100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
No bio...
User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9hr ago
Look, I agree with the sentiment. But, come on, you literally clipped the quote right before I wrote "in theory."
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9hr ago
SSPX
Timely reference, hydro.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9hr ago
This is correct.
Even well intentioned and thoughtful liberal leaning folks confused "individual sovereignty" with the -ism that is "individualism." Individual sovereignty is at the core of American politics (the rest of the west ... maybe). The basic idea being that the government can't tell you what to do outside of the basics; taxes, laws*.
"Individualism" is a self-maximizing ideology that blends together individual freedom, lack of responsibility, hedonic indulgence, and social-proof ego maximization. It cannot lead anywhere but to a neurotic state of simultaneous self-reverence and self-loathing. What better example than the Instagram account with over a million followers who suffers from depression and addiction.
The whole point of family formation is that an individual makes the conscious and affirmative decision to demote themselves in importance in order to gain a level of happiness that is not possible on one's own, even with unlimited financial resources. Every (good) family I've seen start in my friend group has resulted in both the husband and wife taking a step back or slowing down in their careers, social life, hobbies, and even physical fitness (dad guts and mom butts!) .... and then, within a few years, being obviously more happy and fulfilled than all of the single strivers or, god forbid, DINKs.
Modern individualism is the ultimate bill of goods. It is the secular "Non serviam" and it's led, as its biblical predecessor did, to hell.
- And, if you don't like taxes or laws (which are fundamentally the same thing) there is recourse to change them, in theory. Let's avoid a deep dive into political theory for the purposes of this post.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
10hr ago
Not to sidetrack, but I have my own theory for the fertility collapse: SSRIs.
About the only agreed upon effect of SSRIs is a side effect; they reduce libido and cause other (reversible) sexual dysfunction.
Something like 1 in 5 western adults has been on SSRIs at some point in their life, with a disproportionate number being women.
Gotta fuck to make babies, as they say. If you ain't fuckin', no babies.
I am aware that the immediate counter to that is that TFR is down all over the world and, therefore, has a looser correlation with SSRI use. But my counter to that counter is that I don't trust non-western TFR data to be anywhere near as reliable; home births are still far more common, hospital data has to be highly variant, and there's also the, you know, infanticide problems.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
10hr ago
(I should probably turn this into a longer effortpost. We'll see)
The homogenization of America is real. Several of my destinations we're B/C tier cities. As an example; Huntsville, Alabama.
These cities are NOT in decline or blight the way the canonical Gary, Indiana or East St. Louis are. In fact, many of them have experience real population and median income growth over the last decade. Visiting them in rapid succession, however, placed in obvious relief that there is a "book" for modern small city / large down development.
Easily 50% of my conversations with locals went like this:
Me: "What's a good neighborhood for a night out? Dinner, drinks" Them: "Oh, you've GOT to go to the historic district! It's so cool. Tons of great restaurants. Go to [Insert single first name like Jimmy's or Silvia's or Tom's] they the best burger! And there's also like three really good breweries there to."
Everywhere has the best burger. There are always three to a dozen breweries "that let it dogs! and have a great trivia night!." After a few of these same places, I developed a mental formula that involved number of coffee shops with young women outside of them around lunch, number of hand-chalked signs with puns on them, and if a place had a co-working spot with a name like "the railyard" or "brick factory." If yes to all of these - congrats, you're in the "hip, revitalized" part of town.
I'm being a little flippant as this isn't a real culture war issue (or thread). But I do bemoan, to some extent, that regional variety does seem to have slipped meaningfully. I can remember growing up with a friend who had been born in Pittsburgh. He was too young to have absorbed that city, but his parents were deep "Yinzers." In our teenage years, the Dad told us drinking stories about Pittsburgh that seemed like combat to my young ears. I've since been to Pittsburgh and though you can see shadows of the "tough Iron worker" culture, it has no teeth.
