “create a rightwing cult” but surely they did help work people into a panicked tizzy. Just as now left leaning media is riling people up about gay and trans right “under assault” when there have literally never been more legal protections or more social acceptance. It’s just disconnected from reality.
I don’t think you are right about Coleman being “conservative”. He’s thoughtful and open minded. Certainly he’s more conservative than you, but he seems to be much more aligned with John politically, than say Glenn. But suit yourself, don’t listen to his show. Your loss.
An attempted coup is more important to me than the small number of teenagers contemplating sex change operations. Do not not see people willing to use violence to accomplish their goals? That is where 40% of Republicans are right now.
Regarding Hughes, there are so many websites providing information that I don’t have time to read them all. I don’t see missing Hughes as a big loss. I’m reading John and Glenn here and John in the NYT. I will remind you that in “Woke Racism”, John referred to the Woke as being like a species of grasshopper that when infected by a species of worm, drown themselves.
Edit to add:
Reading this site, one would be unaware of the coup attempt.
2nd Edit to add
You seem to have no problem with Lost Cause lies being used to traumatize Black children.
I think it’d be a mistake to say every conservative supported 1/6 or political violence in general. I think that is as unfair as the way the right tries to tar the left with the antics of Antifa. Personally, that broke my heart to see how much resentment had been stoked and how much people are willing to burn it all down. I hope everyone involved goes to jail, and all the congressmen involved are drummed out. Alas, what I think doesn’t matter much.
If you go back a few years John and Glenn talked more about Trump and his disgraceful behavior. It will probably come up more as 2024 approaches.
Honestly, I don’t know what you mean by “You seem to have no problem with Lost Cause lies being used to traumatize Black children.”. I am a total bleeding heart liberal when it comes to the education and success of all children. I don’t want anyone traumatized. I know what they teach here. I know what my kids learn, that is all I have any control over. Fighting over some political narrative isn’t going to help any child. Raging at some stranger on the internet isn’t helping any child either.
Canadian here. The reason why Jian Ghomeshi has become toxic is because it's widely understood he is pretty certainly guilty of abusing women. But the case against him was screwed from the very beginning, because they'd all happened 10-12 years prior, and while it was called 'sexual assault' what Ontario regards as 'sexual assault' and what Americans would varies greatly. No actual sexual contact occurred. His hands literally went no lower than his neck when he throttled, slapped, and smacked them. It was their word against his, and to make matters far, far, worse, the women who accused him were exposed as guilty of colluding against him in email during the trial, and when Ghomeshi's lawyer accessed their emails from the time period in which he was accused of harming them, it became clear that it hadn't been the horrible trauma they'd claimed - they were all a bunch of groupies enamoured of him, all clearly hoping to become his girlfriend. It was a huge illustration of how women *SOMETIMES* exaggerate how traumatic something allegedly is.
But of course there was no real evidence, and Ghomeshi got himself a great lawyer (she's nicknamed "The Barracuda" and she's actually a very good lawyer) and so he got acquitted, even though the judge himself said he thought Ghomeshi was guilty, but acknowledged there was without question lots of reasonable doubt, mostly thrown by the accusers themselves.
So Canadian anger against Ghomeshi is because, like another infamous celebrity on the other side of the border, he got away with it. I wouldn't be interested in reading anything he has to say about his 'toxic' image either, unless he were to get honest about what everyone knows he did and why he did it. There's zero self-awareness or comprehension from this guy.
So why did he quit if he thought he was doing the right thing? Maybe if he stood his ground they would back off. By capitulating he is himself conforming. Me personally I was fired several times for not conforming to corporate dress codes and pissing management off telling them the truth they didn't want to hear. I never quit I made them fire me.
So the liberal media? Sounds like a right wing conspiracy until it doesn’t. Really wished we’d stop comparing “this” to Nazi Germany, that is “woke” in of itself. It’s an emotional, spoiled, childish, cynical response to difficulty, which is exactly the context needed to explain woke. A generation who doesn’t know what it has, and is crying because it doesn’t have what you got. That’s woke.
When I was young I wanted to be a film director and was forging my ethics and virtue around what would make me a success in this field. That currency is popularity. Sad but true. Inescapable even.
