The anti-woke is about rarking up the woke, in a triumphalist and vengeful way, as the woke compression bands come off. My guess is that as workery recedes so will anti-wokery, because it is an attitude of reaction, and is not based on things that matter.
I would love to have been a fly on the wall when that lawyer turned up.
We're on the cusp and could go either way. Either Right Woke gets the Left so mad that they redouble Wokeness in response which causes Right Woke to get even Woker in retaliation and we go on the downward spiral into a black hole of Woke from which not even light can emerge. Or Right Woke destroys Left Woke and in so doing destroys itself since without Left to react against Right Woke collapses.
H.E., you’re there at the coalface in the US; I’m miles away in NZ. But I do think anti-wokery isn’t an ideology—it’s a reaction. It’s not as though people are looking to replace identity politics with, say, a full-blown movement for tax abolition, Ross Perot, and widespread gun ownership. (Okay, maybe not the gun ownership bit, but you know what I mean.)
I’d say the ‘woke right’ might be something genuinely fearful in the air at a university, though, and maybe that’s what you’re picking up on.
Wokery has given the culture a thorough kicking. It’ll take a while for everyone’s fur to go down. The conservative right, broadly speaking, is about incremental change and pragmatism. But if we put aside that the international rules-based order isn’t looking too healthy right now, and neither are the usual processes in DC, we’re left with Donald and Elon. Neither of them is conservative or traditionally right-wing. I have no idea how to characterise them—except as forces of nature, having an impact at levels we haven’t seen before.
But I think the left has shot its bolt. The major bulk of everyone, apart from them, is fed up with their nonsense. Once people are willing to say the emperor has no clothes in public, that’s not a shift in collective awareness that gets rolled back easily.
It’s all performative tomfoolery, left and right. On one side, students camping out in the quad for Palestine—on the other side Trump encouraging supporters at rallies to ‘beat the crap’ out of people.
But a few ideologues on both sides have done bad stuff. On the left, unrestricted, chaotic illegal immigration. On the right, selling out Ukraine (which is what gets to me most!) and gutting the civil service. The DOGE agenda I think is the worst because the aim is to privatize as much as possible, to outsource public services to firms, non-profits, and contractors—essentially replace government agencies with businesses.
I have nothing against business. Some things are better done by firms; but other things better done by government, and maybe others by non-profits, coops, or people on their own. It’s an empirical question what works best for which jobs. The entrenched a priori assumption in the US is that government is always bad and business always does everything better. Gutting government agencies indiscriminately on a priori grounds, especially those involved with security, ain’t good.
I'd be careful about how making claim about "performative tomfoolery on college campuses" makes you look, regardless of the discussion itself
And categorizing immigration as a sin of the left is curious, considering that it is the right that actually has a motive to continue illegal immigration. Legal immigration is anti-capital.
If we completely close our borders, who will build your house, or pick your strawberries, or staff your dry cleaners or nail salon? Who will support the California almond industry?
If you want strawberries picked then revive the Bracero program. Create a program for temporary guest workers. Some would want to live in the US--fix immigration so that those who do and qualify have a route to citizenship. Most don't. And for those who do, provide services to promote assimilation.
Thank you. Yes, that is relevant, that the military in the US holds a position similar to social welfare structures in Europe (and New Zealand).
I agree that rewarding Trump’s bullying approach is not something to do willingly.
European countries on average spend less than 2% of GDP on hard power. They have an understandable distaste of it. The US spends about 3.5%. Poland exceeds this and oddly, Greece comes close.
Russia and China are the ones changing the post-war equation. It is not so much that Trump is smashing the geopolitical order as entering the fray in the same unfortunate spirit. This weakens all of us in the west, and undermines our desire to work amongst ourselves at least, according to a rules-based order. Sadly structures are easy to rip down but hard to establish.
I think all of us outside the US see that we will have to waste (I mean spend) more on hard power.
I’m completely with you. We had better watch out or we will become an echo chamber.
I utterly support Ukraine and fantasise (unkindly and atavistically) that Russia will revert to the economic Stone Age.
But… what if Trump’s posturing re-energises Europe so they no longer free-ride on the military budget of the US. The EU+UK GDP is around $20T. Russia’s is around $2T. Ukraine’s is a massive and experienced army. And if Europe stepped up then I expect the US would remain engaged, albeit it to a lesser extent.
Step back. If you were Trump, and this adjustment was what you wanted, what would you say? (And thoroughly enjoy the ructions as you do so?)
I don’t know enough about Europe vs US military budgets to say anything sensible. If Trump did get Europe to kick in more on balance it would be a very good thing. But at a cost because it would reinforce the idea that blustering and bullying are the way to get things done and confirm Trump’s supporters view’ that he’s a consummate deal maker.
