First of all, thanks for the shout-out. One additional thought on Youngkin. Despite Democrats' entirely sensible strategy to tie the fellow to Trump, he was the CEO of the freaking Carlyle Group, a firm that's as "establishment" (and classically "swampy") as they come[1]. If anyone who runs on a #MAGA ticket has the potential to snap back to the posture of a classic GOP politico, it's this guy. If he wins, I expect Virginia to get more Governor Romney out of him than Governor DeSantis.
Onto other thoughts from this post.
"Another way that the anti-woke forces veer into jerkdom is with the 'Let’s go, Brandon' meme. If you aren’t familiar with the phrase, you can read about the backstory here. In short, the phrase is code for 'F- Joe Biden.' It doesn’t offer a critique of Biden’s policies or presidency, intelligent or otherwise, it’s just an epithet."
I find this whole "Brandon" thing absolutely hilarious. It's about as clever as a 4-year old making a poop joke, and I find the conservatives who think they're pulling a fast one to be funnier than the joke itself (just like laughing at the 4-year old laughing at his own poop joke, which is funny in its own right). I'm also amused when members of the Left are offended by it, as they really shouldn't be, given that they're personally identifying with Dear Leader Biden in the same manner that the Trumpkins identified with Dear Leader Trump anytime anyone said anything cross about The Former Guy. ("An attack against him is an attack against us all 74 million voters!") The best thing that offended Leftists can do in this situation is roll their eyes and get on with their business (like when your 4-year old won't stop telling poop jokes).
"Erickson also says, 'You will be made to care,' but the truth is that they can’t make you care. The woke scolds only have power over most of us if we let them. People talk about being canceled, but the truth is that the wokes don’t have that power over most of us. About the worst that will happen is we lose a social media account and the truth is that closing your social media account would probably be doing most of us a favor."
100%. If you want to combat Wokism, the best way to do so isn't in raising an army to fight against it, but rather smother it with indifference. Let Kendi and pals fall back into the academic obscurity they deserve. Dealing with this in the workplace? There's a whole Reddit[2] devoted to "malicious compliance" where you can find some inspiration if your employer is bitten by this bug. (Or go self-employed, which is how I avoid all of it.)
To be clear, I 100% expect wokism to become the staid corporate philosophy that its proponents are pushing it to become and for it to become fashionable and edgy to rebel against it, just as Gen X pushed back against Tipper Gore back in the '80s. And I expect it to fizzle out into the same bin as the '90s' political correctness before it has any chance to diminish the First Amendment.
Blurred I do tend to agree with. I like to call it the ratchet theory. From my perspective as a fusionist conservative, the US has incrementally departed from its Constitutional moorings for decades. It is perhaps best evidenced the steady growth in the power and size of the Federal state, with Federalism and the Separation of Powers having been seriously eroded. The current regulatory reach and welfare state policies of the Feds significantly depart from one bound by the limits of the Constitution. From a cultural perspective, deleterious norms in our society gradually become mainstreamed into society(counterculture, Clintonianism, Trumpism being the latest examples). Most folks on the right love to cheer when there is a new R administration. But why they do not often realize, is that the goalposts usually have already shifted, making whatever policy accomplishments they achieve seem like a monumental conservative victory. From the past 150 years, you only had 3 periods of solidly conservative pushback and realignment. Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century, Harding/Coolidge in the 1920s-1930s, and the Reagan era from the 1980s-1990s. Other Presidents didn't shift the ideological ball all that much. I've become more pragmatic in my voting and expectations, knowing full well that conservatism requires individual self-restraint, virtue, and restraining the excesses of human nature. It is not a natural governing philosophy, as it is an aspirational philosophy that often falls short in implementation due to the imperfection, flawed nature of humankind. As long as we make measured steps in the right direction, then I'm content.
If I felt we are making measured steps in the right direction, I would also be content. I believe most of the problems we now face were caused by a failure to strictly follow the Constitution, at least one poor Amendment and a failure to enforce Constitutional laws.
It's not just the first amendment. It's school curricula, parental rights, state control of elections, military mission readiness, immigration control and lots of other stuff.
I guess I'm not really all that concerned about it as long as we're free to speak about it, and elect folks who represent us to implement law that reflects the beliefs and attitudes of the represented. (On that note, I'm VERY interested in how you see wokism overlapping with elections.)