Let me be critical here: When I read 'culture of conformity' I was expecting a deeper dive into American sameness. One of the paradoxes of Wokeism is that it champions the opposite of what the religion is itself.
I call it 'auto-antonymic branding.' An example of that would be Wokeism itself, which implies enlightenment, but is really the opposite, a return to the darkness of PC and Marxism-infused groupthink that brooks no dissent. What is meant by "inclusivity" is limited to certain kinds of people and ideas within a narrow parameter that should also never be challenged.
The problems with what I call 'American sameness,' are many. This belief that democracy means one size fits all, that there should be one standardized test for all forms of intelligence, and so forth, is omnipresent. It's perhaps most glaring in the instinct Americans have for what they call "sameness of experience" for national brands; i.e., you will have the same experience in a MacDonald's in New York City as you would in rural Nebraska as you would in Los Angeles.
The default toward sameness and the fear-based abhorrence for true individuality in America is across the board, so pervasive that the vast majority of Americans have no idea how deeply they're buried in it, how conformist they truly are. Look at how you dress — American men have been dressing the same way for over a hundred years — what you eat, how you speak, the prisms by which you process information. Even people who call themselves "freethinkers" in America are saddled with many guardrails of assumptions. Conservatives are the most conformist, of course — the words are synonymous.
The only reason American sameness so glaring to me is I was raised in Europe. I speak five language fluently, and so forth, which isn't bragging for an Ameropean — it's common for Europeans to speak that many. I'm using it to make a point about my difference of experience and why American sameness is so obvious and often disturbing to me.
Even more influential to my outlook is the fact I began my career as the only American of any race in Bollywood, which would normally be a breaking of a glass ceiling, but I'm not the right race or sex for that. India in the early 90s was the most different society on Earth — it still is. It's Western reality pushed through the looking-glass, turned upside down, inside out.
In my considerable experience, Europeans and Middle Easterners — Israelis especially — love that shock to their established reality. Very few Americans like having the augmented reality of Americanness so brutally confronted. For instance, the caste system, including arranged marriages, is a highly successful eugenics program that maintains a balance in a culture that delights in chaos and exoticism.
The realities of what the Indian system truly is causes Americans to short-circuit. A common question is, "But... how come they're all so happy?" According to intractable American sameness, they shouldn't be, but by and large they are.
Americans of all races loathe the truly exotic. In my experience, it's one of the most conformist societies on Earth, in its own way just as conformist as a totalitarian state or an Arab country. Yet Americans labor under the delusion that they're individuals who embrace diversity. Quite the opposite.
That's the true 'culture of conformity' that needs to be addressed, in my view. It sure ain't new, either. Really tired, actually.
I think you are right about how conformist Americans are vs. Europeans. It’s hard, because Americans *say* they value individual freedom, but then use it to be unique in as close to the same way as those around them. It occurred to me while listening, that the MAGA types want to maintain conformity to something like the 1950s in the Midwest and the new generation wants to have conformity to a new standard. I have had this thought for a while, but called it “agreed on culture” instead of “conformity of culture”. But of course, “conformity” implies much more coercion than “agreement” does. I think the coercion part is probably what have made our long simmering culture wars so abruptly toxic.
In the first sentence you call me ignorant, the next you call me knowledgable. Wokeism is a tangle of many contradictory things, a cult of identity and victimhood based around emotions, specious entitlements and received opinions that have little basis in reality.
In no culture in the world is enlightenment considered the placing of selfhood ahead of the greater good. On the contrary, chivalric selflessness is held to be an ideal by every society that I'm aware of, which doesn't mean that most people in those societies behave that way — more often than not, they can't afford to, much like how honesty is a privilege of the wealthy.
In no instance is identity held up to be a positive thing; that's why the attempt at sanctifying it will always collapse in the end. The Left has allowed itself to be held hostage by a bunch of bored, spoiled American kids caught in a group delusion about being oppressed, engaging in false-flag activism to make themselves right at the cost of truth. They should be sent to bed without supper to cry themselves to sleep, then sent to live in rural Africa and Asia for a couple of years to get a clearer, more objective view of everything they have and what they're so bent on destroying.
Either way, it doesn't matter: Wokeism is dying so fast that I've scrapped a bunch of essays about it that I'd scheduled to write. I'm not even using the word anymore, except for instances like this when I'm commenting on a post centered around it.