Another part of me, however, kind of appreciates this. Plainly stated, more small cities are safe, workable, and viable destinations for relocation for people who want to move. Using Huntsville as an example, if you weren't from there up through the early 2000s, could you ever actually fit in after a move? Or would Alabama Southern Society culture suffocate you? If you moved to, I don't know, Buffalo NY in the 1990s and picked the wrong street, would your car get stolen? While homogenization makes places look the same, it also makes them function the same to an extent. In a nation as large and diverse (diversity is our strength!) as the US, an expectation of similar overall capability as you travel is probably a feature, not a bug.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
10hr ago
Download all of the booking apps from the major chains; IHG and Hilton come to mind.
If the hotel is on the app, it's been through a recent refurb so that it can deal with mobile bookings. For many of the Hilton group hotels, they have full check-in on your phone so you don't have to go to the front desk. Your phone is your room key.
If they've been through that refurb, the hotels themselves are going to be fine. The other guests, however, are always a gamble.
I have the advantage of being a rather tall and scary looking white dude, so my "fuck-with-able" coefficient is very low.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3d ago
Yep, the whole calculus changes with kids, and you have to be much more intentional and disciplined about meals, bathroom breaks, and finding ways to keep them occupied.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3d ago
Any reliable way to determine if they are present upon walking into a room?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3d ago
I don’t consider 800 miles in a day as a lot.
Cool. What is a lot then?
Here's my math:
A heuristic for hourly all-in speed is about 60 mph. This takes into account stops for fuel, rest etc. You're doing 75 or so on the highway, but there's traffic etc.
12 hours would be 720 miles. 13 would be 780. 14 would be ... you get the idea.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3d ago
Some Observations From a 2500 Mile Road Trip
I spent a large part of June on the American Interstate.
I decided to take an "open ended" summer vacation. What I mean by that is that I got in my Truck and drove with generally a city in mind, but with no reservations already booked or itineraries planned. I'd get to the target city or, in a few cases, decided on the fly to keep truckin' to a different city, and then book a Motel/Cheap Hotel instantly on my phone. Think "Holiday Inn Express" grade of places. Clean enough, with AC, locks on the doors that work, 24 hour person at front desk. Nothing fancy in the rooms, but they did have coffee makers.
I'd spend between one and three nights in a given city and then move on.
Here are some assorted notes on the moving on part - the driving.
- Drive between 150 - 200 miles at a time, then take a 10 minute break. If you do this, you can do 600 miles per day without feeling road weary. My longest day - where I was intentionally trying to set my own record - I hit 803. That was a lot and I wouldn't do it again. Trying to do a marathon push of 5+ hours behind the wheel, in my experience, creates a negative compounding tiredness.
- Big breakfast, snack and starve during the day. I started each day with truly epic breakfasts at the classics spots - Denny's, Waffle House, iHop. I'd leave with large ToGo cups of coffee. I was peppy and alert. Then, for the rest of the driving day, I'd eat some variety of trail mix and drink water. This kept my energy level smooth and consistent and I never got drowsy behind the wheel. I can do a bunch of caffeine in the morning but, after lunch, sodas or coffee get me feeling over-stimulated for some reason. The jitters make the drive more difficult. Dinners were only after I had checked into a hotel and were more modest the breakfast.
- (Staying On food) the reality really is grim for truckers. There can be lots of highway between even small cities, and its populated by gas stations and fast food outposts. The really is a dearth of semi-healthy food options. It took a lot of discipline for me not to eat a burger or hotdog each day, and I was driving without deadlines or within the context of a "job." It is easy to see how someone working under stress is going to default to the most convenient option.
- I don't think chronic speeding gets you to your destination faster. The naive argument of "It's speed / distance!" doesn't hold up for a number of reasons. First, once you're at 80 mph+, your effective miles per gallon plummets because of the energy needs to overcome air resistance at that speed. Depending on tank size, this can result in an extra fuel stop or two. If you aren't practicing your NASCAR team refueling process and, instead, using the bathroom, buying snacks etc. then these pit stops negate any time saved from speeding. More systemically, my observation was that traffic really does exist in "waves" even on the loneliest of highways. You may be able to speed at 80+ for some time but, eventually, you'll just run into a dozen or so cars / trucks moving in a rough "pack" closer to the speed limit. If you find something like an RV or a heavy load truck, it can be in the right lane doing below the speed limit and cause a jam up around it. You then have to fight your way through this "pack" before getting back up to speed. Much like the pit stops, this sucks back any time gains earned while speeding. Thus, my strategy was to be captain cruise control - speed limit plus 5 mph. People could pass me on the right as much as they wanted. When I passed people, I'd get back in the right lane ASAP.
