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On March 22 2023 06:02 BlueBird. wrote: ... I live in Portland, OR lol, the idea that it is some hellish landscape that no one can inhabit or work in is ridiculous.
It is in complete shambles compared to 5/10 years ago, though. But most of the problems are related to homelessness getting more and more out of control, and that is clearly a national issue rather than an Oregon/Portland issue. The enormous influx of homeless folks from other states has a big impact on the livability of the city and riding public transit.
More and more restaurants are migrating to neighboring communities, such as Beaverton, because its basically the same thing but 100x cleaner and with 1/1000 as many homeless people creating giga-structures, chop shops and lots of other stuff.
The combination of Portland and Oregon's laws regarding public camping are a big part of the problem. But its not like Portland is the one creating the homeless people. There is a huge migration.
Gun violence is also way up, but its a secondary problem compared to the general dissolution of the city due to homelessness.
Homelessness is a federal problem. Not a state problem. Oregon and Portland are set up for failure by the federal government. But that doesn't change the fact that many people I know who used to staunchly defend Portland (for good reason) are now saying they are sad they simply don't want to hang out there any more and generally prefer to just go get food or whatever in Beaverton instead.
On March 22 2023 06:05 StasisField wrote: Can we please get a definition of what "wokeism" is? Pointing to examples and saying "this is wokeism" isn't a definition and makes it very convenient to decide what is and isn't wokeism at will. Define something concrete. Otherwise, wokeism is just "things I don't like".
From experience, this is more likely to not help us understand each other better are more likely to just lead to arguments over definitions and semantics. It's like when critical race theory in schools was discussed here. 90% of the conversation was people saying "well actually critical race theory is a college level course and it is definitely not being taught in grade schools." Instead of just accepting that ideas like white kids being taught they are oppressors and black kids being taught they are oppressed became colloquially known under the umbrella "critical race theory" and debating around that, people instead decided to argue the semantics of whether something is technically critical race theory or not.
Edit: Also looks like Falling has provided some definitions for us, so we can just refer to that post if we want a concrete written definition
On March 22 2023 06:05 StasisField wrote: Can we please get a definition of what "wokeism" is? Pointing to examples and saying "this is wokeism" isn't a definition and makes it very convenient to decide what is and isn't wokeism at will. Define something concrete. Otherwise, wokeism is just "things I don't like".
From experience, this is more likely to not help us understand each other better are more likely to just lead to arguments over definitions and semantics. It's like when critical race theory in schools was discussed here. 90% of the conversation was people saying "well actually critical race theory is a college level course and it is definitely not being taught in grade schools." Instead of just accepting that ideas like white kids being taught they are oppressors and black kids being taught they are oppressed became colloquially known under the umbrella "critical race theory" and debating around that, people instead decided to argue the semantics of whether something is technically critical race theory or not.
People argued against that definition because that's not what CRT is. CRT is an academic critique that says race is socially constructed and that our legal institutions are used to create and maintain inequalities between whites and nonwhites. It's an academic critique of systemic racism and a far cry from "white kids being taught they are oppressors". Your answer to being asked to give a definition of a term the right is poisoning in bad faith is to give another example where the right poisoned a term in bad faith. Stop poisoning words in bad faith and either come up with your own terms for what you want to discuss or use the actual definitions these words have. Until then, discussing these topics is largely a waste of time because we're not talking about the same thing which leads to a disconnect between both sides of the discussion.
On March 22 2023 06:05 StasisField wrote: Can we please get a definition of what "wokeism" is? Pointing to examples and saying "this is wokeism" isn't a definition and makes it very convenient to decide what is and isn't wokeism at will. Define something concrete. Otherwise, wokeism is just "things I don't like".
Edit: Also looks like Falling has provided some definitions for us, so we can just refer to that post if we want a concrete written definition
No, I want you, Blackjack, to pick the definition you want to use to define "woke" and "wokeism". No weaseling your way out of it. Pick what "woke" and "wokeism" are so we can discuss the merits of "woke" and "wokeism". Otherwise, I'm done wasting my time on this subject.
On March 20 2023 14:58 ChristianS wrote: @Intro: Don’t wanna go too long on this, but some points:
-Doesn’t really matter what his brand is in Florida, we’re talking about him running for president. Nationally his identity is pretty much entirely defined by “war on woke” stuff, I don’t care if Floridians like his policy on Everglades protection or Miami beach ordinances or w/e.
-You’re saying I “mischaracterized the education bill” but all I said was teachers are being told they might lose their job if they tell students their gay. And that’s… true? Oh, and I referenced “book bans,” which is also true? You’re explicitly saying “banning objectionable images is reasonable,” which seems to mean “he’s banning books and I like that.” Okay, good for you, why is that a mischaracterization though?
-“Undo left-wing dominance of the professoriate” is a perfect example of what I’m talking about! A bunch of academic fields got dominated by liberals. That wasn’t a government policy, it was just how the scholars tended to land. But! If you don’t like the scholars winding up liberal, you could seize government power and try to use it to “undo left-wing dominance of the professoriate,” i.e. punish liberal academics and reward conservative ones, and if you’re someone with a lot of resentment toward the liberal mainstream of the professoriate, that might appeal to you. Now copy and paste that to every corner of society, from Ivermectin to the green M&M, and you’ve got a pretty good picture of “anti-wokeness.”
On March 20 2023 13:45 BlackJack wrote:
On March 20 2023 06:50 ChristianS wrote: I mean if putting colleges through political purges led by guys like Chris Rufo is “the opposite of crazy,” I don’t want to be sane.
Fundamentally DeSantis’ central political identity is the “war on woke” which, generally, means things are happening culturally that conservatives don’t like, and while the “problem” isn’t a government policy, there’s still room to punish it with government power. Disney is too “woke” so you implement tax changes explicitly to punish them. Teachers are too “woke” so you implement changes such that if they admit they’re gay to students they could lose their job. Doctors are too “woke” so state-level policy forbids trans healthcare even for adults.
If people are exercising their freedoms in ways you don’t like, so you want to seize government power to punish them, there’s a decent chance you’re an authoritarian. In DeSantis’s case, book bans, cult of personality, and a press office explicitly geared toward personally punishing dissenters certainly make the word seem apt. Compared to Trump he’s definitely more likely to send CPS after parents of trans kids. On the other hand, Trump’s probably more likely to attempt violent overthrow of the government, so ya know, pick your poison. But “more sane version of Trump” just completely misunderstands the guy’s movement. He’s more systematic, the quirks are different, but the guy is more extreme than Trump in some pretty meaningful ways.
I pretty much agree. It’s easy for DeSantis to lean into the anti-woke stuff because I’m sure he realizes it’s a massively winning issue. Taking the side of common sense against the side of idiocy is bound to be the popular move.
Not surprised you feel that way. How do you square that with the last election? Seemed pretty clear that Republicans went really hard on anti-wokeness, they underperformed, and voters said it was partly because pronouns and trans athletes just aren’t salient issues. They don’t care very much about it and they think it’s weird you do. (Edit: “You” as in Republicans campaigning on those issues, not you Blackjack specifically. Not actually sure how much trans issues actually matter to you specifically)
If photo shoots in front of a wall of gas ranges is “common sense” to you, I think “common sense” was poorly named.
I don't think holding off the "red wave" from a batshit political party of bible thumpers and election deniers is as big of a win as you think it is. I would think that for most people women losing their rights to an abortion is a more salient issue than whether trans athletes should be allowed to compete in women's sports. I don't think this disproves that anti-woke is a winning issue for Republicans.
“Batshit party of Bible thumpers” is a bit lazy. Obviously if the anti-woke party does poorly in an election you’ll be inclined to blame it on any other factor but their anti-wokeness because you still want to say anti-wokeness is popular. Abortion is certainly more salient, and obviously it’s hard to assess the effect of any one variable on an election. You could, I suppose, read the result as “Republicans underperformed because their immensely popular anti-woke platform was only enough to stem the tide of the anti-Dobbs wave.” That said, I do think it was pretty clear that voters found Republicans’ culture war platform uninteresting.
