Writes Nate Cohn in "What’s 'Woke' and Why It Matters/A marker of just how much American politics has changed over the last eight years" (NYT).
When in conflict, the new left prioritizes the pursuit of a more equitable society over enlightenment-era liberal values. Many of the academic theories, including critical race theory, critique liberalism as an obstacle to progressive change. In this view, equal rights are a veneer that conceal and justify structural inequality, while some liberal beliefs impede efforts to challenge oppression. The liberal value of equal treatment prevents identity-conscious remedies to injustice; the liberal goal of equal opportunity accepts unequal outcomes; even freedom of speech allows voices that would offend and thus could exclude marginalized communities.
Is this a definition of woke? No. But it covers much of what woke is grasping toward: a word to describe a new brand of righteous, identity-conscious, new left activists eager to tackle oppression, including in everyday life and even at the expense of some liberal values....
So what are ordinary Democrats supposed to do when Republicans square off against this new "new left"?
Posts
47 comments:
Stand besides Republicans and fight?
Obama is intelligent, and from an early age was indoctrinated into the art of lying about cultural cohesion while mobilizing deep racial hatreds.
It's an old but effective Revolutionary Marxist strategy.
You have to be quite ignorant or middle-aged teen girl besotted to not see it clearly.
So what are ordinary Democrats supposed do when Republicans square off against this new "new left"?
Realize that Republicans are not always and forever the enemy and that there may be common ground for people of good will but with different perspectives to come together and rebuild civil society?
Nah, that would be crazy talk.
"You’ve been with the professors
And they’ve all liked your looks"
“ Many of the academic theories, including critical race theory, critique liberalism as an obstacle to progressive change.”
And this is why the Stanford Law students shouted down Judge Duncan. The old liberal value of Free Speech is an obstacle to their new Progressive Utopia of equity. The words harmed them. They can’t bear to listen to ideas that conflict with theirs.
We are in deep, deep shit if this crap isn’t stopped.
NYT comment, “ I have yet to see a single comment in the pro-woke camp actually engage with the realities of 'wokism' on the ground: speech suppression, the disengagement with reality, the purity-testing, the viewpoint intolerance, the increasing violence - we can keep going for a while on this list. But at the end of the day, it’s the same list that the political left accuses the 'MAGA-right' of every day. I mean, is anyone here willing to make a principled defense of (say) speech suppression, that you'd also be willing to apply to your tribe? Of course not!”
Disengagement with reality is the feature of wokeism that is so bizarre. Net carbon zero is part of the woke religion. I’ve repeatedly pointed out that temps have been flat for years despite the tons of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere, but the OPPD Board ignores me. Cognitive dissonance.
The basic instinct of all Democrats (which will generally include Prof. Althouse) in times of extreme stress is to revert to their central mantra of the twentieth century: "No enemies to the left."
what does "equitable" mean?
having or exhibiting equity : dealing fairly and equally with all concerned?
If That's the case, and academia WANTS things to be "equitable"..
Shouldn't they donate their ENTIRE endowments to public education?
Is it 'fair', for rich kids to go to rich schools, and get rich(er)?
For the sake of being "equitable", and "woke".. Shouldn't these rich schools torn apart, piece by piece..
and the pieces GIVEN to the poor? Or, Aren't these "woke" folk REALLY all That "woke"
Sometimes i think.. That it's all just a scam to make the rich EVEN richer. By 'sometimes' i mean ALL times
If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor,
and you will have treasure in heaven
Put your money where your woke mouths are
As with the sponge, there is with the orange an aspiration to recover countenance after submitting to the test of expression. But where the sponge is unfailingly successful, the orange never is : its cells have burst, its tissues ripped. As the rind alone gets back its shape, ore or less, thanks to its elasticity, an amber liquid squeezes itself out along with, we grant you, refreshment and suave fragrances, - but also often a bitter awareness of having prematurely delivered its seeds.
Must one take sides concerning these different ways of not withstanding oppression? - The sponge is just a muscle and fills up with air, with clean or dirty water, it all depends : an ignoble performance. The orange has a better taste, but it is too massive, - and this fragrant sacrifice... really it submits too readily to its oppressor.
- Francis Ponge
It seems to me Loury and McWhorter spoke to that, at least concerning blacks, in this this clip.