Here’s a side issue. In the US the military occupies a unique position as a provider of education, healthcare, social services, and opportunity for the working class. It pays huge bonuses and sends students through college, including expensive private universities like mine. VA hospitals and healthcare services are America’s socialized medicine. Europe spends more on welfare state benefits relative what it spends on the military but in the US the military is a major provider of welfare state benefits, though for a restricted population.
I think left woke is dying. This is what I am experiencing in my generation of the people between millennials and Z. There is an emerging consciousness that identity politics has distracted us from class consciousness and the general project of socialism.
The genocide in Gaza that is supported by the Democratic party has turned many away from left liberalism who had true moral principles. Those left in the woke space are being revealed as those who either are afraid of or actively frustrate social change.
There is also a rise of "left accelerationism" which forgoes the identity politics in favor of a full focus on forcing the social conditions to enact UBI and force an initiative for the development of "custodian AGI."
All that to say I think we are entering the era of the post-woke left. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing but it is certainly a welcome change in my opinion because I feel like identity politics was only a weight on the left that kept it paralyzed. My tinfoil schizo view is that companies push hard for "DEI" because it's an amazing political suppressant.
Alas. Thanks for taking the time to read the ramblings of a random 28 year old agender asshole with social ideals that are slowly but surely jading
I know it's scary, but I think it's time to admit that liberalism is a failed project, before we are swallowed by the oceans, ravaged by the water wars, sworn labor feality to our AI technofacist overlords, and lose access to personal property anyway.
We can socialize or we can let Amazon have all of it. Hopefully the youth make the right decision, whatever it is
Left to me means policies concerning money and work. Big, big, government funded by high, high, taxes and massive redistribution. A cradle to grave welfare state. And work affirmative action to end ongoing discrimination in employment. All over support for the administrative state, run by civil servants to enforce fair treatment of citizens including anti-discrimination regulations--not Big Man government. In international affairs it means the West vs. the Rest. Ukraine wants to join the West. I want everyone to join the West and the US should do what it can to promote the Westernization of the world. That's the sum total of liberalism for me.
I hate to see it called 'moderate'. Better 'FOCUSED'--on the fundamental goals of liberalism: opportunity, justice as fairness, all the Rawls stuff. About that we shouldn't be moderate.
The anti-woke is about rarking up the woke, in a triumphalist and vengeful way, as the woke compression bands come off. My guess is that as workery recedes so will anti-wokery, because it is an attitude of reaction, and is not based on things that matter.
I would love to have been a fly on the wall when that lawyer turned up.
We're on the cusp and could go either way. Either Right Woke gets the Left so mad that they redouble Wokeness in response which causes Right Woke to get even Woker in retaliation and we go on the downward spiral into a black hole of Woke from which not even light can emerge. Or Right Woke destroys Left Woke and in so doing destroys itself since without Left to react against Right Woke collapses.
H.E., you’re there at the coalface in the US; I’m miles away in NZ. But I do think anti-wokery isn’t an ideology—it’s a reaction. It’s not as though people are looking to replace identity politics with, say, a full-blown movement for tax abolition, Ross Perot, and widespread gun ownership. (Okay, maybe not the gun ownership bit, but you know what I mean.)
I’d say the ‘woke right’ might be something genuinely fearful in the air at a university, though, and maybe that’s what you’re picking up on.
Wokery has given the culture a thorough kicking. It’ll take a while for everyone’s fur to go down. The conservative right, broadly speaking, is about incremental change and pragmatism. But if we put aside that the international rules-based order isn’t looking too healthy right now, and neither are the usual processes in DC, we’re left with Donald and Elon. Neither of them is conservative or traditionally right-wing. I have no idea how to characterise them—except as forces of nature, having an impact at levels we haven’t seen before.
But I think the left has shot its bolt. The major bulk of everyone, apart from them, is fed up with their nonsense. Once people are willing to say the emperor has no clothes in public, that’s not a shift in collective awareness that gets rolled back easily.
It’s all performative tomfoolery, left and right. On one side, students camping out in the quad for Palestine—on the other side Trump encouraging supporters at rallies to ‘beat the crap’ out of people.
But a few ideologues on both sides have done bad stuff. On the left, unrestricted, chaotic illegal immigration. On the right, selling out Ukraine (which is what gets to me most!) and gutting the civil service. The DOGE agenda I think is the worst because the aim is to privatize as much as possible, to outsource public services to firms, non-profits, and contractors—essentially replace government agencies with businesses.
I have nothing against business. Some things are better done by firms; but other things better done by government, and maybe others by non-profits, coops, or people on their own. It’s an empirical question what works best for which jobs. The entrenched a priori assumption in the US is that government is always bad and business always does everything better. Gutting government agencies indiscriminately on a priori grounds, especially those involved with security, ain’t good.