But let me back up a moment, because I think we’re using some pretty coarse shorthand terminology that elides kind of a lot of meaningful distinctions. “Woke” is pretty obviously poorly defined, which is frustrating because it means “anti-woke” includes both completely idiotic positions like “The libs took away the sexy green M&M” along with much more sane stuff (or, at least, stuff that I would probably even agree with).
When I was in college a lot of my peers were spending a lot of time on Tumblr enumerating all of the facets of all things Problematic. The rhetorical positions were, at the very the least, annoying. It was a form of (in a broad sense) political argument that was completely uninterested in tolerating or discussing with dissenting views, in large part because the main purpose of it all seemed to be self-congratulation. 22 year olds were assuring themselves of their righteousness and self-worth entirely on the basis of having right-thinking opinions on whether Hank Azaria should voice Apu, or the acceptableness of giving Oscars to movies that fail the Bechdel Test. When your opinions exist entirely for self-soothing, you really aren’t looking to be challenged, even if the challenge is “well you’re 99% right, but I think on this one issue you should clarify how x should be handled.” Any challenge, however minor, is deflating. (This is, of course, an overgeneralization; any particular “woke” person might be more or less tolerant of having their views challenged, and any given critic might have been more or less reasonable to ignore.)
How harmful was it? I dunno. It could definitely tear apart friend groups in the right context. The internet has always had a tendency for a sort of drive-by judgmentalism that can be extremely unpleasant for whatever poor soul just became the Main Character of an extremely stupid drama. It could end a career, or kill off a TV show or something for no good reason. On the other hand, sometimes the “woke” people are right! Some stuff is racist; some terms or modes of discourse do carry ugly baggage once you unpack them. It’s not a fundamentally fruitless mode of thought.
The thing is, very little of this is a government policy problem. The anti-woke talk a lot about “eradicating the woke mind virus” and the like; I think it’s pretty obvious they’re usually just as uninterested in tolerating different viewpoints. What are book bans, if not an attempt to eliminate an idea without engaging with it rhetorically? It’s one thing if that’s a sexually explicit image, but if it’s a book discussing structural racism? Or the possibility of non-binary gender? If the “problem” is wokeness, i.e. that people exist with “woke” beliefs, and the “solution” is to use whatever government power necessary to eliminate those beliefs in the population, that’s quite a bit more heinous intolerance than the Tumblr kids were ever guilty of.
So to the extent “anti-woke” means “rolling your eyes when a bunch of random Twitter accounts say you can’t use the term JRPG any more or w/e,” I suspect that is, indeed, a broadly popular position. But if it means installing guys like Chris Rufo in college administrations to mandate professors aren’t allowed to use the word “racist” in class or something? I mean, if that’s a broadly popular position, then God help us.
Woke should be something like “I understand that transgendered men are not the same as biological men however I want to be kind and tolerant so I will choose to refer to them as men and use masculine pronouns.” Very reasonable. But actual woke these days is “transgendered men are literally the exact same as biological men and If you disagree you’re committing violence against trans people and it will make them commit suicide and now you’re worse than Hitler.”
Then you end up with Supreme Court justice KBJ being asked for how she would define what a woman is and she responds she doesn’t know because she’s not a biologist. This a very highly educated woman that’s going to be deciding very important issues for woman’s rights. Does anyone believe she doesn’t have some idea in her head of what a woman is? Of course nobody believes that, she just opts to give a non-answer to the question so that nobody’s toes get stepped on. When this even starts to infiltrated the highest court in the land it becomes a lot more pernicious than your peers tumblr posts.
Take the ACLU as another example. They have been around for a century and they have always operated under a “if the shoe was on the other foot” principle. Which means they will defend anyone’s rights in a blind and principled way regardless if they personally agree with what they are saying. They have defended plenty of despicable people, including the rights of pedophiles to talk about how great it is to have sex with young boys. Now even they weighing whether they should stop defending free speech that is “contrary to our values.” Also more pernicious than some Twitter hot takes.
Maybe this isn’t worth getting into, but I think the actual biology of gender might be a lot more complicated than you’re thinking. People have a simple model in their head of XY -> testosterone -> male genitalia and secondary sex characteristics, XX -> estrogen -> female genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. But actual organisms never want to conform to your model in the wild, not 100% of the time anyway. So you might actually have XX and never realize it unless you have a karyotype done for some reason, because phenotypically you were just always male and never thought to question it. That might be because there was a crossing over event with a Y chromosome, it might be because you have a congenital insensitivity to estrogen, it might be because you’re actually a chimera of two different cell lines and you’ve got different chromosomes in different parts of your body. There’s all kinds of weird stuff that can happen.
I say all this because in the simple model it’s tempting to think of “real” or “normal” males as opposed to trans males who, presumably, you’d figure are only psychologically inclined toward that identity. But biologists don’t spend a whole lot of time talking about “normal” because it doesn’t really exist; the actual biological story is pretty complicated for most people, not just for trans people. I wish I knew more about it, it’s not my area unfortunately.
Partly for the reasons above, I extremely don’t buy your KBJ example as “wokeness.” The only reason the question is being asked is because of culture war anti-woke nonsense, and the reason it works as a gotcha is because any attempt to answer it fully will involve distinctions and nuance that the question asker can write off as a dodge anyway. Legally defining “woman” will be difficult and contextual! In SCOTUS hearings it’s long-established precedent that you sidestep anyone trying to force you to give a controversial answer on a hot button issue. Partly because it’s good politics, partly because it’s not really appropriate to spout off on issues before the court before you’ve heard the oral arguments, etc. Anyway, after that hearing reporters asked several Republicans who were bloviating about it the same question, and they couldn’t give a good answer either!
The ACLU has definitely gotten a lot less pro-free speech over the years, I don’t dispute that. And I won’t dispute that people on the internet will get pretty dramatic if you imply any skepticism about a trans person’s identity (they also get pretty dramatic if you express an opinion about good animal care, or the right way to write a bit of code, but maybe this is a bit different). I’m open to being convinced that the excesses of “wokeness” have clear policy implications, although your KBJ or ACLU examples certainly don’t persuade me.
Like, to what extent is the problem captured by “some people have bad opinions and are pretty obnoxious about it”? Because the only answers I have to that are a) ignore them, b) try to convince them they’re wrong, or c) try to convince other people not to listen to them. Is “wokeness” qualitatively different?
If you want clear policy examples of wokeness ruining things just look at some of our once great cities. A blind eye getting turned to the crime of shoplifting is definitely wokeist ideology. The theory being that big corporations have billions in profits and shoplifting is a crime of poverty that isn't going to effect a WalMart or Walgreens. Then you end up with Walgreens closing down stores and politicians begging for them to not close because now seniors in the area will be in a pharmacy desert of sorts. The consequences of our own stupidity, whoops.
The DA of San Francisco was soundly defeated in a recall election after vowing not to go after small crimes of poverty and being extremely lenient on crime. Unilaterally deciding to not do your job and prosecute crimes because you want judicial reform is definitely woke-ist ideology in my book.
Or look at the SF school board, who had 3 members recalled because they were too busy trying to rename every school instead of getting kids back in the classroom during the pandemic. Apparently having a school named after Abraham Lincoln is more problematic than kids not being able to attend class. Here is one of my favorite news stories on the SF school board:
A gay dad volunteers for one of eight open slots on a parent committee that advises the school board. All of the 10 current members are straight moms. Three are white. Three are Latina. Two are Black. One is Tongan. They all want the dad to join them.
The seven school board members talk for two hours about whether the dad brings enough diversity. Yes, he’d be the only man. And the only LGBTQ representative. But he’d be the fourth white person in a district where 15% of students are white.
The gay dad never utters a single word. The board members do not ask the dad a single question before declining to approve him for the committee. They say they’ll consider allowing him to volunteer if he comes back with a slate of more diverse candidates, ideally including an Arab parent, a Native American parent, a Vietnamese parent and a Chinese parent who doesn’t speak English.
This is a level of parody that you wouldn't even believe on South Park and these are the people that are tasked with overseeing the education of children. How is this not absurd?
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot just lost her re-election. I think these are the types of elections you should be looking at as the referendum on woke-dom as opposed to the 2022 mid-terms.