It’s necessary to place woke ideology in the broad sweep of post-modern Marxism. The essence of Marxism is utopian egalitarianism. Traditional Marxism focuses on economic classes and aims at the elimination of classes. Revolutionary Marxism, like the Cultural Revolution and the Killing Fields, focuses on identifying class enemies — the oppressors of the oppressed classes — and liquidating them. Post-Modern Marxism focuses on the oppression of racial, ethnic, gender or other “marginalized “ groups, and seeks to ensure their equality by identifying their oppressors (that’s you and me) and suppressing if not liquidating them. Both varieties of Marxism divide the world into oppressors and the oppressed, and interpret all historical, social, economic and political events through the lens of oppression.
1. Wait for this lefty fad to pass, as the left is constitutionally unable to stick to a single goal or set of principles. That's what makes them left wing. At the same time, any leftist who eventually sticks to optimal-but-imperfect solutions becomes a de facto conservative or joins the center left in firm opposition to hard left anarchists.
2. The right's best strategy is to use the left's past language, laws, and principles against the current left. Quote MLK, quote JFK, quote FDR, quote all their heroes. As with clever martial artists use their own force and excesses to create untenable reductos ad absurdum. Paint them into corners and hoist them on their own petards. Wedges. Hypocrisy. Unworkable nonsense (e.g., Seattle CHAZ, Defund the Police, Hold up SF, Chicago, and NYC as lefty utopias). Abuse 'women' to benefit transgendered people. Abuse Asian students to benefit Black and Hispanic students, etc.
Left wing movements always end when the left starts to each each other, and this always happens. It has something to do with leaping before you look.
It sounds like the conquistadors coming to the new world and campaigning to save it.
Woke is just new lingo for the same old human desire to rule over people, places and things.
History repeating.
The author is almost there. The definition of "woke" is awareness of your previous unconscious bias; "the source of the expanded, academic meanings of 'trauma,' 'violence,' 'safety' and 'erasure,' which implicitly equate the psychological harm experienced by marginalized groups with the physical harms of traditional illiberal oppression."
If you were woke, you understood how you were part of the systemic racism and now could be anti-racist. Becoming woke is the Christian religion equivalent of a baptism. And just like a baptism, afterwards you are expected to continue tithing to your church or they'll harumph about your reversion to sin. The church and its leaders become richer while you go broke.
Interesting that the failures of Obama - in the mind of the Left - are why woke arose.
"activists eager to tackle oppression, including in everyday life and even at the expense of some liberal values."
I can't help reading the "even" clause as if "at the expense of some liberal values" were an unfortunate downside, which these activists accept only reluctantly, rather than a feature, which they embrace eagerly.
It's all about the power structures – and only their total control over these can be accepted. Hope? Who has room for that? In their minds, Obama was just too conciliatory, always reaching across the aisle only to get slapped for it.
Historically the left has been far more sclerotic than the right. The right, for example, after a period of adjustment was able to shrug off gay marriage. The left, after any number of famines, civil wars, and mass executions remained committed to Communism....There are many mildly bigoted white people who go to work, take care of their families, and produce the kind of affluent society where marginal people can worry about their grievances rather than, say, starvation as happens in so many more egalitarian societies.
What strikes me is how OLD this is. It was common in the revolutionary socialism of more than a century ago. Most of us don't realize that it was popular with a surprisingly large number of people. (And, yes, just like today, a good deal of it was, "We, the good people, deserve power over you.")
"The new left sees society as a web of overlapping power structures or systems of oppression, constituted by language and norms as much as law and policy...."
I was taken to task by a commenter some months ago for referring to the 'New Left,' as that term was used in the Seventies for a different movement. My point was that the latest iteration of leftism was like the New Left of the Seventies, only more so. I suppose I could have called it the 'New New Left,' but since the original phrase has been revived, I'll keep on using it.
Douglas B. Levene said...
"Traditional Marxism focuses on economic classes and aims at the elimination of classes. Revolutionary Marxism, like the Cultural Revolution and the Killing Fields, focuses on identifying class enemies — the oppressors of the oppressed classes — and liquidating them."
In practice, Marxism of any flavor replaces one class system with another - Nomenklatura, Apparatchiks, and Proletariat. Equal misery for most, a few extra benefits for the minders, and a comfy life for Party leadership... except that everyone, at every level of society, is forever looking over the shoulder so as not to run afoul of Party doctrine. See: Dear Comrades, The Lives of Others. As pointed out in DBL's comment, at its worst, Marxist rule applies the Final Solution to anyone who appears to vary from the approved narrative.