Woke is broad and ambiguous language. In the context of what? It has been weaponized here in the U.S. with biased toxic extremist right-wing propaganda.
Which state of the Union is Uganda, again? And as a total top I find your reference to my "sweet ass" triggering.
Seriously, though, false equivalencies are a sign you're grasping at straws. Even Ted Cruz came out against Ugandan laws; most people aren't aware that it was a team of Republican lawyers who led the successful challenge to Prop 8. See Rob Reiner's 'The Case Against 8.' Yes, Rob Reiner. Log Cabin Republicans have done far more to advance LGBT rights than female impersonators reading fairy tales to children.
I've long had a personal policy of not even laying over in countries that impose prison or capital punishment on same-sex activity. I returned a Saudia ticket to an Indian client's travel dept. once and had it switched to Etihad because of that. I'll also fly Qatar and Emirates; while those countries have statutes that punish homosexuality, they're cultural, a nod to Shariah Law, and have never been enforced. Saudi Arabia, Iran and others are a different matter. I will not travel to African countries like Uganda and have been vocal in my condemnation of them. I even published a map in a piece a few months ago while taking apart Dave Chappelle's "comedy":
Fighting flagrant human rights violations in countries with real systemic oppression isn't the same as fighting theoretical oppression in the West — nobody is oppressed in the West by his or her government. As long as people make judgments, there will always be prejudice and unfairness; the Woke have their fair share of both, more so than the phantom menaces they've constructed — they're so many Don Quixotes tilting at windmills thinking they're dragons. That's an example of an accurate equivalency.
There is no systemic oppression in America, in rest of the Anglosphere or the Global North. Nobody is violating "trans rights"; they're pushing back on the excesses of gender-queer false-flag activism entirely fabricated from theory, against the tyranny of a teeny minority with mental disorders who perceive their acts of social injustice as justice.
You will never make Woke claptrap a reality because there's simply no basis for it. You can change 'systemic' to 'institutional' or 'structural' oppression all you want, parse the nuances to subatomic levels, scream yourself black and blue, but you cannot make falsehoods true any more than Trump can turn a loss into a victory, or a medieval alchemist could turn lead into gold. That's another example of a true equivalency: Wokeism is the Dark Ages, an inquisition based on anti-science religious dogma.
But it's almost over — let it go. Why not make yourself useful with worthy activism by fighting actual systemic oppression in the Global South? Stop looking at yourself in the mirror; quit the great American circle jerk in an echo chamber and do something constructive for all mankind, which is how we've always done things, until the Left drank the collective-narcissistic Kool Aid of identity politics and the Right succumbed to Identitarian populism.
Not that I give a shit what you do but I would add Florida to your no go list if I were you. Uncle Clarence for his next trick is going to repeal gay marriage (but not interracial marriage of course). That should be a rude awakening for you.
Conservatives master projection. Woke is a religion as their anti-Woke movement features prominent Christian Nationalists. They say that the Woke portray themselves as victims, while the leader of the Republican Party fuels his campaign by stating he is under attack, not because of crimes he committed, but because he is the victim carrying the cross of victimhood. Trump suffers for his followers.
The projection of Woke being a religion is obviously ridiculous. However, on the anti-Woke side, Russell Moore the editor of Christian’s Today tells us Conservative Christians reject the actual teaching of Jesus in favor of anti-Woke ideology. Turn the other cheek is said not to work anymore. When Conservatives do their projection, we need to treat them as if we are talking to a member of a cult. You are not having a discussion with a serious person.
Think about the position of the apologists for DeSantis’ department of education. The cultists tell us to trust the words on guideline for teaching African American history. Prager U is allowed to slander Frederick Douglass and lie in a video about his view on slavery. The cult has no problem with Prager U.
The encouraging thing is that much of their cult propaganda can only be carried out by authoritarian, voter suppression maneuvers. They know their ideas fall flat when introduced to the general public. That is why Trump wanted a coup. That is why their abortion bans fail when put to a vote. That is why DeSantis gets booed in frigging Iowa.
The culture wars are the cults only platform. Notice how Conservatives rush to ribbon cutting events for construction projects that they voted against?