Have you been to Portland lately? I was there last year and what an absolute shithole. I was walking around downtown and it was like a dystopian wasteland. So many abandoned and boarded up shops. I don't think anyone would argue that Portland is not the most "woke" city in America and it's turning into the biggest shitshow in America. Not a coincidence, imo.
There are thousands of examples. If you look at any 1 or 2 in isolation it doesn't look like much of anything. It's hard to quantify so it's easy write off.
I don't know what the chances are this becomes law as written or that Tina Kotek would sign, etc. State lawmakers in every state propose dumb things all the time so I don't take this as anything or else I'd post about the stupidity emanating from Florida or west Virgina more than I do (I do a good job of not doing it).
On March 22 2023 06:49 StasisField wrote: I want to pin Blackjack to a definition so I know what we're actually talking about and not just throwing everything he doesn't like under the "woke" banner. Working with the same definition is pretty integral to discussing a topic. Surely you understand that.
EDIT: And no, I'm not denying "woke" as a term ever existed (nobody on the left is). "Woke" has very much existed for several years now. But the way the right uses it has no meaning. We need words to have meaning if we're to have a conversation.
My impression is that this is actually a genuine complaint from the sincere right wingers - that the 'overarching woke ideology' encompasses a shift in language that make words lose their original meaning. Racism in particular being such a word, where it used to have a meaning akin to deliberately being an asshole to someone because they have a particular ethnic background, but where it has by some definitions also started to encompass unconscious actions or actions stemming from ignorance.
Then right wing trolls also make this argument about gender related words. Those I ignore - but I've seen many well-intended and genuinely caring teenagers express fear of voicing their opinion on issues relating to immigration, because they still have the understanding of being racist as a really heinous thing, but also that the word has gotten such wide definition that by some accounts, nearly everyone is racist. In the eyes of many, the insulting quality stays, because you they think that if you hate or discriminate against a person for being black, you're just a giant idiot, but then those same people might totally use the word Eskimo, and think it kinda sucks that now they are part of this group of giant idiots.
The fact is that words evolve over time and certain words will at certain times have different meanings to different people. I think it's generally very helpful to try to give concrete examples, even hypotheticals, and then have a discussion based around those, rather than try to discuss semantics. But yes, I made the point a couple days ago that BJ probably means something else by woke than what many of us do - but with transitional words I don't think we can necessarily claim that one definition is right, but rather be cognizant of the fact that different definitions exist.
On March 22 2023 06:05 StasisField wrote: Can we please get a definition of what "wokeism" is? Pointing to examples and saying "this is wokeism" isn't a definition and makes it very convenient to decide what is and isn't wokeism at will. Define something concrete. Otherwise, wokeism is just "things I don't like".
From experience, this is more likely to not help us understand each other better are more likely to just lead to arguments over definitions and semantics. It's like when critical race theory in schools was discussed here. 90% of the conversation was people saying "well actually critical race theory is a college level course and it is definitely not being taught in grade schools." Instead of just accepting that ideas like white kids being taught they are oppressors and black kids being taught they are oppressed became colloquially known under the umbrella "critical race theory" and debating around that, people instead decided to argue the semantics of whether something is technically critical race theory or not.
People argued against that definition because that's not what CRT is. CRT is an academic critique that says race is socially constructed and that our legal institutions are used to create and maintain inequalities between whites and nonwhites. It's an academic critique of systemic racism and a far cry from "white kids being taught they are oppressors". Your answer to being asked to give a definition of a term the right is poisoning in bad faith is to give another example where the right poisoned a term in bad faith. Stop poisoning words in bad faith and either come up with your own terms for what you want to discuss or use the actual definitions these words have. Until then, discussing these topics is largely a waste of time because we're not talking about the same thing which leads to a disconnect between both sides of the discussion.
On March 22 2023 06:05 StasisField wrote: Can we please get a definition of what "wokeism" is? Pointing to examples and saying "this is wokeism" isn't a definition and makes it very convenient to decide what is and isn't wokeism at will. Define something concrete. Otherwise, wokeism is just "things I don't like".
From experience, this is more likely to not help us understand each other better are more likely to just lead to arguments over definitions and semantics. It's like when critical race theory in schools was discussed here. 90% of the conversation was people saying "well actually critical race theory is a college level course and it is definitely not being taught in grade schools." Instead of just accepting that ideas like white kids being taught they are oppressors and black kids being taught they are oppressed became colloquially known under the umbrella "critical race theory" and debating around that, people instead decided to argue the semantics of whether something is technically critical race theory or not.
People argued against that definition because that's not what CRT is. CRT is an academic critique that says race is socially constructed and that our legal institutions are used to create and maintain inequalities between whites and nonwhites. It's an academic critique of systemic racism and a far cry from "white kids being taught they are oppressors". Your answer to being asked to give a definition of a term the right is poisoning in bad faith is to give another example where the right poisoned a term in bad faith. Stop poisoning words in bad faith and either come up with your own terms for what you want to discuss or use the actual definitions these words have. Until then, discussing these topics is largely a waste of time because we're not talking about the same thing which leads to a disconnect between both sides of the discussion.
Awesome so you admit that you were wrong and that it had nothing to do with kids being taught in grade school and that it was an academic thing tought in colleges the whole time?
On March 22 2023 06:49 StasisField wrote: I want to pin Blackjack to a definition so I know what we're actually talking about and not just throwing everything he doesn't like under the "woke" banner. Working with the same definition is pretty integral to discussing a topic. Surely you understand that.
EDIT: And no, I'm not denying "woke" as a term ever existed (nobody on the left is). "Woke" has very much existed for several years now. But the way the right uses it has no meaning. We need words to have meaning if we're to have a conversation.
My impression is that this is actually a genuine complaint from the sincere right wingers - that the 'overarching woke ideology' encompasses a shift in language that make words lose their original meaning. Racism in particular being such a word, where it used to have a meaning akin to deliberately being an asshole to someone because they have a particular ethnic background, but where it has by some definitions also started to encompass unconscious actions or actions stemming from ignorance.
Then right wing trolls also make this argument about gender related words. Those I ignore - but I've seen many well-intended and genuinely caring teenagers express fear of voicing their opinion on issues relating to immigration, because they still have the understanding of being racist as a really heinous thing, but also that the word has gotten such wide definition that by some accounts, nearly everyone is racist. In the eyes of many, the insulting quality stays, because you they think that if you hate or discriminate against a person for being black, you're just a giant idiot, but then those same people might totally use the word Eskimo, and think it kinda sucks that now they are part of this group of giant idiots.
The fact is that words evolve over time and certain words will at certain times have different meanings to different people. I think it's generally very helpful to try to give concrete examples, even hypotheticals, and then have a discussion based around those, rather than try to discuss semantics. But yes, I made the point a couple days ago that BJ probably means something else by woke than what many of us do - but with transitional words I don't think we can necessarily claim that one definition is right, but rather be cognizant of the fact that different definitions exist.
You can't just allow for people to change language to mean whatever they want whenever they want to fit however it benifits them most. You're talking about people trying to control the language of a debate in order to win the debate by making the thing being debated as vauge as possible to include the worst along with the best of the whole topic.
What the right wingers mean by woke is a lot different than what left wingers mean by woke. But being able to use the word as a sledgehammer against the most moderate and mundane by useing examples of the extreme and radical is purposeful. They are the ones trying to shift language to make words lose their original meaning. The fact that they can't come up with a single coherent definition or description of what they mean should show to you how hard they're useing ignorance to justify the hate they express with it. Ask any of them, any of them at all, what their solution is dealing with "wokeism" and you'll find anti intellectual anti trans anti gay anti womens health and privacy bills on all of it. At some point you need to wake up and see the paterns.
Do we really want to go through the parallel efforts on expanding what "groomers" are and how that word is being weaponized?
On March 20 2023 14:58 ChristianS wrote: @Intro: Don’t wanna go too long on this, but some points:
-Doesn’t really matter what his brand is in Florida, we’re talking about him running for president. Nationally his identity is pretty much entirely defined by “war on woke” stuff, I don’t care if Floridians like his policy on Everglades protection or Miami beach ordinances or w/e.
-You’re saying I “mischaracterized the education bill” but all I said was teachers are being told they might lose their job if they tell students their gay. And that’s… true? Oh, and I referenced “book bans,” which is also true? You’re explicitly saying “banning objectionable images is reasonable,” which seems to mean “he’s banning books and I like that.” Okay, good for you, why is that a mischaracterization though?