Thereby proving every conservative’s lived experience over the past five decades as the left keeps going farther left. They already heartily endorse mob violence and suppression of speech and assembly and are so whack already that prominent elected democrats like Gabbard and Sinema have been pushed out/ left behind. But hey no matter how ridiculous even mild mannered former law professors will defend the “reasonable approach” by DEI deans to stifle discussion and poison public discourse. Since the constant leftward push has met so little resistance of course they will keep pushing.
Rust will keep rusting. Erosion will keep undermining our Bill of Rights.
Think, for once.
@Dave Begley said: "And this is why the Stanford Law students shouted down Judge Duncan. The old liberal value of Free Speech is an obstacle to their new Progressive Utopia of equity. The words harmed them. They can’t bear to listen to ideas that conflict with theirs.
We are in deep, deep sh*t if this crap isn’t stopped."
The reason that we are headed for deep sh*t is because peaceful resolution is, to all appearances, not an option in cases like this on the public stage. And it has been tried every single time, to no avail. The only constructive peaceful outcome in this episode has been the Law Dean coming out in condemnation of the student's behavior (and the D&I Dean's as well). But this is simply an attempt to de-escalate the damage being done to Stanford; the student activists have not repented, far from it - they're doubling down, and so is the D&I Dean.
Once the very idea of discourse has been trumped by the heckler's drown-them-out approach, and reinforced by doubling down, there is really only one type of action left available to the object of the aggression. Physical protest - which is precisely what the Woke-sters are primed and ready for, the oppressed victim's portrayal as 'proving my point'.
The only effective response is to use damaging subversive counter-meaures, conducted far from the public stage. But of course, that's illegal and wrong - even though it's routinely done as a tactic of choice by the same kind of activists.
Woke, like climate change is a secular religion. Like any institution in power, they first want to obtain more power. Like most religions, the doctrine is controlled by the high priests and debate is antithetical. Like any religion, you must follow the doctrine without question or be punished. Repent or die. You can't negotiate with zealots. They have the holy sanction of god on their side and to compromise is to sin In religion, there is no freedom, there are no rights. There is only adherence to the sacred texts, forget that the texts keep changing, that's all just new revelation from god.
The so-called Obama-inspired hope was always a fraud designed to make people feel safe in voting for him.
The tell was when his life-partner who has a vulva stated the quiet part out loud.
“ Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”
The purpose here was to make all parts of your life politics and open every cultural aspect of society up for attack.
Enigma wrote:
"Left wing movements always end when the left starts to each each other, and this always happens. It has something to do with leaping before you look."
This is dangerously optimistic. Left wing movements do always end when the left starts to eat each other, but this sometimes happens after they have already eaten everyone else.
The logical conclusion would be that one either becomes a manipulator of power oneself, part of one force clashing against another, or else that one tries to maintain some sanity, balance and freedom in between the clashing power blocs. But instead, there's a residual sense that the victory of one side will result in justice and liberation without much of value being lost in the process. This feeling isn't supported by the amoral view of the world as power and oppression all the way down, but it's been hard for "social justice warriors" to shake.
I wonder what Adorno or Foucault would think if they were alive today. Would they view wokeism as a path to liberation and justice or just another structure of oppression? To one degree or another, "the administered life" seems to be unavoidable and likely to increase as the woke left increases power. Older leftists sometimes ended up in disillusioned, convinced that power games were always dirty and rigged and trying to hold on to some semblance of what they regarded as integrity. Maybe a few of today's woke young will end up that way as well.
It's all designed to destroy the fabric of the family and enhance the power of the state...
Oppression can be created out of whole cloth by leftist oppression police.
..and they use it not for enlightenment, but for the speech crimes and power grabs.
Making excuses for WOKE fascism.
"...[V]irtually everything about America might have to change to end systemic racism."
Let us be clear. The ONLY "systemic racism" here is that sponsored - nay, REQUIRED - by Government. It begins with classification of individual citizens by "Race" and continues through racial set-asides and other unequal treatments.
Government - again picking winners and losers. If ya doesn't like what Government does with the Power, then don't give it the Power. Choke it back. Take away its funding.
from insty:
The woke left are out of control They are the new witch burners.