If something's becoming popular then it's on the opponents to make their vision more popular as long as we have a democratic process to work out the differences. And that's precisely what I'm seeing as this Virginia election unfolds. So the system currently seems to be working as intended - I wish more conservatives recognized this and were staging their resistance in the political system instead of delegitimizing that process when it doesn't go their way. (And to be fair, to see the school board meetings, parents have caught on to this and have started to push back effectively.)
I'm always look to our history as a reminder that having codified, constitutionally guaranteed rights as enumerated in the Bill of Rights didn't necessarily result in rights being guaranteed for all. That the cultural attitudes of the people often conflicted and prevailed over the Bill of Rights and the aspirational ideals in the Declaration of Independence. Even after emancipation, and the amending of the Constitution for the 3 reconstruction amendments(13A-15A), the country would go through decades of Jim Crow, that finally receded during the 1960s. The basic lesson is, you can have as many Constitutional amendments that guarantees basic rights. But it doesnt mean much without a moral and virtuous people. People who are committed to maintaining the rule of law, individual dignity and worth, pluralistic tolerance, and basic human decency.
Fast forward to today, many of the illiberal folks from the left and right have an increasingly hostile view towards private property and free speech rights(the hard left has always viewed the right to gun ownership with latent hostility). This is why it is always important to push back against these trends. Many of the older deleterious trends met a swift death, because a solid majority of the populace stood firmly against it. They fought smart though. There wasn't this "F___ Trump", "F___ Biden", "Lets go Brandon" or any of this "f___ the other side".
So you are justified in being concerned for the things you mentioned above. I am likewise concerned myself. The best way to fight back is to expose woke leftists for their ridiculous beliefs. Then provide contrast to these wokes by coming up with superior ideas and beliefs. So I agree with you in pushing back against wokeness. As long one does it in a smart, productive manner.
Brash and obnoxious behavior does obscure whatever truth is in the message. Your statement about Constitutional rights is spot-on and something I have believed for years. There is no guarantee that individuals will honor those rights. With regard to "wokeness", superior ideas are not enough when the panderers are in charge but violence and coarseness do not help matters.
I believe the Constitution was written assuming that our nation would consist mostly of a homogenous population of men of good will who have a strong moral compass. Laws were written to control the exceptions to that assumption. Obviously, the population is no longer homogenous, the moral compass is pointing in different directions and good will is no longer the rule.
Ever since the Constitution was ratified there has been a progressive movement to give the central government more control over our day-to-day lives and to weaken the role of the states. Legislators, courts and bureaucrats have all contributed to diminishing the role of individuals and the states.
So I am a bit late to this convo. Curtis, I do agree that ignoring the illiberal left's penchant for wokeness can lead to woke leftists having a greater permission structure further entrench their toxic views into society. While toxic wokeness is still small relative to the size of the country, it has steadily been a growing phenomenon in our cultural and education institutions. It is more of a nascent thing in K-12 schools, but wokeness has been more prevalent in colleges and universities. You can also count the corporate world as having seen an uptick in woke behavior. I used to think that you could ignore these extremists and they will discredit themselves into oblivion or obscurity. I think part of the reason is that many of these woke extremists are very brash, loud, and just plain out obnoxious. And understandably,(some have called it "white guilt") many people in these institutions don't relish a nasty confrontation and don't want their reputation tarred, so they cave to the woke mob. And you Curtis mentioned increasing unrest. It brings to mind the 2020 riots. Granted most of the protests were peaceful, though a few weren't. But while these woke mobsters were destroying private property(often belonging to blacks and other nonwhites), many left leaners shrugged, and often came up with an out-of-context quote from MLK Jr citing that "riots are the language of the unheard". Dr. King's full remarks are part of a speech he made at Stanford, CA, and when one reads the full context of his remarks, it is clear that he never condoned rioting, while understanding the frustration of his people. Other remarks included "life is more valuable than property" as a strawman argument to justify property destruction was justified because of "racial justice", among others. So yes, you are right in that one shouldn't ignore it and expect it to fizzle out.
I think though the way to contest wokeness, is not through some of this "anti-woke" behavior from some parts of the right. To me, this essentially amounts to fighting wokeness with wokeness of one's own. Conservatives shouldn't go out and try to get a Biden voting liberal fired from their job as a way of pushing back against woke cancel culture. That leftists used the F-bomb with Bush 43's or Trump's name, shouldn't be an invitation for those on the right to do the same thing. You can't win persuadable voters, and many of them will just keep their mouths shut and tune out while the illiberal stench from both extremes will continue to fester.