-“Undo left-wing dominance of the professoriate” is a perfect example of what I’m talking about! A bunch of academic fields got dominated by liberals. That wasn’t a government policy, it was just how the scholars tended to land. But! If you don’t like the scholars winding up liberal, you could seize government power and try to use it to “undo left-wing dominance of the professoriate,” i.e. punish liberal academics and reward conservative ones, and if you’re someone with a lot of resentment toward the liberal mainstream of the professoriate, that might appeal to you. Now copy and paste that to every corner of society, from Ivermectin to the green M&M, and you’ve got a pretty good picture of “anti-wokeness.”
On March 20 2023 13:45 BlackJack wrote:
On March 20 2023 06:50 ChristianS wrote: I mean if putting colleges through political purges led by guys like Chris Rufo is “the opposite of crazy,” I don’t want to be sane.
Fundamentally DeSantis’ central political identity is the “war on woke” which, generally, means things are happening culturally that conservatives don’t like, and while the “problem” isn’t a government policy, there’s still room to punish it with government power. Disney is too “woke” so you implement tax changes explicitly to punish them. Teachers are too “woke” so you implement changes such that if they admit they’re gay to students they could lose their job. Doctors are too “woke” so state-level policy forbids trans healthcare even for adults.
If people are exercising their freedoms in ways you don’t like, so you want to seize government power to punish them, there’s a decent chance you’re an authoritarian. In DeSantis’s case, book bans, cult of personality, and a press office explicitly geared toward personally punishing dissenters certainly make the word seem apt. Compared to Trump he’s definitely more likely to send CPS after parents of trans kids. On the other hand, Trump’s probably more likely to attempt violent overthrow of the government, so ya know, pick your poison. But “more sane version of Trump” just completely misunderstands the guy’s movement. He’s more systematic, the quirks are different, but the guy is more extreme than Trump in some pretty meaningful ways.
I pretty much agree. It’s easy for DeSantis to lean into the anti-woke stuff because I’m sure he realizes it’s a massively winning issue. Taking the side of common sense against the side of idiocy is bound to be the popular move.
Not surprised you feel that way. How do you square that with the last election? Seemed pretty clear that Republicans went really hard on anti-wokeness, they underperformed, and voters said it was partly because pronouns and trans athletes just aren’t salient issues. They don’t care very much about it and they think it’s weird you do. (Edit: “You” as in Republicans campaigning on those issues, not you Blackjack specifically. Not actually sure how much trans issues actually matter to you specifically)
If photo shoots in front of a wall of gas ranges is “common sense” to you, I think “common sense” was poorly named.
I don't think holding off the "red wave" from a batshit political party of bible thumpers and election deniers is as big of a win as you think it is. I would think that for most people women losing their rights to an abortion is a more salient issue than whether trans athletes should be allowed to compete in women's sports. I don't think this disproves that anti-woke is a winning issue for Republicans.
“Batshit party of Bible thumpers” is a bit lazy. Obviously if the anti-woke party does poorly in an election you’ll be inclined to blame it on any other factor but their anti-wokeness because you still want to say anti-wokeness is popular. Abortion is certainly more salient, and obviously it’s hard to assess the effect of any one variable on an election. You could, I suppose, read the result as “Republicans underperformed because their immensely popular anti-woke platform was only enough to stem the tide of the anti-Dobbs wave.” That said, I do think it was pretty clear that voters found Republicans’ culture war platform uninteresting.
But let me back up a moment, because I think we’re using some pretty coarse shorthand terminology that elides kind of a lot of meaningful distinctions. “Woke” is pretty obviously poorly defined, which is frustrating because it means “anti-woke” includes both completely idiotic positions like “The libs took away the sexy green M&M” along with much more sane stuff (or, at least, stuff that I would probably even agree with).
When I was in college a lot of my peers were spending a lot of time on Tumblr enumerating all of the facets of all things Problematic. The rhetorical positions were, at the very the least, annoying. It was a form of (in a broad sense) political argument that was completely uninterested in tolerating or discussing with dissenting views, in large part because the main purpose of it all seemed to be self-congratulation. 22 year olds were assuring themselves of their righteousness and self-worth entirely on the basis of having right-thinking opinions on whether Hank Azaria should voice Apu, or the acceptableness of giving Oscars to movies that fail the Bechdel Test. When your opinions exist entirely for self-soothing, you really aren’t looking to be challenged, even if the challenge is “well you’re 99% right, but I think on this one issue you should clarify how x should be handled.” Any challenge, however minor, is deflating. (This is, of course, an overgeneralization; any particular “woke” person might be more or less tolerant of having their views challenged, and any given critic might have been more or less reasonable to ignore.)
How harmful was it? I dunno. It could definitely tear apart friend groups in the right context. The internet has always had a tendency for a sort of drive-by judgmentalism that can be extremely unpleasant for whatever poor soul just became the Main Character of an extremely stupid drama. It could end a career, or kill off a TV show or something for no good reason. On the other hand, sometimes the “woke” people are right! Some stuff is racist; some terms or modes of discourse do carry ugly baggage once you unpack them. It’s not a fundamentally fruitless mode of thought.
The thing is, very little of this is a government policy problem. The anti-woke talk a lot about “eradicating the woke mind virus” and the like; I think it’s pretty obvious they’re usually just as uninterested in tolerating different viewpoints. What are book bans, if not an attempt to eliminate an idea without engaging with it rhetorically? It’s one thing if that’s a sexually explicit image, but if it’s a book discussing structural racism? Or the possibility of non-binary gender? If the “problem” is wokeness, i.e. that people exist with “woke” beliefs, and the “solution” is to use whatever government power necessary to eliminate those beliefs in the population, that’s quite a bit more heinous intolerance than the Tumblr kids were ever guilty of.
So to the extent “anti-woke” means “rolling your eyes when a bunch of random Twitter accounts say you can’t use the term JRPG any more or w/e,” I suspect that is, indeed, a broadly popular position. But if it means installing guys like Chris Rufo in college administrations to mandate professors aren’t allowed to use the word “racist” in class or something? I mean, if that’s a broadly popular position, then God help us.
Woke should be something like “I understand that transgendered men are not the same as biological men however I want to be kind and tolerant so I will choose to refer to them as men and use masculine pronouns.” Very reasonable. But actual woke these days is “transgendered men are literally the exact same as biological men and If you disagree you’re committing violence against trans people and it will make them commit suicide and now you’re worse than Hitler.”
Then you end up with Supreme Court justice KBJ being asked for how she would define what a woman is and she responds she doesn’t know because she’s not a biologist. This a very highly educated woman that’s going to be deciding very important issues for woman’s rights. Does anyone believe she doesn’t have some idea in her head of what a woman is? Of course nobody believes that, she just opts to give a non-answer to the question so that nobody’s toes get stepped on. When this even starts to infiltrated the highest court in the land it becomes a lot more pernicious than your peers tumblr posts.
Take the ACLU as another example. They have been around for a century and they have always operated under a “if the shoe was on the other foot” principle. Which means they will defend anyone’s rights in a blind and principled way regardless if they personally agree with what they are saying. They have defended plenty of despicable people, including the rights of pedophiles to talk about how great it is to have sex with young boys. Now even they weighing whether they should stop defending free speech that is “contrary to our values.” Also more pernicious than some Twitter hot takes.
Maybe this isn’t worth getting into, but I think the actual biology of gender might be a lot more complicated than you’re thinking. People have a simple model in their head of XY -> testosterone -> male genitalia and secondary sex characteristics, XX -> estrogen -> female genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. But actual organisms never want to conform to your model in the wild, not 100% of the time anyway. So you might actually have XX and never realize it unless you have a karyotype done for some reason, because phenotypically you were just always male and never thought to question it. That might be because there was a crossing over event with a Y chromosome, it might be because you have a congenital insensitivity to estrogen, it might be because you’re actually a chimera of two different cell lines and you’ve got different chromosomes in different parts of your body. There’s all kinds of weird stuff that can happen.