Encourage people to fight the voter suppression efforts (see Alabama) and vote the cultists out of office. Note the Woke want to use the vote. The cultists in the GOP are ready to use force to get their way. 40% of Republicans are OK with violence to achieve their political goals.
t think the stagnation does lead to a boring culture , but i think it also leads to a dynamic counter culture that will ferment and create new ideas that go against the grain .
don't get me wrong , it's stupid and in many was evil to create an ossified learning atmosphere. but every now and then weeds spring through the cement
Interesting as always! It occurs to be listening to this discussion, and maintaining the frame of “religion” on “wokeness”: that John and Glenn are trying to be reformers of the faith. Glenn, who disagrees with much of the “teachings,” is looking to change “dogma” and John, who mostly agrees with the “teachings” in general, is trying to reduce the fundamentalist fervor with which people are practicing the “faith.”
The anti-Woke movement seems very willing to pretend that many of the people on the anti-Woke side were willing to go along with an attempted coup. In measuring dangers to society, how can a group that is willing to suppress votes, terrorize immigrants by shipping them to cold climates, erecting barbed wire barriers, falsify historical facts, be ignored. The anti- Woke lose battles because they ignore the excesses happening in their own ranks.
DeSantis ran on an anti-Woke platform and has become a joke. Children in Florida are using online sources to overcome the biased history presented in Florida by sources like Prager U. Schools on Little Rock are defying an attempt by the Governor of Arkansas to ban AP African American history. People are fighting back. The anti-Woke are giving a moral victory to the Woke. The anti-Woke are now associated with a parent who had a child removed from a classroom because the parent was upset about a poster of an interracial couple holding hand in a classroom. The parent, seeing the poster which displayed only the hands of the couple, said the picture was indoctrination. The anti-Woke are authoritarians who will lose.
The University of North Carolina blocked Hannah-Nikole Jones from a teaching position. This was followed by Texas A&M refusing to honor a signed contract with a Black professor hired to develop a journalism department. The Board of Regents did not want the professor approved because they felt she endorsed DEI. The citizens of Texas had to pay the journalism professor $1 M to prevent a lawsuit. DeSantis has apparently destroyed one Florida college with professors and students fleeing the institution. The scale of damage done by the anti-Woke far exceeds the faults of the so-called Woke.
Why is there silence on the anti-Woke?
First off, I just listened to Coleman Hughes’ latest podcast on “the myth of left and right”. Highly recommend. You may not agree, but it is thought provoking.
But on to your comment, I think we are living through a time where there is a profound clash of visions of America. In the past, there was a culture clash, but mostly things were pretty live and let live. Now the power of government (and corporations) is being used to mandate those values, so it feels more desperate. I agree with you about the wrongs of todays conservative governors, like DeSantis, but I think you are wrong about anti-woke being worse. I think if you have a left leaning media diet you just never hear the outrageous stuff on the left.
For example, on the left (or the “woke”) youth gender transitions are a civil rights issue; there is no doubt as to the effectiveness of the medical treatment, no cultural implications, no trade offs. The media will tell you all day about the transphobia of not allowing “life saving gender affirming care” and the horrors of taking kids away from parents who allow this care for their kids. They don’t tell you about this being a (over)reaction the west coast states’ policies of allowing minors to receive hormones and even surgery even *without* parental consent and removal of children from their parents if they, for example, don’t use their kids’ preferred pronouns. There are plenty of outrageous positions among the “woke” and from my perspective, it’s really just a back and forth between extremes. Once you stake a side, you are unwilling to give an inch, even if it really makes sense to do so. Certainly in war, no one wants to point out the flaws on their “side”.
The media seems incentivized to turn us against each other. That isn’t how America *works*. America works on persuasion and consensus, the only thing division and battle leads to is more division and battle, more anger, more backlash. We have to start with ourselves, bring down the temperature, think more deeply, listen to each others concerns instead of just disregarding them and characterizing the person as hateful..
DeSatan is not hateful you think? No idea how the left allowed folks like you and Loury to hijack the term "woke" and re-brand it as anti-white, anti-straight, anti-Christian, anti-American. There is no hate on the left. The right is 100% misery, hatred, and ignorance. (Well let me put it another way you hate everyone that is not you. We just hate you). You want to lower the temperature put down your Bibles and your guns.