The progressive left has a similar problem with "anti-racism". They have long had a major problem equating differences in policy matters with racism, and have an ugly history of race baiting/playing the race card for things not even remotely racist. Many of them have promoted twisted concepts like race based equity(as opposed to equality and opportunity). Much of their so-called "anti-racism" essentially amounts to racist sentiments and beliefs, using whites as a boogeyman, and making underhandedly racist assertions that nonwhites are stuck to a tribal belief system, and are not capable of thinking for themselves.
Neither party is the savior it claims to be for our country. Neither party can fix America's broken spiritual condition.
However, as far as I am concerned, as a born-again Christian, I consider GOP to be the lesser of evils. At this point, even though GOP is inflected with many problems, including Trump, for most part, it is far more accepting of evangelical voters like me, and its policies or governance is far less hostile to any type of religious piety.
Disagree with me if you want to, but this is simply my view and I suspect a great deal of people like me also holds this view as well.
"If we are between a spiritual rock and a hard place when it comes to the political landscape, what are we to do? Charles Spurgeon famously said, “Of two evils, choose neither,” and that’s the key. If it comes down to choosing the lesser evil, then we’ve already lost the battle."
Sounds good but one will get chosen. If you can't find anything to differentiate between the two it doesn't matter and others will do the choosing for you. I personally prefer to have a say-so in the outcome.
Of course you will be made to care. And just to make sure Erick and all his right wing buddies will tell any lie they need to you to get you to believe it. And then they will pretend they aren't the evil ones because there is nothing a christian is better at then projecting.
I'm sure Erick represented his god well in his twitter spat with Swift. It's just that his god isn't who he thinks it is.
First of all, thanks for the shout-out. One additional thought on Youngkin. Despite Democrats' entirely sensible strategy to tie the fellow to Trump, he was the CEO of the freaking Carlyle Group, a firm that's as "establishment" (and classically "swampy") as they come[1]. If anyone who runs on a #MAGA ticket has the potential to snap back to the posture of a classic GOP politico, it's this guy. If he wins, I expect Virginia to get more Governor Romney out of him than Governor DeSantis.
Onto other thoughts from this post.
"Another way that the anti-woke forces veer into jerkdom is with the 'Let’s go, Brandon' meme. If you aren’t familiar with the phrase, you can read about the backstory here. In short, the phrase is code for 'F- Joe Biden.' It doesn’t offer a critique of Biden’s policies or presidency, intelligent or otherwise, it’s just an epithet."
I find this whole "Brandon" thing absolutely hilarious. It's about as clever as a 4-year old making a poop joke, and I find the conservatives who think they're pulling a fast one to be funnier than the joke itself (just like laughing at the 4-year old laughing at his own poop joke, which is funny in its own right). I'm also amused when members of the Left are offended by it, as they really shouldn't be, given that they're personally identifying with Dear Leader Biden in the same manner that the Trumpkins identified with Dear Leader Trump anytime anyone said anything cross about The Former Guy. ("An attack against him is an attack against us all 74 million voters!") The best thing that offended Leftists can do in this situation is roll their eyes and get on with their business (like when your 4-year old won't stop telling poop jokes).
"Erickson also says, 'You will be made to care,' but the truth is that they can’t make you care. The woke scolds only have power over most of us if we let them. People talk about being canceled, but the truth is that the wokes don’t have that power over most of us. About the worst that will happen is we lose a social media account and the truth is that closing your social media account would probably be doing most of us a favor."
100%. If you want to combat Wokism, the best way to do so isn't in raising an army to fight against it, but rather smother it with indifference. Let Kendi and pals fall back into the academic obscurity they deserve. Dealing with this in the workplace? There's a whole Reddit[2] devoted to "malicious compliance" where you can find some inspiration if your employer is bitten by this bug. (Or go self-employed, which is how I avoid all of it.)
Become Dee Snider to Wokism's Tipper Gore.[3]
[1] https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2002/03/18/319881/index.htm
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veoYcsH7Wrs
I agree that it's just an epithet but it is being becoming more popular and it shows increasing unrest.