I say all this because in the simple model it’s tempting to think of “real” or “normal” males as opposed to trans males who, presumably, you’d figure are only psychologically inclined toward that identity. But biologists don’t spend a whole lot of time talking about “normal” because it doesn’t really exist; the actual biological story is pretty complicated for most people, not just for trans people. I wish I knew more about it, it’s not my area unfortunately.
Partly for the reasons above, I extremely don’t buy your KBJ example as “wokeness.” The only reason the question is being asked is because of culture war anti-woke nonsense, and the reason it works as a gotcha is because any attempt to answer it fully will involve distinctions and nuance that the question asker can write off as a dodge anyway. Legally defining “woman” will be difficult and contextual! In SCOTUS hearings it’s long-established precedent that you sidestep anyone trying to force you to give a controversial answer on a hot button issue. Partly because it’s good politics, partly because it’s not really appropriate to spout off on issues before the court before you’ve heard the oral arguments, etc. Anyway, after that hearing reporters asked several Republicans who were bloviating about it the same question, and they couldn’t give a good answer either!
The ACLU has definitely gotten a lot less pro-free speech over the years, I don’t dispute that. And I won’t dispute that people on the internet will get pretty dramatic if you imply any skepticism about a trans person’s identity (they also get pretty dramatic if you express an opinion about good animal care, or the right way to write a bit of code, but maybe this is a bit different). I’m open to being convinced that the excesses of “wokeness” have clear policy implications, although your KBJ or ACLU examples certainly don’t persuade me.
Like, to what extent is the problem captured by “some people have bad opinions and are pretty obnoxious about it”? Because the only answers I have to that are a) ignore them, b) try to convince them they’re wrong, or c) try to convince other people not to listen to them. Is “wokeness” qualitatively different?
If you want clear policy examples of wokeness ruining things just look at some of our once great cities. A blind eye getting turned to the crime of shoplifting is definitely wokeist ideology. The theory being that big corporations have billions in profits and shoplifting is a crime of poverty that isn't going to effect a WalMart or Walgreens. Then you end up with Walgreens closing down stores and politicians begging for them to not close because now seniors in the area will be in a pharmacy desert of sorts. The consequences of our own stupidity, whoops.
The DA of San Francisco was soundly defeated in a recall election after vowing not to go after small crimes of poverty and being extremely lenient on crime. Unilaterally deciding to not do your job and prosecute crimes because you want judicial reform is definitely woke-ist ideology in my book.
Or look at the SF school board, who had 3 members recalled because they were too busy trying to rename every school instead of getting kids back in the classroom during the pandemic. Apparently having a school named after Abraham Lincoln is more problematic than kids not being able to attend class. Here is one of my favorite news stories on the SF school board:
A gay dad volunteers for one of eight open slots on a parent committee that advises the school board. All of the 10 current members are straight moms. Three are white. Three are Latina. Two are Black. One is Tongan. They all want the dad to join them.
The seven school board members talk for two hours about whether the dad brings enough diversity. Yes, he’d be the only man. And the only LGBTQ representative. But he’d be the fourth white person in a district where 15% of students are white.
The gay dad never utters a single word. The board members do not ask the dad a single question before declining to approve him for the committee. They say they’ll consider allowing him to volunteer if he comes back with a slate of more diverse candidates, ideally including an Arab parent, a Native American parent, a Vietnamese parent and a Chinese parent who doesn’t speak English.
This is a level of parody that you wouldn't even believe on South Park and these are the people that are tasked with overseeing the education of children. How is this not absurd?
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot just lost her re-election. I think these are the types of elections you should be looking at as the referendum on woke-dom as opposed to the 2022 mid-terms.
Have you been to Portland lately? I was there last year and what an absolute shithole. I was walking around downtown and it was like a dystopian wasteland. So many abandoned and boarded up shops. I don't think anyone would argue that Portland is not the most "woke" city in America and it's turning into the biggest shitshow in America. Not a coincidence, imo.
There are thousands of examples. If you look at any 1 or 2 in isolation it doesn't look like much of anything. It's hard to quantify so it's easy write off.
Christ, are you a fan of that YouTube channel?
I remember the Chesa Boudin election. And yeah, I’ve been to Portland a couple times in recent years, I have family up there. As usual, I think the “wokeness” framing isn’t clarifying anything for you. You’re annoyed about how a school board meeting went + Show Spoiler +
I think you forgot to link the article for it?
, okay, but you somehow think this is the same problem as Portland having a homeless problem or San Francisco voting out a “soft on crime” DA. I don’t buy it! I don’t think voters are going to look at a DeSantis presidential campaign bragging about requiring general inspections in women’s sports and think “hmm, I think crime is bad, so this is really resonating with me.”
Voters like “tough on crime” rhetoric. This is not a recent development, nor is it exclusive to red or blue districts. They’re usually on pretty poor evidentiary footing that harsher policing reduce crime, but when you tell people “crime is bad, let’s brutalize criminals so they’ll stop” they tend to like that logic. They also like policies intended to push homeless people into some other district, policies that keep their own land value up even if that causes cost of living to skyrocket, etc. If you want to find a single overarching phenomenon that underlies most problems in local politics, try NIMBYism, it’s clearly not “wokeness.” Even in blue states the local policies enacted are seldom all that “woke.”
On March 22 2023 06:49 StasisField wrote: I want to pin Blackjack to a definition so I know what we're actually talking about and not just throwing everything he doesn't like under the "woke" banner. Working with the same definition is pretty integral to discussing a topic. Surely you understand that.
EDIT: And no, I'm not denying "woke" as a term ever existed (nobody on the left is). "Woke" has very much existed for several years now. But the way the right uses it has no meaning. We need words to have meaning if we're to have a conversation.
My impression is that this is actually a genuine complaint from the sincere right wingers - that the 'overarching woke ideology' encompasses a shift in language that make words lose their original meaning. Racism in particular being such a word, where it used to have a meaning akin to deliberately being an asshole to someone because they have a particular ethnic background, but where it has by some definitions also started to encompass unconscious actions or actions stemming from ignorance.
Then right wing trolls also make this argument about gender related words. Those I ignore - but I've seen many well-intended and genuinely caring teenagers express fear of voicing their opinion on issues relating to immigration, because they still have the understanding of being racist as a really heinous thing, but also that the word has gotten such wide definition that by some accounts, nearly everyone is racist. In the eyes of many, the insulting quality stays, because you they think that if you hate or discriminate against a person for being black, you're just a giant idiot, but then those same people might totally use the word Eskimo, and think it kinda sucks that now they are part of this group of giant idiots.
The fact is that words evolve over time and certain words will at certain times have different meanings to different people. I think it's generally very helpful to try to give concrete examples, even hypotheticals, and then have a discussion based around those, rather than try to discuss semantics. But yes, I made the point a couple days ago that BJ probably means something else by woke than what many of us do - but with transitional words I don't think we can necessarily claim that one definition is right, but rather be cognizant of the fact that different definitions exist.
I agree there is no "right" definition of a word or phrase (unless we are talking about academic or legal definitions). Language does shift over time and because of that the meaning of words are always changing. That's why I want Blackjack to define what "woke" and "wokeism" mean to him. "Woke" means very different things to the right and the left, so much to the point that I think without a definition to work off of, discussing "woke" becomes pointless. Just as GH has to use "raycism" so people understand what is being said, I think Blackjack should have to define what he means by "woke" and "wokeism" so the rest of us understand what is being discussed.
EDIT: I also think Blackjack's use of "woke" and "wokeism" is in bad faith and the reason he deliberately refuses to commit to a definition is because he posts in this thread in bad faith.
On March 22 2023 06:05 StasisField wrote: Can we please get a definition of what "wokeism" is? Pointing to examples and saying "this is wokeism" isn't a definition and makes it very convenient to decide what is and isn't wokeism at will. Define something concrete. Otherwise, wokeism is just "things I don't like".
From experience, this is more likely to not help us understand each other better are more likely to just lead to arguments over definitions and semantics. It's like when critical race theory in schools was discussed here. 90% of the conversation was people saying "well actually critical race theory is a college level course and it is definitely not being taught in grade schools." Instead of just accepting that ideas like white kids being taught they are oppressors and black kids being taught they are oppressed became colloquially known under the umbrella "critical race theory" and debating around that, people instead decided to argue the semantics of whether something is technically critical race theory or not.