When did I say any of that? Why on earth would you hate me? You don’t know me. That is a seriously strong emotion for someone you don’t even know. Funny, you claim there is no hate on the left, then literally say you hate me.
You can tell a Nazi a mile away when you trot out that "it's ALL the MEDIA'S FAULT" horseshit. DeSatan slitting throats and throwing Fauci in the Potomac is not a media creation. Insane Clown "they are coming after you I'm just standing in the way" is not a media creation. Take ownership of what you are honey you are not fooling anyone.
Cool. You don’t think Fox News, or Breitbart or Alex Jones had anything to do with our current political landscape? Or did you just *assume* I was complaining about the “mainstream media”? For the record, I wasn’t. My beef is with the fact that we don’t even have a shared reality now. Clearly, in your little reality I’m a Nazi, which is frankly hilarious. It takes me back to college when I was called a “femiNazi” because I don’t think rape jokes were funny. Good times…
Conservatives attempted a coup and support the people involved in the coup. The media did not create the plan for the coup. The media did not force Prager U not elementary schools. There is no both sides do it.
Regarding transgender surgery in children
A recent article published in the Associated Press debunks a map circulating online claiming to show where it’s possible for toddlers to receive gender-affirming surgeries. It was clearly found to be completely false. Surgery under the age of 18 is very rare and is decided on a case by case basis. No toddler is receiving surgeries, nor any form of gender-affirming medical care for that matter.
The map in question actually belongs to transgender rights advocate, Erin Reed, and depicts the states that have the “worst active anti-trans laws” in red and the “safest states” with protections for transgender people in blue. Right-wing extremists took the map to start a disinformation campaign about safer states for transgender young people.
The fact check makes clear that gender affirming surgeries are NOT performed on children, and that, “In all cases, gender affirming surgeries are only performed after multiple discussions with both mental health providers and physicians (including endocrinologists and/or surgeons), to determine if surgery is the appropriate course of action.”
https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/icymi-ap-debunks-extremist-claims-about-gender-affirming-care
The media did not create the rightwing cult. The Woke are fighting back because we have no F’s left to give. We will not yield on voter suppression. We will not yield on Lost Cause history. We are suspicious of Conservative data suggesting an assault on innocent children. Conservatives are actually assaulting Black children by whitewashing history on a daily basis.
Edit to add:
I don’t pay attention to Coleman Hughes. Hughes is a young Conservative with an undergraduate degree from Columbia. I place him in the same category as Robin DiAngelo and Ibrim Kendi. If I hear they have put out something new %I may check it out, but I seek out better sources, so it may take months to get around to their article. There are better sources.
Okay, so you ask a question, I answer, you move the goal post. I said nothing about toddlers transitioning medically. Clearly that’s nonsense. I said “minor” — teenagers are a grey area, that we shouldn’t be afraid to admit *are* different than adults. You are so in your media bubble you don’t even understand what I’m talking about: *that* is my point, and my worry.
No, the NYT and MSNBC did not create a coup. Do you really believe Fox, Breitbart, and right wing talk radio had nothing to do with it? Because those are also *media*! And they didn’t “create a rightwing cult” but surely they did help work people into a panicked tizzy. Just as now left leaning media is riling people up about gay and trans right “under assault” when there have literally never been more legal protections or more social acceptance. It’s just disconnected from reality.
I don’t think you are right about Coleman being “conservative”. He’s thoughtful and open minded. Certainly he’s more conservative than you, but he seems to be much more aligned with John politically, than say Glenn. But suit yourself, don’t listen to his show. Your loss.
An attempted coup is more important to me than the small number of teenagers contemplating sex change operations. Do not not see people willing to use violence to accomplish their goals? That is where 40% of Republicans are right now.
Regarding Hughes, there are so many websites providing information that I don’t have time to read them all. I don’t see missing Hughes as a big loss. I’m reading John and Glenn here and John in the NYT. I will remind you that in “Woke Racism”, John referred to the Woke as being like a species of grasshopper that when infected by a species of worm, drown themselves.
Edit to add:
Reading this site, one would be unaware of the coup attempt.
2nd Edit to add
You seem to have no problem with Lost Cause lies being used to traumatize Black children.
