"Woke begets woke. It’s a narrative that Labour is promoting now but the Conservatives will pick it up as a reaction. The damage and the consequences of that chasm is awful. When you have decided that your country is institutionally racist and discriminatory you don’t normally go back.... I’m seeing things that you are going to see six months to a year from now. It’s already done significant damage to our system in the United States. It prioritises equality over meritocracy. We’re becoming intolerant of tolerance.... We are writing each other off and out of our lives. The damage and the consequences of that chasm is awful. The consequences are so significant, less cooperation, less compromise, more negativity."
Said the American pollster Frank Luntz, quoted in the London Times, in "‘Woke’ culture war is biggest dividing line among voters."
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8 comments:
Temujin writes:
"Yes. If you were a foreign entity who wanted to see the USA reduce its footprint and influence, or if you wanted to take over its land and people, you would do two things and neither of them is a direct military assault.
"First, you would take over the schools. It's a long process, but you do that by installing Marxist thought into the faculty at all levels. Once you own the colleges, you can crank out your own kind of teachers from the Education Departments and send them out into the countryside to do their work. One they are out there, you can evolve the thinking and plans as you go, merely uploading the latest thought trends to them- your already faithful followers. Put in 3-4 decades of this and you'll own academia, media, government, and technology.
"Second- as those trends evolve, you eventually come to Wokeism of which there is no end except the actual end of your history, culture, and society. Wokeism mirrors the Cultural Revolution or Stalin's kulak purges. There is no right answer and you are guilty. It's just a matter of finding the crime to fit you.
"Then you simply have to show up as a strong leader and the people- ravaged for years by disarray and collapse- will welcome your strong direction and leadership, and view it as a safe and smart change for us all.
"If I were the Russians, I'd have started with the schools. But the Russians are too messed up to take it to the next level. That's where the Chinese come in. And if you don't think the Chinese have thousands of people and bots working social media, news media, and within our colleges and Big Tech- then you are missing the story. This is not just a bunch of school aged kids ripping the country apart."
George writes:
"Woke ends when the guillotine's blade falls. I'm watching a Great Courses lecture series on the French Revolution by History Prof. Suzanne Desan. The parallels between the U.S. today and France are fascinating. Both nations neared financial collapse caused by debt, partly due to foreign wars, a situation masked by finance ministers' chicanery. Inflation, shortages of goods, and terrible weather plague the nation. Elites detached from most people's daily reality cling to ancestral rights but engage in spontaneous public confessions of their crimes in an attempt to maintain their positions. Commoners exposed to vast expansion of information (i.e. pamphlets in France and the internet here) lose respect for leaders, institutions, and norms. Equality is valued above all else. Conspiracists spin tales of the leader's corruption/infirmity and ties to foreign enemies. Religious observance declines. Slaves revolt in colonies while mobs at home rule cities. Statues are desecrated. Symbols of the regime are destroyed. Government buildings are attacked with the tacit acceptance of leaders. Powerful foreign foes to the east and west (Great Britain/Prussia) seek to weaken their long-time enemy, and control over the border weakens. In France, those who fanned the flames were consumed. A military dictator rises. One good thing did happen—men stopped wearing short pants (i.e. knee britches) and put on long pants."
Thanks. I've watched that Great Courses course. Excellent!
Tom writes:
"Ever since the US landed troops in Russia right after the Bolshevik Revolution, the communist have sought to trigger a revolution in the US. It took years for the communists to find the right weakness. They tried to use the Great Depression but FDR implemented some mildly socialist policies to keep the communists at bay. There’s been a solid attempt with environmentalism but not enough Americans care. They tried income inequality but too many poor and middle class Americans still believe in the American Dream. None of those divisions created enough of an opening for the communists.
"Until now. It turns out it’s race, and, to some degree, sexual orientation. And while much of the codified racial and sexual orientation discrimination has been eliminated, we still have people who feel included in society and those who don’t. We also have the issue that life is often deeply unfair. But, if you’re a POC or LBGTQ in the US, that unfairness can be blamed on racism and bigotry. The communists have found western civilization’s kryptonite and, if we don’t stop it fast, it will trigger a class-based revolution that leads directly to authoritarianism."
Brian writes:
Progressives are like sharks, they MUST keep moving (progressing), or they'll die.
Whenever they achieve a victory (legalizing homosexuality, same sex marriage, transgenderism), they have to Move On to the next hill.
The exciting thing, is to try to guess what's next?
Lowering the age of consent?
Banning the American Flag?
Incest?
Your guess is as good as mine
Jack writes:
"Notice how Luntz is afraid to identify the perpetrators of the wokeism scourge? He falls back on “we” to avoid the woke guillotine. It’s like in Harry Potter - he who shall not be named. We cannot stop this scourge unless we bring the enforcers of the Marxist woke brigade into the open. If we were to do that I think we would see that the woke emperors have no clothes. Wokeism runs on fear."
Assistant Village idiot writes:
"The reason it never ends is that the woke have a psychological need to be in battle and condemn others. It is a prominent symptom of a few of the more common Personality Disorders. most notably Borderline. They are externalising their inner conflicts in order to blame others and not have to look to themselves for solutions. You can see it a hundred times a day at your local mental health center. Social media empowers Borderlines and allows them to distract from the warring voices in their heads. You can hear the yelping - sad, really - in the prominent trans advocacy. They are unhappy and it must be someone else's fault.
"For the rest, they believe that they or their tribe has not succeeded as much as they deserve, and that must be someone else's fault. It is bottomless."
Norman writes:
"Scott Alexander has a great piece, The Toxoplasma of Rage, explaining why cancel culture is never done."
Responding to the comment by Brian, above, Michelle writes:
My own guess is polyamory/plural marriage, though surely incest is a contender: How long before it's pointed out that the risk of genetic abnormalities in offspring (the "official" reason for banning incest) only applies if there are children, so brother/brother or father/son or sister/sister or mother/daughter incest are all OK? As is any incest where the female partner is post-menopausal or otherwise infertile?
But polyamory is the surer bet. I mean, it follows the general pattern: First you say that you just want this little bit, (a), which needn't imply (b); then (b) happens, and you say, but that doesn't imply (c); then (c) happens, and so ad infinitem, or at least until you run out of letters.
In this case, (a) was Bowers, and (b) was Obergefell. The argument post-Obergefell was that it would never spread beyond marriages of two people, because three and up are fundamentally different from two. But can we maintain that? We already have, and have had for a long time, complicated family arrangements involving surrogate parents, birth mothers, divorced-and-remarried parents; what say we make it possible to codify these in the form of a plural marriage? Sensible, yes? And (d) will never happen, anyway. Whatever it is.
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