People argued against that definition because that's not what CRT is. CRT is an academic critique that says race is socially constructed and that our legal institutions are used to create and maintain inequalities between whites and nonwhites. It's an academic critique of systemic racism and a far cry from "white kids being taught they are oppressors". Your answer to being asked to give a definition of a term the right is poisoning in bad faith is to give another example where the right poisoned a term in bad faith. Stop poisoning words in bad faith and either come up with your own terms for what you want to discuss or use the actual definitions these words have. Until then, discussing these topics is largely a waste of time because we're not talking about the same thing which leads to a disconnect between both sides of the discussion.
On March 22 2023 06:05 StasisField wrote: Can we please get a definition of what "wokeism" is? Pointing to examples and saying "this is wokeism" isn't a definition and makes it very convenient to decide what is and isn't wokeism at will. Define something concrete. Otherwise, wokeism is just "things I don't like".
From experience, this is more likely to not help us understand each other better are more likely to just lead to arguments over definitions and semantics. It's like when critical race theory in schools was discussed here. 90% of the conversation was people saying "well actually critical race theory is a college level course and it is definitely not being taught in grade schools." Instead of just accepting that ideas like white kids being taught they are oppressors and black kids being taught they are oppressed became colloquially known under the umbrella "critical race theory" and debating around that, people instead decided to argue the semantics of whether something is technically critical race theory or not.
People argued against that definition because that's not what CRT is. CRT is an academic critique that says race is socially constructed and that our legal institutions are used to create and maintain inequalities between whites and nonwhites. It's an academic critique of systemic racism and a far cry from "white kids being taught they are oppressors". Your answer to being asked to give a definition of a term the right is poisoning in bad faith is to give another example where the right poisoned a term in bad faith. Stop poisoning words in bad faith and either come up with your own terms for what you want to discuss or use the actual definitions these words have. Until then, discussing these topics is largely a waste of time because we're not talking about the same thing which leads to a disconnect between both sides of the discussion.
Awesome so you admit that you were wrong and that it had nothing to do with kids being taught in grade school and that it was an academic thing tought in colleges the whole time?
That's my point that you missed. I never said that grade schoolers were being taught "critical race theory." I said the term was used as a colloquial to describe certain ideas being taught in grade school. If I thought it was literally critical race theory then why would I call it a colloquial instead of just calling it critical race theory?
On March 22 2023 06:05 StasisField wrote: Can we please get a definition of what "wokeism" is? Pointing to examples and saying "this is wokeism" isn't a definition and makes it very convenient to decide what is and isn't wokeism at will. Define something concrete. Otherwise, wokeism is just "things I don't like".
From experience, this is more likely to not help us understand each other better are more likely to just lead to arguments over definitions and semantics. It's like when critical race theory in schools was discussed here. 90% of the conversation was people saying "well actually critical race theory is a college level course and it is definitely not being taught in grade schools." Instead of just accepting that ideas like white kids being taught they are oppressors and black kids being taught they are oppressed became colloquially known under the umbrella "critical race theory" and debating around that, people instead decided to argue the semantics of whether something is technically critical race theory or not.
People argued against that definition because that's not what CRT is. CRT is an academic critique that says race is socially constructed and that our legal institutions are used to create and maintain inequalities between whites and nonwhites. It's an academic critique of systemic racism and a far cry from "white kids being taught they are oppressors". Your answer to being asked to give a definition of a term the right is poisoning in bad faith is to give another example where the right poisoned a term in bad faith. Stop poisoning words in bad faith and either come up with your own terms for what you want to discuss or use the actual definitions these words have. Until then, discussing these topics is largely a waste of time because we're not talking about the same thing which leads to a disconnect between both sides of the discussion.
Awesome so you admit that you were wrong and that it had nothing to do with kids being taught in grade school and that it was an academic thing tought in colleges the whole time?
That's my point that you missed. I never said that grade schoolers were being taught "critical race theory." I said the term was used as a colloquial to describe certain ideas being taught in grade school. If I thought it was literally critical race theory then why would I call it a colloquial instead of just calling it critical race theory?
yeah, keep trying to steer away from the actual point being made. You have no concept of 'woke' that your complaining about. You just want to whine about something you don't like.
On March 22 2023 06:05 StasisField wrote: Can we please get a definition of what "wokeism" is? Pointing to examples and saying "this is wokeism" isn't a definition and makes it very convenient to decide what is and isn't wokeism at will. Define something concrete. Otherwise, wokeism is just "things I don't like".
From experience, this is more likely to not help us understand each other better are more likely to just lead to arguments over definitions and semantics. It's like when critical race theory in schools was discussed here. 90% of the conversation was people saying "well actually critical race theory is a college level course and it is definitely not being taught in grade schools." Instead of just accepting that ideas like white kids being taught they are oppressors and black kids being taught they are oppressed became colloquially known under the umbrella "critical race theory" and debating around that, people instead decided to argue the semantics of whether something is technically critical race theory or not.
People argued against that definition because that's not what CRT is. CRT is an academic critique that says race is socially constructed and that our legal institutions are used to create and maintain inequalities between whites and nonwhites. It's an academic critique of systemic racism and a far cry from "white kids being taught they are oppressors". Your answer to being asked to give a definition of a term the right is poisoning in bad faith is to give another example where the right poisoned a term in bad faith. Stop poisoning words in bad faith and either come up with your own terms for what you want to discuss or use the actual definitions these words have. Until then, discussing these topics is largely a waste of time because we're not talking about the same thing which leads to a disconnect between both sides of the discussion.
Awesome so you admit that you were wrong and that it had nothing to do with kids being taught in grade school and that it was an academic thing tought in colleges the whole time?
That's my point that you missed. I never said that grade schoolers were being taught "critical race theory." I said the term was used as a colloquial to describe certain ideas being taught in grade school. If I thought it was literally critical race theory then why would I call it a colloquial instead of just calling it critical race theory?
That doesn't change anything. Useing a semanical "I didn't say there teaching the thing I was just saying they were teaching the things that I describe as being the thing" argument doesn't leave you off the hook. You were describing kids in grade school being taught things you describe as critical race theory therefore you were describing kids in grade school being taught critical race theory the same as we've seen repeatedly people say that critical race theory needs to be kept out of our schools.
We have conservative states that are outlawing CRT being in grade schools, we have other states that have outlawed the emplacement of policies to each Critical race theory in school. You are talking about teaching critical race theory in school in context of Us politics.
Or you are asking for a level of grace from other posters that you have never reciprocated which is it?
He was using CRT as an example of a word taking on a colloquial meaning which differs from the original academic meaning, not arguing that CRT is taught in grade school. Then he argued that the semantic discussion some people prefer to have detracts from the discussion of examples or hypotheticals: rather than to debate whether it is correct to teach white kids that they are oppressors or black kids that they are oppressed (or, rather than discussing how prevalent this type of discourse is), people home in on how the phrase CRT isn't appropriate to describe what is being taught.
Honestly it is pretty similar to what is happening here: rather than discussing whether BJs concrete examples from SF are instances of good policy, or discuss whether those examples are nearly unique and thus irrelevant in terms of saying anything meaningful about the direction society is headed, these discussions are sidelined in favor of discussing whether BJ is correctly using the word woke.
On March 20 2023 14:58 ChristianS wrote: @Intro: Don’t wanna go too long on this, but some points:
-Doesn’t really matter what his brand is in Florida, we’re talking about him running for president. Nationally his identity is pretty much entirely defined by “war on woke” stuff, I don’t care if Floridians like his policy on Everglades protection or Miami beach ordinances or w/e.
-You’re saying I “mischaracterized the education bill” but all I said was teachers are being told they might lose their job if they tell students their gay. And that’s… true? Oh, and I referenced “book bans,” which is also true? You’re explicitly saying “banning objectionable images is reasonable,” which seems to mean “he’s banning books and I like that.” Okay, good for you, why is that a mischaracterization though?