I think it’d be a mistake to say every conservative supported 1/6 or political violence in general. I think that is as unfair as the way the right tries to tar the left with the antics of Antifa. Personally, that broke my heart to see how much resentment had been stoked and how much people are willing to burn it all down. I hope everyone involved goes to jail, and all the congressmen involved are drummed out. Alas, what I think doesn’t matter much.
If you go back a few years John and Glenn talked more about Trump and his disgraceful behavior. It will probably come up more as 2024 approaches.
Honestly, I don’t know what you mean by “You seem to have no problem with Lost Cause lies being used to traumatize Black children.”. I am a total bleeding heart liberal when it comes to the education and success of all children. I don’t want anyone traumatized. I know what they teach here. I know what my kids learn, that is all I have any control over. Fighting over some political narrative isn’t going to help any child. Raging at some stranger on the internet isn’t helping any child either.
Canadian here. The reason why Jian Ghomeshi has become toxic is because it's widely understood he is pretty certainly guilty of abusing women. But the case against him was screwed from the very beginning, because they'd all happened 10-12 years prior, and while it was called 'sexual assault' what Ontario regards as 'sexual assault' and what Americans would varies greatly. No actual sexual contact occurred. His hands literally went no lower than his neck when he throttled, slapped, and smacked them. It was their word against his, and to make matters far, far, worse, the women who accused him were exposed as guilty of colluding against him in email during the trial, and when Ghomeshi's lawyer accessed their emails from the time period in which he was accused of harming them, it became clear that it hadn't been the horrible trauma they'd claimed - they were all a bunch of groupies enamoured of him, all clearly hoping to become his girlfriend. It was a huge illustration of how women *SOMETIMES* exaggerate how traumatic something allegedly is.
But of course there was no real evidence, and Ghomeshi got himself a great lawyer (she's nicknamed "The Barracuda" and she's actually a very good lawyer) and so he got acquitted, even though the judge himself said he thought Ghomeshi was guilty, but acknowledged there was without question lots of reasonable doubt, mostly thrown by the accusers themselves.
So Canadian anger against Ghomeshi is because, like another infamous celebrity on the other side of the border, he got away with it. I wouldn't be interested in reading anything he has to say about his 'toxic' image either, unless he were to get honest about what everyone knows he did and why he did it. There's zero self-awareness or comprehension from this guy.
Pros and cons of conformity.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/conformity
So why did he quit if he thought he was doing the right thing? Maybe if he stood his ground they would back off. By capitulating he is himself conforming. Me personally I was fired several times for not conforming to corporate dress codes and pissing management off telling them the truth they didn't want to hear. I never quit I made them fire me.
So the liberal media? Sounds like a right wing conspiracy until it doesn’t. Really wished we’d stop comparing “this” to Nazi Germany, that is “woke” in of itself. It’s an emotional, spoiled, childish, cynical response to difficulty, which is exactly the context needed to explain woke. A generation who doesn’t know what it has, and is crying because it doesn’t have what you got. That’s woke.
Woke is a term used by Conservatives to divert attention from an attempted coup.
The current generation realizes that among other issues, they face an economic burden of obtaining an education. They are not crybabies.
https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year
When I was young I wanted to be a film director and was forging my ethics and virtue around what would make me a success in this field. That currency is popularity. Sad but true. Inescapable even.
Let me be critical here: When I read 'culture of conformity' I was expecting a deeper dive into American sameness. One of the paradoxes of Wokeism is that it champions the opposite of what the religion is itself.
I call it 'auto-antonymic branding.' An example of that would be Wokeism itself, which implies enlightenment, but is really the opposite, a return to the darkness of PC and Marxism-infused groupthink that brooks no dissent. What is meant by "inclusivity" is limited to certain kinds of people and ideas within a narrow parameter that should also never be challenged.
The problems with what I call 'American sameness,' are many. This belief that democracy means one size fits all, that there should be one standardized test for all forms of intelligence, and so forth, is omnipresent. It's perhaps most glaring in the instinct Americans have for what they call "sameness of experience" for national brands; i.e., you will have the same experience in a MacDonald's in New York City as you would in rural Nebraska as you would in Los Angeles.