The trouble with ignoring wokism is that it could very well become codified. Check out Canada and the UK among others.
Neither Canada nor the UK have a robust First Amendment like we do that any codification would have to accommodate.
To be clear, I 100% expect wokism to become the staid corporate philosophy that its proponents are pushing it to become and for it to become fashionable and edgy to rebel against it, just as Gen X pushed back against Tipper Gore back in the '80s. And I expect it to fizzle out into the same bin as the '90s' political correctness before it has any chance to diminish the First Amendment.
Everything old is new again.
Everything old is new again and becomes a little more blurred in the process.
Blurred I do tend to agree with. I like to call it the ratchet theory. From my perspective as a fusionist conservative, the US has incrementally departed from its Constitutional moorings for decades. It is perhaps best evidenced the steady growth in the power and size of the Federal state, with Federalism and the Separation of Powers having been seriously eroded. The current regulatory reach and welfare state policies of the Feds significantly depart from one bound by the limits of the Constitution. From a cultural perspective, deleterious norms in our society gradually become mainstreamed into society(counterculture, Clintonianism, Trumpism being the latest examples). Most folks on the right love to cheer when there is a new R administration. But why they do not often realize, is that the goalposts usually have already shifted, making whatever policy accomplishments they achieve seem like a monumental conservative victory. From the past 150 years, you only had 3 periods of solidly conservative pushback and realignment. Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century, Harding/Coolidge in the 1920s-1930s, and the Reagan era from the 1980s-1990s. Other Presidents didn't shift the ideological ball all that much. I've become more pragmatic in my voting and expectations, knowing full well that conservatism requires individual self-restraint, virtue, and restraining the excesses of human nature. It is not a natural governing philosophy, as it is an aspirational philosophy that often falls short in implementation due to the imperfection, flawed nature of humankind. As long as we make measured steps in the right direction, then I'm content.
If I felt we are making measured steps in the right direction, I would also be content. I believe most of the problems we now face were caused by a failure to strictly follow the Constitution, at least one poor Amendment and a failure to enforce Constitutional laws.
It's not just the first amendment. It's school curricula, parental rights, state control of elections, military mission readiness, immigration control and lots of other stuff.
Fair 'nuff.
I guess I'm not really all that concerned about it as long as we're free to speak about it, and elect folks who represent us to implement law that reflects the beliefs and attitudes of the represented. (On that note, I'm VERY interested in how you see wokism overlapping with elections.)
If something's becoming popular then it's on the opponents to make their vision more popular as long as we have a democratic process to work out the differences. And that's precisely what I'm seeing as this Virginia election unfolds. So the system currently seems to be working as intended - I wish more conservatives recognized this and were staging their resistance in the political system instead of delegitimizing that process when it doesn't go their way. (And to be fair, to see the school board meetings, parents have caught on to this and have started to push back effectively.)
I'm always look to our history as a reminder that having codified, constitutionally guaranteed rights as enumerated in the Bill of Rights didn't necessarily result in rights being guaranteed for all. That the cultural attitudes of the people often conflicted and prevailed over the Bill of Rights and the aspirational ideals in the Declaration of Independence. Even after emancipation, and the amending of the Constitution for the 3 reconstruction amendments(13A-15A), the country would go through decades of Jim Crow, that finally receded during the 1960s. The basic lesson is, you can have as many Constitutional amendments that guarantees basic rights. But it doesnt mean much without a moral and virtuous people. People who are committed to maintaining the rule of law, individual dignity and worth, pluralistic tolerance, and basic human decency.
Fast forward to today, many of the illiberal folks from the left and right have an increasingly hostile view towards private property and free speech rights(the hard left has always viewed the right to gun ownership with latent hostility). This is why it is always important to push back against these trends. Many of the older deleterious trends met a swift death, because a solid majority of the populace stood firmly against it. They fought smart though. There wasn't this "F___ Trump", "F___ Biden", "Lets go Brandon" or any of this "f___ the other side".
So you are justified in being concerned for the things you mentioned above. I am likewise concerned myself. The best way to fight back is to expose woke leftists for their ridiculous beliefs. Then provide contrast to these wokes by coming up with superior ideas and beliefs. So I agree with you in pushing back against wokeness. As long one does it in a smart, productive manner.