"The shameful persecution of Posie Parker in New Zealand"
Next time you’re reading a history book and find yourself wondering how Salem came to be consumed by such swirling hysteria, watch the clips of Posie’s persecution in New Zealand. This is how it happens. This is how the fear of witches can overrule reason and unleash the darkest, most punitive passions of the mob.
And what is Parker’s crime? What did this witch do? She said, ‘A woman is an adult human female’. That’s it. Parker, whose real name is Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, is well known for her criticism of the ideology of transgenderism. She thinks a man never becomes a woman, no matter how many hormones he takes or surgeries he undergoes. She thinks if you were born male, you will die male, and in the time in between you have no right whatsoever to enter any women-only space.
This is heresy. Dissenting from the gospel of gender ideology is to the 21st century what dissenting from the actual gospels was to the 15th. And so Parker must be punished. It was a modern-day stoning, so mercifully they only threw soup and water and planks of cardboard at the blasphemer.
Parker organises public events called ‘Let Women Speak’. She has done it across the UK, in parts of the US, and for the past couple of weeks she’s been doing it in Australia and New Zealand.
It’s a genius initiative. She knows these gatherings of women who merely want to give voice to their profane belief that sex can never be changed will draw out crowds of intolerant trans activists and their allies. She knows the ‘Be Kind’ mob will do everything in its power to stop women from speaking. And she knows it will all brilliantly illustrate her core belief: that trans activism is misogyny in disguise, misogyny in drag, if you like, and that it has devoted itself to silencing women who believe in biology."
So what are ordinary Democrats supposed to do when Republicans square off against this new "new left"?
First they came for the MAGA Republicans, but I wasn't a MAGA Republican.
"...the new left prioritizes the pursuit of a more equitable society...." What is an "equitable society?"
Top Google response to "equitable society": https://www.broward.org/Climate/Documents/EquityHandout_082019.pdf
.."Equity is just and fair inclusion. An equitable society is one in which all can participate and prosper. The goals of equity must be to create conditions that allow all to reach their full potential. In short, equity creates a path from hope to change."
.."Just" is as decided by Law.
.."Fair" is as accepted by unanimous vote. Every One can veto, so practically unobtainable when N reaches small triple digits.
.."Participate" brings no special meaning. Each in their own way - the incarcerated and the homeless inclusive - IS a "participant."
.."Prosper" and "Full Potential" - is there threshold of "prosperity?" A hominid equivalent of the Farad?
Frankly, much restraint of achieving Prosperity and Full Potential is due to Government intervention. Consider minimum wage laws, which price entry level jobs out of the market. Consider licensing and permit laws which unreasonably restrict entrepreneurial employment or property use.
"The new left sees society as a web of overlapping power structures or systems of oppression, constituted by language and norms as much as law and policy...."
They are right about that. Of course the interlocking directorates that sustain prog hegemony and constitute the executive committee of the ruling class are all prog.
"So what are ordinary Democrats supposed to do when Republicans square off against this new "new left"?'
Swallow hard and join the deplorables. Put country above self-regard. Be allies--good, consistent allies. Not wishy-washy, sideline, outrage-rationalizing, Dems-should-be-better allies.
It's equality of opportunity vs fixing the results. You get to choose a side.
By now we can critique CRT/BLM on the basis if their historical record. If we do that we see that adopting that ideology actually blinds you to existing injustices.
A disproportionate number of abortions in the black community is the reason why blacks are no longer the largest minority in this society. There would be 40 million more living blacks were for the disproportion. But CRT/BLM and all wokies find it impossible to even look in the direction of this existing reality while they look hard at whether Tik Tok discussions of pantry arrangements and knitting circles are racist.
And there's many other similar disproportions which are certain to be ignored by people whose heads are stuffed full with CRT/BLM.
There's the ghastly state of the public schools in the big Dem cities in the areas where the black community is concentrated. Those children are three or more years behind where they should be.
There's the 40% of young black men who do not even graduate from high school in these cities. Once they don't have a high school degree they're going to disproportionately lack opportunity. And it's only then, at 18, that BLM/CRT notices these young men and women. Too late, too late. But by noticing them then, CRT/BLM gives its followers the impression that they are social justice warriors. CRT/BLM wokies would only be warriors if they confronted the teacher's unions and the school administrations. Instead the wokies move about conferring medals on each other for insignificant skirmishes (Coffee is racist; ear rings are racist; national parks are racist) until their chests glitter like the chests of generals in Third World republic armies.