- Silence >>>>> Podcasts > Musics. Driving without any podcast / music in the Truck was the easiest mileage I did, and I felt the best after. Still, eventually I did get a feeling of antsy-ness that would get cured with a podcast. Music I left for in town driving because I have a tendency to start hitting the skip button a lot trying to search for a "perfect" song.
- Drivers are truly insanely dangerous. The overestimation of ability is breathtaking. Constant tailgating and lane weaving at 70+ mph. A human simply doesn't have enough basic reaction speed to adjust on the fly at those speeds. Add in the fact that bad drivers seem to always be somewhat distracted. Death machines, each of them. I saw multiple cases of people clearly watching something on their phones while driving. One woman I passed was eating with a plastic fork and knife out of a Styrofoam food container she had balanced on the neck behind the steering while, obscuring her own dashboard. Another guy was tailgating an 18-wheeler, perhaps four feet from the truck's rear bumper, while laying on his horn. I have no idea what his intent was. According to Wikipedia motor-vehicle deaths are, if I'm reading correctly, the 2nd most common cause of accidental death in the US, behind "poisoning." As much as a car enthusiast as I am, I am beginning to think that driver training should be far, far more involved and thorough than at present, and that loss of license for repeated infractions (speeding, recklessness etc.) should be more common.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
10d ago
The media was all over J6'ers about being broke idiots. Literally.
Nearly 60 percent of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records for 125 defendants with sufficient information to detail their financial histories.
The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18 percent — was nearly twice as high as that of the American public, The Post found. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor. And 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home at one point, according to court filings.
So, a population of 125 comes up as perhaps one standard deviation above expected random sampling.
This is selection bias at a cartoonish level. But it's dressed up with enough circumstantial relevance and high-minded sounding statistical framing that the self-assured PMC'er reading it can go, "Oh, of course, those crazy MAGA folks are aggrieved because they haven't the sense to manage their money properly. Harumph. I, on the other hand, am always wise in my investments. Why, just look at what we did for young Junior - $300,000 for a degree from Am'erst (not Am-herst ... the "h" is for the peasants)."
Hat tip as ever to Scott's idea that the media doesn't lie in a factual sense, but just frames and reports selectively to, nonetheless, alter the perception.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13d ago
This is just such a willful sidestepping of the obvious context of the issue. @Sloot's comment was very clearly about Ukrainian women who left when the war started and are now going to bed with EuroBros elsewhere.
Your comment isn't in bad faith, per se, but it's an intellectual dodge. You're better than that.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13d ago
Something something "believe all women."
Unless those women are 250,000 little British girls, I guess.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
21d ago
Thanks. And thanks for doing the survey. Survey's take a little bit of doing.
The takeaways are interesting to me because of the next level of analysis they point to; the context and nature of the events surrounding an infidelity event.
Based on the survey and several different comments in the thread, I think a starting point framework could be as followed:
- Men cheat in in-the-moment opportunities or (often drunken) impulsive and horny decision making.
- Women "cheat" by creating the conditions in their own relationship to push them into the arms of another partner (notice I'm saying partner here because, I think, this holds across hetero/homo/bi).
This mirrors the "porn versus romance novel" framework. Men are captivated by the act itself, while women like the lead up to the act.
I've been thinking about marriage in the west for about 7 years or so. That's when my friend group started to get married, so it makes sense. I wonder how many of these marriages will make it 5, 10, 20+ years. There's already been a few divorces less than 3 years after the wedding. Then, I think about how many of these marriages will turn into dead bedroom, mutual-resentment situations. How many will have to deal with either or both of physical infidelity or emotional infidelity.