I'd be careful about how making claim about "performative tomfoolery on college campuses" makes you look, regardless of the discussion itself
And categorizing immigration as a sin of the left is curious, considering that it is the right that actually has a motive to continue illegal immigration. Legal immigration is anti-capital.
If we completely close our borders, who will build your house, or pick your strawberries, or staff your dry cleaners or nail salon? Who will support the California almond industry?
I've got tenure. I don't have to be careful.
If you want strawberries picked then revive the Bracero program. Create a program for temporary guest workers. Some would want to live in the US--fix immigration so that those who do and qualify have a route to citizenship. Most don't. And for those who do, provide services to promote assimilation.
Thank you. Yes, that is relevant, that the military in the US holds a position similar to social welfare structures in Europe (and New Zealand).
I agree that rewarding Trump’s bullying approach is not something to do willingly.
European countries on average spend less than 2% of GDP on hard power. They have an understandable distaste of it. The US spends about 3.5%. Poland exceeds this and oddly, Greece comes close.
Russia and China are the ones changing the post-war equation. It is not so much that Trump is smashing the geopolitical order as entering the fray in the same unfortunate spirit. This weakens all of us in the west, and undermines our desire to work amongst ourselves at least, according to a rules-based order. Sadly structures are easy to rip down but hard to establish.
I think all of us outside the US see that we will have to waste (I mean spend) more on hard power.
I’m completely with you. We had better watch out or we will become an echo chamber.
I utterly support Ukraine and fantasise (unkindly and atavistically) that Russia will revert to the economic Stone Age.
But… what if Trump’s posturing re-energises Europe so they no longer free-ride on the military budget of the US. The EU+UK GDP is around $20T. Russia’s is around $2T. Ukraine’s is a massive and experienced army. And if Europe stepped up then I expect the US would remain engaged, albeit it to a lesser extent.
Step back. If you were Trump, and this adjustment was what you wanted, what would you say? (And thoroughly enjoy the ructions as you do so?)
I don’t know enough about Europe vs US military budgets to say anything sensible. If Trump did get Europe to kick in more on balance it would be a very good thing. But at a cost because it would reinforce the idea that blustering and bullying are the way to get things done and confirm Trump’s supporters view’ that he’s a consummate deal maker.
Here’s a side issue. In the US the military occupies a unique position as a provider of education, healthcare, social services, and opportunity for the working class. It pays huge bonuses and sends students through college, including expensive private universities like mine. VA hospitals and healthcare services are America’s socialized medicine. Europe spends more on welfare state benefits relative what it spends on the military but in the US the military is a major provider of welfare state benefits, though for a restricted population.
I think left woke is dying. This is what I am experiencing in my generation of the people between millennials and Z. There is an emerging consciousness that identity politics has distracted us from class consciousness and the general project of socialism.
The genocide in Gaza that is supported by the Democratic party has turned many away from left liberalism who had true moral principles. Those left in the woke space are being revealed as those who either are afraid of or actively frustrate social change.
There is also a rise of "left accelerationism" which forgoes the identity politics in favor of a full focus on forcing the social conditions to enact UBI and force an initiative for the development of "custodian AGI."
All that to say I think we are entering the era of the post-woke left. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing but it is certainly a welcome change in my opinion because I feel like identity politics was only a weight on the left that kept it paralyzed. My tinfoil schizo view is that companies push hard for "DEI" because it's an amazing political suppressant.
Alas. Thanks for taking the time to read the ramblings of a random 28 year old agender asshole with social ideals that are slowly but surely jading
I know it's scary, but I think it's time to admit that liberalism is a failed project, before we are swallowed by the oceans, ravaged by the water wars, sworn labor feality to our AI technofacist overlords, and lose access to personal property anyway.
We can socialize or we can let Amazon have all of it. Hopefully the youth make the right decision, whatever it is
I am getting the feeling that we might not actually agree on what "left" means. Regardless, I hope the moral core of my message comes through.
Left to me means policies concerning money and work. Big, big, government funded by high, high, taxes and massive redistribution. A cradle to grave welfare state. And work affirmative action to end ongoing discrimination in employment. All over support for the administrative state, run by civil servants to enforce fair treatment of citizens including anti-discrimination regulations--not Big Man government. In international affairs it means the West vs. the Rest. Ukraine wants to join the West. I want everyone to join the West and the US should do what it can to promote the Westernization of the world. That's the sum total of liberalism for me.
Right about now I'd take an extra-large serving of some moderate liberalism
I hate to see it called 'moderate'. Better 'FOCUSED'--on the fundamental goals of liberalism: opportunity, justice as fairness, all the Rawls stuff. About that we shouldn't be moderate.
Fair enough, we are saying the same thing I think.
The opposite of moderate, please. I don't want moderate while we are barreling towards disaster. A bit more urgency could do