Brash and obnoxious behavior does obscure whatever truth is in the message. Your statement about Constitutional rights is spot-on and something I have believed for years. There is no guarantee that individuals will honor those rights. With regard to "wokeness", superior ideas are not enough when the panderers are in charge but violence and coarseness do not help matters.
I believe the Constitution was written assuming that our nation would consist mostly of a homogenous population of men of good will who have a strong moral compass. Laws were written to control the exceptions to that assumption. Obviously, the population is no longer homogenous, the moral compass is pointing in different directions and good will is no longer the rule.
Ever since the Constitution was ratified there has been a progressive movement to give the central government more control over our day-to-day lives and to weaken the role of the states. Legislators, courts and bureaucrats have all contributed to diminishing the role of individuals and the states.
So I am a bit late to this convo. Curtis, I do agree that ignoring the illiberal left's penchant for wokeness can lead to woke leftists having a greater permission structure further entrench their toxic views into society. While toxic wokeness is still small relative to the size of the country, it has steadily been a growing phenomenon in our cultural and education institutions. It is more of a nascent thing in K-12 schools, but wokeness has been more prevalent in colleges and universities. You can also count the corporate world as having seen an uptick in woke behavior. I used to think that you could ignore these extremists and they will discredit themselves into oblivion or obscurity. I think part of the reason is that many of these woke extremists are very brash, loud, and just plain out obnoxious. And understandably,(some have called it "white guilt") many people in these institutions don't relish a nasty confrontation and don't want their reputation tarred, so they cave to the woke mob. And you Curtis mentioned increasing unrest. It brings to mind the 2020 riots. Granted most of the protests were peaceful, though a few weren't. But while these woke mobsters were destroying private property(often belonging to blacks and other nonwhites), many left leaners shrugged, and often came up with an out-of-context quote from MLK Jr citing that "riots are the language of the unheard". Dr. King's full remarks are part of a speech he made at Stanford, CA, and when one reads the full context of his remarks, it is clear that he never condoned rioting, while understanding the frustration of his people. Other remarks included "life is more valuable than property" as a strawman argument to justify property destruction was justified because of "racial justice", among others. So yes, you are right in that one shouldn't ignore it and expect it to fizzle out.
I think though the way to contest wokeness, is not through some of this "anti-woke" behavior from some parts of the right. To me, this essentially amounts to fighting wokeness with wokeness of one's own. Conservatives shouldn't go out and try to get a Biden voting liberal fired from their job as a way of pushing back against woke cancel culture. That leftists used the F-bomb with Bush 43's or Trump's name, shouldn't be an invitation for those on the right to do the same thing. You can't win persuadable voters, and many of them will just keep their mouths shut and tune out while the illiberal stench from both extremes will continue to fester.
The progressive left has a similar problem with "anti-racism". They have long had a major problem equating differences in policy matters with racism, and have an ugly history of race baiting/playing the race card for things not even remotely racist. Many of them have promoted twisted concepts like race based equity(as opposed to equality and opportunity). Much of their so-called "anti-racism" essentially amounts to racist sentiments and beliefs, using whites as a boogeyman, and making underhandedly racist assertions that nonwhites are stuck to a tribal belief system, and are not capable of thinking for themselves.
Neither party is the savior it claims to be for our country. Neither party can fix America's broken spiritual condition.
However, as far as I am concerned, as a born-again Christian, I consider GOP to be the lesser of evils. At this point, even though GOP is inflected with many problems, including Trump, for most part, it is far more accepting of evangelical voters like me, and its policies or governance is far less hostile to any type of religious piety.
Disagree with me if you want to, but this is simply my view and I suspect a great deal of people like me also holds this view as well.
"If we are between a spiritual rock and a hard place when it comes to the political landscape, what are we to do? Charles Spurgeon famously said, “Of two evils, choose neither,” and that’s the key. If it comes down to choosing the lesser evil, then we’ve already lost the battle."
Sounds good but one will get chosen. If you can't find anything to differentiate between the two it doesn't matter and others will do the choosing for you. I personally prefer to have a say-so in the outcome.
Of course you will be made to care. And just to make sure Erick and all his right wing buddies will tell any lie they need to you to get you to believe it. And then they will pretend they aren't the evil ones because there is nothing a christian is better at then projecting.
I'm sure Erick represented his god well in his twitter spat with Swift. It's just that his god isn't who he thinks it is.