The postmodern (and wrong) response to this is the current vibe of polyamory and its various branches. Interestingly enough, the survey demonstrated that that is a more unstable structure than monogamy.
The 'conservative' view of this is "welp, yep, marriage takes work and even couple goes through a rough patch or two." Think of the fat boomer (and, increasingly, millenial) men who like to say "happy wife, happy life", "let me check with the boss" when asked about going to a game / bar / boys night, and makes a lot and makes jokes about spousal murder. In many ways, I hate this "version" of marriage the most. It's a long-term, slow neutering of the modern married man and "battle-axe-ification" of the modern married woman. This is how you get "Karens" and their husbands, which google tells me are one of "Dale", "Darren", "Ken", or "David."
I've written before about how marriage is a miracle that, along with children, sits as the basis for the rest of a functioning, large scale, self-determined society. And I think that we've spent something like 4 or more generations now not only not doing the basic maintenance of marriage as an institution, but actively undermining it.
The results of that are hinted at in the survey -- realtionships, in general and across the board, seem to have more failure modes than success states. To be sure, this has been the case forever, but the entire point of the institution of marriage - along with the stricter courtship habits preceding it - is to give a massive social support to the odds of a marriage working out.
We've traded that for mobile-based-hookups and a silly vibe of "sexual freedom" and "self expression" and now, again according to the survey, the majority of people are having a very bad time, for at least part of their life, with it.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
24d ago
I gotta say, selfishly, I like this comment and the responses to it because it confirms my original hypothesis that "Mr. Brightside" is a choose-your-own-adventure about relationship ambiguities, general feels of "hurt" or "pain" etc. and that is why it's such a big song.
I don't think anyone in this thread is right because I also don't believe anyone in this thread is wrong. And that makes me happy. I guess I'm looking on the brightsid---GOD DAMN IT.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
24d ago
Although I no nothing about the professional music industry, I think "Mr. Brightside" is probably a song that nearly every songwriter and pop(ish) performer has a huge love-hate relationship with.
They "love" it because it's a simple enough song to write and arrange. The detailed Wikipedia entry on it has quotes from The Killers that say as much. The song itself was a "yeah, I guess this one isn't that bad" level of initial excitement. It was certainly not a "we knew this one was special" kind of track.
Some of the lyrics are high-school sad poetry levels of overwrought;
Swimming through sick lullabies
Choking on your alibis
But it's just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
I'm just imagining the "cool" 10th grade literature teacher saying "Wow, these are such raw emotions. But, maybe you should spend more time thinking about, you know, word choice and avoid cliches."
Which leads right into why, I think, a lot of artists also "hate" this song -- it shouldn't be such a staple. There's nothing very specific or unique about it. It's a Rorschach test for each and every listener to map their own personal experience to. The experience of infidelity (to some degree) is common to many (most? idk) people. And it has a unique emotional resonance. Until the advent of true maturity and, very often, never, people always think their experience with cheating was the absolute worst. So, a song that makes (almost) everyone who listens to it feel like it's "their" song is bound to be huge.
But, again - why does this very median song (especially the lyrics) just "hit" so well compared to the thousands of other songs about infidelity and the harshness of romance? I think it's genuinely mysterious. And I think that's maddening for people.
To add another, slightly different concept in support, I also think that Mr. Brightside hits a kind of midwit depth of emotionality. To a lot of listeners, Mr. Brightside seems "deep" and doesn't come across as the overproduced love songs of, say, Mariah Carey. But it isn't nuanced. Once we get to the chorus of "[she's touching his] Chest now..." it's damn obvious whats happening and how you (in the person of the singer) should feel. Compare this to a classic like "Casey's Last Ride" by Kris Kristofferson which is a subtle meditation on isolation, loneliness, the remembrance of love or something that felt like love (is the unnamed paramour in the song, perhaps, a prostitute?). That kind of depth is something to genuinely wrestle with. It's ponderous and weight. Mr. Brightside gives you a much cleaner payoff -- "dude, like, this song. Bro, this is exactly what happened when Kayley/Ashleigh/Tara/Madison cheated on me with Chet/Chad/Braden/Glorp." You get to feel the emotional satisfaction of "literally me" paired with the intellectual self-satisfaction of "nobody gets this but me."