-“Undo left-wing dominance of the professoriate” is a perfect example of what I’m talking about! A bunch of academic fields got dominated by liberals. That wasn’t a government policy, it was just how the scholars tended to land. But! If you don’t like the scholars winding up liberal, you could seize government power and try to use it to “undo left-wing dominance of the professoriate,” i.e. punish liberal academics and reward conservative ones, and if you’re someone with a lot of resentment toward the liberal mainstream of the professoriate, that might appeal to you. Now copy and paste that to every corner of society, from Ivermectin to the green M&M, and you’ve got a pretty good picture of “anti-wokeness.”
On March 20 2023 13:45 BlackJack wrote:
On March 20 2023 06:50 ChristianS wrote: I mean if putting colleges through political purges led by guys like Chris Rufo is “the opposite of crazy,” I don’t want to be sane.
Fundamentally DeSantis’ central political identity is the “war on woke” which, generally, means things are happening culturally that conservatives don’t like, and while the “problem” isn’t a government policy, there’s still room to punish it with government power. Disney is too “woke” so you implement tax changes explicitly to punish them. Teachers are too “woke” so you implement changes such that if they admit they’re gay to students they could lose their job. Doctors are too “woke” so state-level policy forbids trans healthcare even for adults.
If people are exercising their freedoms in ways you don’t like, so you want to seize government power to punish them, there’s a decent chance you’re an authoritarian. In DeSantis’s case, book bans, cult of personality, and a press office explicitly geared toward personally punishing dissenters certainly make the word seem apt. Compared to Trump he’s definitely more likely to send CPS after parents of trans kids. On the other hand, Trump’s probably more likely to attempt violent overthrow of the government, so ya know, pick your poison. But “more sane version of Trump” just completely misunderstands the guy’s movement. He’s more systematic, the quirks are different, but the guy is more extreme than Trump in some pretty meaningful ways.
I pretty much agree. It’s easy for DeSantis to lean into the anti-woke stuff because I’m sure he realizes it’s a massively winning issue. Taking the side of common sense against the side of idiocy is bound to be the popular move.
Not surprised you feel that way. How do you square that with the last election? Seemed pretty clear that Republicans went really hard on anti-wokeness, they underperformed, and voters said it was partly because pronouns and trans athletes just aren’t salient issues. They don’t care very much about it and they think it’s weird you do. (Edit: “You” as in Republicans campaigning on those issues, not you Blackjack specifically. Not actually sure how much trans issues actually matter to you specifically)
If photo shoots in front of a wall of gas ranges is “common sense” to you, I think “common sense” was poorly named.
I don't think holding off the "red wave" from a batshit political party of bible thumpers and election deniers is as big of a win as you think it is. I would think that for most people women losing their rights to an abortion is a more salient issue than whether trans athletes should be allowed to compete in women's sports. I don't think this disproves that anti-woke is a winning issue for Republicans.
“Batshit party of Bible thumpers” is a bit lazy. Obviously if the anti-woke party does poorly in an election you’ll be inclined to blame it on any other factor but their anti-wokeness because you still want to say anti-wokeness is popular. Abortion is certainly more salient, and obviously it’s hard to assess the effect of any one variable on an election. You could, I suppose, read the result as “Republicans underperformed because their immensely popular anti-woke platform was only enough to stem the tide of the anti-Dobbs wave.” That said, I do think it was pretty clear that voters found Republicans’ culture war platform uninteresting.
But let me back up a moment, because I think we’re using some pretty coarse shorthand terminology that elides kind of a lot of meaningful distinctions. “Woke” is pretty obviously poorly defined, which is frustrating because it means “anti-woke” includes both completely idiotic positions like “The libs took away the sexy green M&M” along with much more sane stuff (or, at least, stuff that I would probably even agree with).
When I was in college a lot of my peers were spending a lot of time on Tumblr enumerating all of the facets of all things Problematic. The rhetorical positions were, at the very the least, annoying. It was a form of (in a broad sense) political argument that was completely uninterested in tolerating or discussing with dissenting views, in large part because the main purpose of it all seemed to be self-congratulation. 22 year olds were assuring themselves of their righteousness and self-worth entirely on the basis of having right-thinking opinions on whether Hank Azaria should voice Apu, or the acceptableness of giving Oscars to movies that fail the Bechdel Test. When your opinions exist entirely for self-soothing, you really aren’t looking to be challenged, even if the challenge is “well you’re 99% right, but I think on this one issue you should clarify how x should be handled.” Any challenge, however minor, is deflating. (This is, of course, an overgeneralization; any particular “woke” person might be more or less tolerant of having their views challenged, and any given critic might have been more or less reasonable to ignore.)
How harmful was it? I dunno. It could definitely tear apart friend groups in the right context. The internet has always had a tendency for a sort of drive-by judgmentalism that can be extremely unpleasant for whatever poor soul just became the Main Character of an extremely stupid drama. It could end a career, or kill off a TV show or something for no good reason. On the other hand, sometimes the “woke” people are right! Some stuff is racist; some terms or modes of discourse do carry ugly baggage once you unpack them. It’s not a fundamentally fruitless mode of thought.
The thing is, very little of this is a government policy problem. The anti-woke talk a lot about “eradicating the woke mind virus” and the like; I think it’s pretty obvious they’re usually just as uninterested in tolerating different viewpoints. What are book bans, if not an attempt to eliminate an idea without engaging with it rhetorically? It’s one thing if that’s a sexually explicit image, but if it’s a book discussing structural racism? Or the possibility of non-binary gender? If the “problem” is wokeness, i.e. that people exist with “woke” beliefs, and the “solution” is to use whatever government power necessary to eliminate those beliefs in the population, that’s quite a bit more heinous intolerance than the Tumblr kids were ever guilty of.
So to the extent “anti-woke” means “rolling your eyes when a bunch of random Twitter accounts say you can’t use the term JRPG any more or w/e,” I suspect that is, indeed, a broadly popular position. But if it means installing guys like Chris Rufo in college administrations to mandate professors aren’t allowed to use the word “racist” in class or something? I mean, if that’s a broadly popular position, then God help us.
Woke should be something like “I understand that transgendered men are not the same as biological men however I want to be kind and tolerant so I will choose to refer to them as men and use masculine pronouns.” Very reasonable. But actual woke these days is “transgendered men are literally the exact same as biological men and If you disagree you’re committing violence against trans people and it will make them commit suicide and now you’re worse than Hitler.”
Then you end up with Supreme Court justice KBJ being asked for how she would define what a woman is and she responds she doesn’t know because she’s not a biologist. This a very highly educated woman that’s going to be deciding very important issues for woman’s rights. Does anyone believe she doesn’t have some idea in her head of what a woman is? Of course nobody believes that, she just opts to give a non-answer to the question so that nobody’s toes get stepped on. When this even starts to infiltrated the highest court in the land it becomes a lot more pernicious than your peers tumblr posts.
Take the ACLU as another example. They have been around for a century and they have always operated under a “if the shoe was on the other foot” principle. Which means they will defend anyone’s rights in a blind and principled way regardless if they personally agree with what they are saying. They have defended plenty of despicable people, including the rights of pedophiles to talk about how great it is to have sex with young boys. Now even they weighing whether they should stop defending free speech that is “contrary to our values.” Also more pernicious than some Twitter hot takes.
Maybe this isn’t worth getting into, but I think the actual biology of gender might be a lot more complicated than you’re thinking. People have a simple model in their head of XY -> testosterone -> male genitalia and secondary sex characteristics, XX -> estrogen -> female genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. But actual organisms never want to conform to your model in the wild, not 100% of the time anyway. So you might actually have XX and never realize it unless you have a karyotype done for some reason, because phenotypically you were just always male and never thought to question it. That might be because there was a crossing over event with a Y chromosome, it might be because you have a congenital insensitivity to estrogen, it might be because you’re actually a chimera of two different cell lines and you’ve got different chromosomes in different parts of your body. There’s all kinds of weird stuff that can happen.
I say all this because in the simple model it’s tempting to think of “real” or “normal” males as opposed to trans males who, presumably, you’d figure are only psychologically inclined toward that identity. But biologists don’t spend a whole lot of time talking about “normal” because it doesn’t really exist; the actual biological story is pretty complicated for most people, not just for trans people. I wish I knew more about it, it’s not my area unfortunately.