And then there's the consequences of de-policing which has increased the murder rate in the black community and only in the black community. But CRT/BLM very efficiently turns its followers' minds away from this shocking truth.
There's talk about making AC more expensive. That'll hit the black community hard but CRT/BLM will turn the wokies away from noticing it.
It's impossible not to think that the focus on insignificant minutiae sponsored by CRT/BLM is pushing out real thought within the black community and among their wokey suburban allies about significant disproportions in abortions, schools, policing and more. This benefits the Democratic party and its minions and that's why CRT/BLM is so influential and so useless.
"So what are ordinary Democrats supposed to do when Republicans square off against this new "new left"? "
If democracy was working right now, they'd become conservative and vote against this tyranny. But the media has so poisoned the conservative "brand" it doesn't happen.
The only principle in politics is whose ox gets gored. The followers of wokeness want revenge, and their arguments are just rationalizations to get it.
What compromise can there be between those who desire the right to free speech and those who insist you cannot say anything they might take offense to.
This article reminds me of an anthropologist trying desperately to understand an utterly alien primitive culture dedicated to human sacrifice. I don't mean the culture of woke. The article does define that in a minimally acceptable way. No, I mean the culture of Republican conservatism, about which this article, like the Times in general, and especially its readers, are all totally clueless. Take one example from the article:
"The backlash against the new left could end in a repeat of how New Left politics in the 1960s facilitated the marriage of neoconservatives and the religious right in the 1970s. Back then, opposition to the counterculture helped unify Republicans against a new class of highly educated liberals, allowing Southern opponents of civil rights to join old-school liberal intellectuals who opposed Communism and grew skeptical of the Great Society."
This is the grand liberal myth about the Reagan Republican triumph. Just a coalition of quaint "old-school" Red Baiting anti-Communists, all stingy about social welfare spending to boot, along with all those fanatic religious right Southern racists. No other possible reasons besides racism why anyone in the South might leave the Democratic Party once it became less life-threatening to do so down there, right? No possible rational explanation for why post-1960s Americans might have lost a bit of faith in the "Great" Society, right? It's the same NYTs demonization that every other part of the paper fosters all the time. Sickening.
Woke is walking, talking, a defined meme. Bring out your burdens, your politically incongruent, your excess capital. Woke and morally broke
So what are ordinary Democrats supposed to do when Republicans square off against this new "new left"?
Ask the Republicans to define "woke." Discuss with them the history of the usage of "woke." Itemize each claimed abuse in the name of "woke." Demand details of same.
Listen to this brilliant podcast; David Remnick discussing "woke" with linguist and lexicographer Tony Thorne, the author of “Dictionary of Contemporary Slang,” about the history and usage of "woke."
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/segments/what-does-woke-mean
Even the MSM admitted that they didn't vet Obama. He grew up being trained to be a revolutionary in sheep's clothing. He was handed from Frank Marshall Davis to Bill Ayers. His voting record was "present" in Springfield, except for being the one vote for late third trimester abortion, which the media studiously wormholed.
The radicals bided their time. The media abetted them. The work Obama did in Chicago schools alone should have revealed his racism, also his campaign speeches, forgotten and hidden now.
"the new left prioritizes the pursuit of a more equitable society over enlightenment-era liberal values."
That's an understatement. And liberals need to wake up more to this. For the record, some do and speak up. But the new left isn't interested in "progress". That's the whole point of the new left. No more incremental progress through democratic/republican process with people practicing liberal values of the Enlightenment such as *freedom* of speech, thought, and so on.
The new left is convinced the process/system is inherently corrupt. Dare we say systemically so. What the new left wants is Revolution. Once we recognize that, almost everything happening throughout Western society makes a whole lot more sense.
What an asshole. Do you and your peers find it funny to fuck with low income people, Ann?
Not a surprise to me. Scum attracts scum with no insight. You are degrading yourself increasingly. Why? Losing competence or cognicance?
What an asshole. Do you and your peers find it funny to fuck with low income people, Ann?
Not a surprise to me. Scum attracts scum with no insight. You are degrading yourself increasingly. Why? Losing competence or cognicance?
Post a Comment