The default toward sameness and the fear-based abhorrence for true individuality in America is across the board, so pervasive that the vast majority of Americans have no idea how deeply they're buried in it, how conformist they truly are. Look at how you dress — American men have been dressing the same way for over a hundred years — what you eat, how you speak, the prisms by which you process information. Even people who call themselves "freethinkers" in America are saddled with many guardrails of assumptions. Conservatives are the most conformist, of course — the words are synonymous.
The only reason American sameness so glaring to me is I was raised in Europe. I speak five language fluently, and so forth, which isn't bragging for an Ameropean — it's common for Europeans to speak that many. I'm using it to make a point about my difference of experience and why American sameness is so obvious and often disturbing to me.
Even more influential to my outlook is the fact I began my career as the only American of any race in Bollywood, which would normally be a breaking of a glass ceiling, but I'm not the right race or sex for that. India in the early 90s was the most different society on Earth — it still is. It's Western reality pushed through the looking-glass, turned upside down, inside out.
In my considerable experience, Europeans and Middle Easterners — Israelis especially — love that shock to their established reality. Very few Americans like having the augmented reality of Americanness so brutally confronted. For instance, the caste system, including arranged marriages, is a highly successful eugenics program that maintains a balance in a culture that delights in chaos and exoticism.
The realities of what the Indian system truly is causes Americans to short-circuit. A common question is, "But... how come they're all so happy?" According to intractable American sameness, they shouldn't be, but by and large they are.
Americans of all races loathe the truly exotic. In my experience, it's one of the most conformist societies on Earth, in its own way just as conformist as a totalitarian state or an Arab country. Yet Americans labor under the delusion that they're individuals who embrace diversity. Quite the opposite.
That's the true 'culture of conformity' that needs to be addressed, in my view. It sure ain't new, either. Really tired, actually.
I think you are right about how conformist Americans are vs. Europeans. It’s hard, because Americans *say* they value individual freedom, but then use it to be unique in as close to the same way as those around them. It occurred to me while listening, that the MAGA types want to maintain conformity to something like the 1950s in the Midwest and the new generation wants to have conformity to a new standard. I have had this thought for a while, but called it “agreed on culture” instead of “conformity of culture”. But of course, “conformity” implies much more coercion than “agreement” does. I think the coercion part is probably what have made our long simmering culture wars so abruptly toxic.
You have no clue what woke is. You of all people should know better.
In the first sentence you call me ignorant, the next you call me knowledgable. Wokeism is a tangle of many contradictory things, a cult of identity and victimhood based around emotions, specious entitlements and received opinions that have little basis in reality.
In no culture in the world is enlightenment considered the placing of selfhood ahead of the greater good. On the contrary, chivalric selflessness is held to be an ideal by every society that I'm aware of, which doesn't mean that most people in those societies behave that way — more often than not, they can't afford to, much like how honesty is a privilege of the wealthy.
In no instance is identity held up to be a positive thing; that's why the attempt at sanctifying it will always collapse in the end. The Left has allowed itself to be held hostage by a bunch of bored, spoiled American kids caught in a group delusion about being oppressed, engaging in false-flag activism to make themselves right at the cost of truth. They should be sent to bed without supper to cry themselves to sleep, then sent to live in rural Africa and Asia for a couple of years to get a clearer, more objective view of everything they have and what they're so bent on destroying.
Either way, it doesn't matter: Wokeism is dying so fast that I've scrapped a bunch of essays about it that I'd scheduled to write. I'm not even using the word anymore, except for instances like this when I'm commenting on a post centered around it.
Woke is broad and ambiguous language. In the context of what? It has been weaponized here in the U.S. with biased toxic extremist right-wing propaganda.
Do gay folks in Uganda who are punishable by death wish they had woke allies? You bet your sweet ass they do.
Which state of the Union is Uganda, again? And as a total top I find your reference to my "sweet ass" triggering.
Seriously, though, false equivalencies are a sign you're grasping at straws. Even Ted Cruz came out against Ugandan laws; most people aren't aware that it was a team of Republican lawyers who led the successful challenge to Prop 8. See Rob Reiner's 'The Case Against 8.' Yes, Rob Reiner. Log Cabin Republicans have done far more to advance LGBT rights than female impersonators reading fairy tales to children.