I think it's worth comparing Mr. Brightside to it's cousin; "Misery Business" by the band Paramour. This is a song from a female protagonist viewpoint (sung by a female lead, the quirky-alt-chick archetype Hayley Williams. You'll remember her from being the profile photo of literally every girl with a LiveJournal from 2004 - 2012).
The plot arc of the song is something along the lines of;
The female "protagonist" in the song sees a guy friend being mistreated by his existing girlfriend. She, the protagonist, somehow steals the guy and starts dating him. The song is then a kind of victory chant to the other, unnamed, female antagonist.
If Mr. Brightside had a, well, brighter side, it very well might be "Misery Business." And it has a lot of the same features I pointed out before; goofy teenage quality lyrics, personalized "literally me" accessibility, and just enough depth to make it seem authentic and meaningful.
I'm not trying to be critical of either of these songs. I'm just trying to figure out why they are what they are.
They are both far better than "Imagine" by John Lennon.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
27d ago
I’m a software developer and I deal with that all the time when trying to communicate with non technical people.
And
labels are not the truth and that the words we use daily are more probabilistic than discrete
Pick one.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
28d ago
Because if you define gay as “person with XY chromosomes attracted to another person with XY chromosomes”, it’s not necessarily wrong, but it might not be useful.
So this is actually a profoundly monstrous argument.
If you take this to its logical extreme, this is literally saying "there are things that are true and there are things that are useful. We should focus on the things that are more useful."
Cue the hyper cut to soviet pogroms, concentration camps, khmer rouge, whatever.
Normies will look at semantic word games like "it depends on how you define that" and "what are you saying when you say you don’t think I’m a woman?" and simply roll their eyes, I get incensed by them because that slipperiness not with the truth but with the relative importance of the truth to utility is how you unlock the gates of Hell.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
28d ago
I’m generally curious as to why non-trans people get invested in this when it seems easy to ignore
The sexual assault of an underage girl isn't easy for me to ignore.
A romantic partner might commit murder because of the shame of being publically outed as being in a relationship with a trans gender person, and honour killings of trans people by their family members do occur.
You offer a hypothetical counter explanation but I don't think it's good enough when the original poster was bringing in real data. Furthermore, you're up against the fact that domestic partner violence in non-trans relationships is the most common road to murder aside from heterosexual young males who kill each other for money and prestige. It's one of those crazy truths of the world; the person most likely to kill you is probably the last person you kissed (or had sex with). So, you'd have to somehow show that Trans romantic partner violence is somehow a total departure from the history of non-trans romantic partner violence.
If transphobia becomes more widespread and accepted, it seems obvious that violence and discrimination will increase as a result.
There are like three layers of baked in assumptions here. First, the term "transphobia" is especially loaded because earnest and good faith trans skepticism is often lumped into it. Second, the "If" at the beginning isn't really an honest hypothesis style "if", it's a covert assumption of your assertion (i.e. that "transphobia" will become more widespread and accepted). Finally the "it seems obvious" line completes the "mean words turn into lethal actions" fallacious argument. Here's an example you can use: how many Americans, in 1950, had a sincerely held belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ? How many hold that same view now? How many are avowed atheists or similar? Has this widespread and accepted belief obviously led to more violence and discrimination against Christians? Now, to be fair and to possibly undermine my own point, there's good evidence that semi-legal and social discrimination against Christians probably has gone up. Still, however, people aren't getting beaten in mobs (in the USA) for wearing a cross around their neck.
being trans can lead to discrimination, being ostracised by your friends and family, and make you more at risk of low level violence and hate crimes.