Partly for the reasons above, I extremely don’t buy your KBJ example as “wokeness.” The only reason the question is being asked is because of culture war anti-woke nonsense, and the reason it works as a gotcha is because any attempt to answer it fully will involve distinctions and nuance that the question asker can write off as a dodge anyway. Legally defining “woman” will be difficult and contextual! In SCOTUS hearings it’s long-established precedent that you sidestep anyone trying to force you to give a controversial answer on a hot button issue. Partly because it’s good politics, partly because it’s not really appropriate to spout off on issues before the court before you’ve heard the oral arguments, etc. Anyway, after that hearing reporters asked several Republicans who were bloviating about it the same question, and they couldn’t give a good answer either!
The ACLU has definitely gotten a lot less pro-free speech over the years, I don’t dispute that. And I won’t dispute that people on the internet will get pretty dramatic if you imply any skepticism about a trans person’s identity (they also get pretty dramatic if you express an opinion about good animal care, or the right way to write a bit of code, but maybe this is a bit different). I’m open to being convinced that the excesses of “wokeness” have clear policy implications, although your KBJ or ACLU examples certainly don’t persuade me.
Like, to what extent is the problem captured by “some people have bad opinions and are pretty obnoxious about it”? Because the only answers I have to that are a) ignore them, b) try to convince them they’re wrong, or c) try to convince other people not to listen to them. Is “wokeness” qualitatively different?
If you want clear policy examples of wokeness ruining things just look at some of our once great cities. A blind eye getting turned to the crime of shoplifting is definitely wokeist ideology. The theory being that big corporations have billions in profits and shoplifting is a crime of poverty that isn't going to effect a WalMart or Walgreens. Then you end up with Walgreens closing down stores and politicians begging for them to not close because now seniors in the area will be in a pharmacy desert of sorts. The consequences of our own stupidity, whoops.
The DA of San Francisco was soundly defeated in a recall election after vowing not to go after small crimes of poverty and being extremely lenient on crime. Unilaterally deciding to not do your job and prosecute crimes because you want judicial reform is definitely woke-ist ideology in my book.
Or look at the SF school board, who had 3 members recalled because they were too busy trying to rename every school instead of getting kids back in the classroom during the pandemic. Apparently having a school named after Abraham Lincoln is more problematic than kids not being able to attend class. Here is one of my favorite news stories on the SF school board:
A gay dad volunteers for one of eight open slots on a parent committee that advises the school board. All of the 10 current members are straight moms. Three are white. Three are Latina. Two are Black. One is Tongan. They all want the dad to join them.
The seven school board members talk for two hours about whether the dad brings enough diversity. Yes, he’d be the only man. And the only LGBTQ representative. But he’d be the fourth white person in a district where 15% of students are white.
The gay dad never utters a single word. The board members do not ask the dad a single question before declining to approve him for the committee. They say they’ll consider allowing him to volunteer if he comes back with a slate of more diverse candidates, ideally including an Arab parent, a Native American parent, a Vietnamese parent and a Chinese parent who doesn’t speak English.
This is a level of parody that you wouldn't even believe on South Park and these are the people that are tasked with overseeing the education of children. How is this not absurd?
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot just lost her re-election. I think these are the types of elections you should be looking at as the referendum on woke-dom as opposed to the 2022 mid-terms.
Have you been to Portland lately? I was there last year and what an absolute shithole. I was walking around downtown and it was like a dystopian wasteland. So many abandoned and boarded up shops. I don't think anyone would argue that Portland is not the most "woke" city in America and it's turning into the biggest shitshow in America. Not a coincidence, imo.
There are thousands of examples. If you look at any 1 or 2 in isolation it doesn't look like much of anything. It's hard to quantify so it's easy write off.
I don't know what the chances are this becomes law as written or that Tina Kotek would sign, etc. State lawmakers in every state propose dumb things all the time so I don't take this as anything or else I'd post about the stupidity emanating from Florida or west Virgina more than I do (I do a good job of not doing it).
I see, and appreciate, the reference behind your post.
The parent committee that was referenced is a volunteer based team that merely gives recommendations to the school board based on what parents are concerned about. They are not legally in charge of the school system and have no authority.
" people that are tasked with overseeing the education of children"
Is just a false statement. The school district, teachers, administrators and others are the ones that have a professional obligation to oversee student education. These people are volunteers tasked with giving input to the school board on concerns that parents have.
Given that this is just a batch of volunteers, I don't see the issue. Are they out of touch? Yes. But every single one of these unpaid, time consuming, volunteer positions is going to attract people that are out of touch.
On March 22 2023 08:41 Liquid`Drone wrote: He was using CRT as an example of a word taking on a colloquial meaning which differs from the original academic meaning, not arguing that CRT is taught in grade school. Then he argued that the semantic discussion some people prefer to have detracts from the discussion of examples or hypotheticals: rather than to debate whether it is correct to teach white kids that they are oppressors or black kids that they are oppressed (or, rather than discussing how prevalent this type of discourse is), people home in on how the phrase CRT isn't appropriate to describe what is being taught.
Honestly it is pretty similar to what is happening here: rather than discussing whether BJs concrete examples from SF are instances of good policy, or discuss whether those examples are nearly unique and thus irrelevant in terms of saying anything meaningful about the direction society is headed, these discussions are sidelined in favor of discussing whether BJ is correctly using the word woke.
Words matter Drone. Their definitions matter. He's not just giving examples and saying "these examples are bad". He's saying these examples are bad, misattributing them to left-leaning terms and ideas, and then claiming these left-leaning terms and ideas are bad because of these things. Why should the right freely decide what these left-leaning ideas mean (or in the case of "woke" not give them any meaning at all) and then categorize all bad things as products of these defined left-leaning ideas without pushback from the left? That's bad faith behavior and should receive pushback.
Because his Portland post was about how dems have been doing woke and how stupid dems are for doing woke to their communities. He was using it as the same broad term that republicans used crt and groomers to mean an impossibly broad series of things and label them all as being the mainstream tenant of democrats. He used an example of Chicago to show how broadly he was using the descriptor. He then tried to include crt as a gotcha to define it in his imagining insisting that it was fact but shielding himself from any response by insisting that "oh I wasn't talking about it I was just talking about the example of it" as if examples can't be used both ways.
On March 22 2023 08:41 Liquid`Drone wrote: He was using CRT as an example of a word taking on a colloquial meaning which differs from the original academic meaning, not arguing that CRT is taught in grade school. Then he argued that the semantic discussion some people prefer to have detracts from the discussion of examples or hypotheticals: rather than to debate whether it is correct to teach white kids that they are oppressors or black kids that they are oppressed (or, rather than discussing how prevalent this type of discourse is), people home in on how the phrase CRT isn't appropriate to describe what is being taught.
Honestly it is pretty similar to what is happening here: rather than discussing whether BJs concrete examples from SF are instances of good policy, or discuss whether those examples are nearly unique and thus irrelevant in terms of saying anything meaningful about the direction society is headed, these discussions are sidelined in favor of discussing whether BJ is correctly using the word woke.
Defining terms that we use - especially terms that can be used in different or confusing ways - is necessary for avoiding semantics arguments. It's necessary for clarity. That's basic discussion 101. The idea that we shouldn't define terms because not knowing the intention behind a label that someone uses is somehow preferable, is absolutely backwards.
The only reason one would have for not providing a definition of a word they're using is to leave an opening for bad-faith backtracking and moving goalposts, in case they end up being proven wrong, by insisting that that's not what they secretly meant by the word they're using.
On March 22 2023 08:12 Liquid`Drone wrote: I made the point a couple days ago that BJ probably means something else by woke than what many of us do - but with transitional words I don't think we can necessarily claim that one definition is right, but rather be cognizant of the fact that different definitions exist.
This is exactly why defining words is important. If you and I have different personal definitions for the same word, it's vital that I say something like "this is what I mean by X", and then you say "that's not how I'd use the term, but for the purpose of this conversation, let's just run with your definition for now (or let's just run with my definition for now)", and then we can potentially have a meaningful conversation without talking past each other, since otherwise I'd be privately using my definition while you'd be privately using a different definition, leading to confusion and miscommunication. The label itself may not be a big deal between two people, but the definition of the label absolutely is.
EPT