I've long had a personal policy of not even laying over in countries that impose prison or capital punishment on same-sex activity. I returned a Saudia ticket to an Indian client's travel dept. once and had it switched to Etihad because of that. I'll also fly Qatar and Emirates; while those countries have statutes that punish homosexuality, they're cultural, a nod to Shariah Law, and have never been enforced. Saudi Arabia, Iran and others are a different matter. I will not travel to African countries like Uganda and have been vocal in my condemnation of them. I even published a map in a piece a few months ago while taking apart Dave Chappelle's "comedy":
https://jameskillough.substack.com/p/the-comforting-addictiveness-of-victimhood-bba
Fighting flagrant human rights violations in countries with real systemic oppression isn't the same as fighting theoretical oppression in the West — nobody is oppressed in the West by his or her government. As long as people make judgments, there will always be prejudice and unfairness; the Woke have their fair share of both, more so than the phantom menaces they've constructed — they're so many Don Quixotes tilting at windmills thinking they're dragons. That's an example of an accurate equivalency.
There is no systemic oppression in America, in rest of the Anglosphere or the Global North. Nobody is violating "trans rights"; they're pushing back on the excesses of gender-queer false-flag activism entirely fabricated from theory, against the tyranny of a teeny minority with mental disorders who perceive their acts of social injustice as justice.
You will never make Woke claptrap a reality because there's simply no basis for it. You can change 'systemic' to 'institutional' or 'structural' oppression all you want, parse the nuances to subatomic levels, scream yourself black and blue, but you cannot make falsehoods true any more than Trump can turn a loss into a victory, or a medieval alchemist could turn lead into gold. That's another example of a true equivalency: Wokeism is the Dark Ages, an inquisition based on anti-science religious dogma.
But it's almost over — let it go. Why not make yourself useful with worthy activism by fighting actual systemic oppression in the Global South? Stop looking at yourself in the mirror; quit the great American circle jerk in an echo chamber and do something constructive for all mankind, which is how we've always done things, until the Left drank the collective-narcissistic Kool Aid of identity politics and the Right succumbed to Identitarian populism.
Not that I give a shit what you do but I would add Florida to your no go list if I were you. Uncle Clarence for his next trick is going to repeal gay marriage (but not interracial marriage of course). That should be a rude awakening for you.
Conservatives master projection. Woke is a religion as their anti-Woke movement features prominent Christian Nationalists. They say that the Woke portray themselves as victims, while the leader of the Republican Party fuels his campaign by stating he is under attack, not because of crimes he committed, but because he is the victim carrying the cross of victimhood. Trump suffers for his followers.
The projection of Woke being a religion is obviously ridiculous. However, on the anti-Woke side, Russell Moore the editor of Christian’s Today tells us Conservative Christians reject the actual teaching of Jesus in favor of anti-Woke ideology. Turn the other cheek is said not to work anymore. When Conservatives do their projection, we need to treat them as if we are talking to a member of a cult. You are not having a discussion with a serious person.
Think about the position of the apologists for DeSantis’ department of education. The cultists tell us to trust the words on guideline for teaching African American history. Prager U is allowed to slander Frederick Douglass and lie in a video about his view on slavery. The cult has no problem with Prager U.
The encouraging thing is that much of their cult propaganda can only be carried out by authoritarian, voter suppression maneuvers. They know their ideas fall flat when introduced to the general public. That is why Trump wanted a coup. That is why their abortion bans fail when put to a vote. That is why DeSantis gets booed in frigging Iowa.
The culture wars are the cults only platform. Notice how Conservatives rush to ribbon cutting events for construction projects that they voted against?
Encourage people to fight the voter suppression efforts (see Alabama) and vote the cultists out of office. Note the Woke want to use the vote. The cultists in the GOP are ready to use force to get their way. 40% of Republicans are OK with violence to achieve their political goals.
t think the stagnation does lead to a boring culture , but i think it also leads to a dynamic counter culture that will ferment and create new ideas that go against the grain .
Sure. Unless the culture becomes sufficiently damaged enough that can't 'recover'.
Western culture?
don't get me wrong , it's stupid and in many was evil to create an ossified learning atmosphere. but every now and then weeds spring through the cement