I think this is common to several mental health ... situations ... where a person's fundamental concept of their own identity doesn't match reality. I'll hang my hat on this analogy; if I go to the doctor and say I'm always sad, even after something good happens to me, he or she will likely say "hey, your subjective experience doesn't quite mesh with reality. We should take a look at that." This is a generalized structure of how a lot of people begin to deal with depression. When a trans person says "my subjective experience / identity doesn't quite mesh with my anatomy" why should the start of that not be something similar to the depression example? Why is the default, as far as I'm aware, to simply assume the subjective trans feeling is the correct starting point and to move towards 'transitioning' to some extent?
While I don't think trans "isn't a thing" as the kids say, I think it's even more of a hyper-minority than it always is. For one, I'd wager something like 50% of MtF's are just gay men who couldn't figure themselves out. Another sizable portion are autistic people who think that Trans-ing will help them "feel normal" when, very sadly, that may simply not be in the cards for them.
If we could have good faith discussions about these ideas, I think that the Trans "issue", such as it is, would absolutely quickly disappear from the culture war. But, instead, you have organizations like WPATH that seem to be actively trying to suppress the truth and instead advance an agenda, as well as various publishers and media outlets that seem to have a strong interest in other people's kids.
Like @Amadan's post below says, most face-to-face encounters with non-activist Trans people aren't fundamentally difficult or fraught to extreme levels. On the surface. But once there's a crossing of that line into the issue territory, they force the various declarations of purity and allegiance. That's not something a person who "just wants to live their life" does. That is the behavior of a person who believes their view of your life is unimpeachable.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
28d ago
Violent crime committed by Indians in the United States is almost unheard of
Or....conspiracy theory level: 5 out of 10.
Indian violent crime towards other ethnicities is almost unheard of. I believe, however, (and, again, this is an admitted 5/10 conspiracy theory) that there are honor style killings from the sub-continent that get either non-reported to police or disguised as something like the kitchen fires euphemism.
Obviously I can't prove this, but I dont' believe in holes in the ocean. When one group within a population has a bizarre statistical outlier relative to all others, there's either an obvious cause or the numbers are wrong (hence, hole in the ocean).
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
28d ago
Reddit levels of _"nuh-uh!" with nothing to back it up.
The Fall of Minneapolis is an entire documentary, that you can watch for free, about the extensive fuckery around the George Floyd case. While, charitably, there is room to argue about Floyd's cause of death, the idea that any sort of fair process of justice was carried out after the fact is close to laughable at this point. Chauvin being in sentenced to over 20 years is perhaps the most recent and glaring example of a literal political prisoner.
Then you have to layer on the contest of lackdown double-standards from 2020. "Stay home with no exceptions unless you want to murder your whole neighborhood" gave way to "It's not possible to catch COVID at a George Floyd rally" awfully quickly.
The entire George Floyd meta-cycle ought to be studied as one of those particularly shameful mass events in American history. I'd put it up there with, ironically enough, something like the spontaneously lynchings in the South over the first 20 - 30 years of the 20th century.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
The article literally quotes another juror who says he was not into it and only went along with it for the photo.
But, the bigger problem is that people consider playing dress-up in the function of jury duty to be permissible.
This isn't an argument about that specific case. I'm using that specific case to argue about the breakdown of contextual professional due to female cultural policing.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
Anything with a feedback loop and open competition is going to produce effective organizations.
This is also the problem with government services in general. The IRS /DMV etc. have no competition (by law) and so there's no pressure to perform. Throw in public sector unions (which is a truly wacky concept) and you have all of the incentives to do nothing, avoid all risk, and fall back on process, procedure, and policy.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
And where prosecutors don't go to trial, whatever "injustice" there is there gets socialized as a cost across society.
Picking where you live is important.
I've always liked James Buckley's thoughts on this matter.
Wokeness is absolutely a (pseudo)religion in that it gives its believers a sense of being among the "elect" and "right" in the metaphysical sense. Where it falls woefully short, of course, is in its role as a cohesive and consistent worldview and moral compass. How do wokies deal with the very common idea of "You don't like thing x, but you have to do thing x as part of your job / role / responsibility?" They don't, the cry out "oppression!"
More options
Context Copy link