naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
5d ago
That's not the work I intended that phrase to do. It was more of a factual observation about the extent to which outcomes are actually (not) within OP's control, which was the overall point of my post.
Specifically, "ought" implies "can." Ensuring that some people are employed might be the right thing to do; say for the purposes of argument that it is in this case. If in such a case it's not really up to you that those people will stay employed, it can't really be a moral requirement that you keep them employed. The claim "if you don't do it, eventually someone else will" is not a justification for any particular course of action, but an empirical claim about the extent to which a certain outcome is likely (not) within OP's control.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5d ago
Are you running a business, or a charity?
My perspective is that your "career development" is mostly illusory. If automating part of your process results in a better product or cheaper manufacturing, perhaps you will get a bonus? Certainly you will get a resume point. Perhaps it will get you a promotion? A raise? You don't seem to think it will result in you, too, being replaced by a machine, at least not immediately, so in terms of self interest it seems like an obvious choice.
As for the moral implications of making low-skilled people unemployed, like... if you don't do it, eventually someone else will, except you will get none of the benefits while still suffering all the possible downsides. There may be public policy arguments about this that matter from a moral or legal perspective, but unless it is your job to make or enforce public policy, then you don't really have a seat at that table.
In the medium-term future (two or three centuries at most), I think that we either get widespread universal basic income, or we get rampant Luddism. Authoritarian governments and relatively culturally homogeneous nations seem likely to weather that transition better than pluralistic democracies, as identitarian competition for resources and handouts ramps up toward infinity. You will contribute to this process no matter what you choose to do in your current role; the best you can do is what is best for yourself, as that is what you have the most control over and the greatest understanding of.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8d ago
One thing I think everyone forgets
One of the things that really struck me about the article was that the authors introduced the concept of "competitive democracy" in a book that explained how, to the best of my understanding, Western ties and influence were a major distinguisher between autocracies that "fully" democratized, and autocracies that did not. Way in particular seems to have in mind exactly your points about Russian history. It was weird to read an article that appeared to be written by two scholars who knew substantially more about the 20th century history of other nations, than about the 21st century history of the nation they were writing about.
It's Different When We Do It, Chapter 27
or
Did I Just Get Trolled?
tw: old news, unapologetic whataboutism
Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way have a free essay at the (reportedly centrist!) Foreign Affairs: "The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown." (Archive link.) You may notice the URL has "trump" in it, despite that word not appearing in the title. Curious.
But wait--who are Steve Levitsky and Lucan Way? After all, one can scarcely throw a cursor across a website these days without hitting, say, six or seven hyperlinks to "think pieces" about Trump, fascism, fascist Trumpism, or even Trumpist fascism. But never fear--this is no Average Andy/Joe Sixpack collaboration. This is professional work by a team of scholars whose most famous contribution to the canon of political scholarship is the term "competitive authoritarianism." What, you may ask, is competitive authoritarianism? Read on!
Steve Levitsky, according to his employer (Harvard University, naturally), is a
Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. He is Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation and a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America.
His focus is not exclusive--he also writes on Israel policy while calling himself a "lifelong Zionist" (admittedly, in an article endorsing something like BDS)--but his interest in Latin America is apparently more than skin-deep:
Levitsky is married to Liz Mineo, a Peruvian journalist with degrees from the National University of San Marcos and Columbia University who currently works at The Harvard Gazette.
Lucan Way is no less distinguished. Well, maybe a litte less--the University of Toronto is not even the Harvard of Canada, much less the Harvard of, well, Harvard. But his title--his title! He is literally a Distinguished Professor of Democracy. Where Levitsky's focus is Latin America, however, Way's might best be described as "Cold War and Cold War adjacent." He credits at least some of that interest to family ties to historical events:
My stepfather's family were Jewish socialists, and his grandfather, Henrik Ehrlich, was a Menshevik during the 1917 revolution. This familial link to such a pivotal historical moment gave the chapter on Russia a deeper, more personal resonance.
This is an academic power couple, right here. Get one expert on authoritarianism in the New World, one on authoritarianism in the Old World, and baby, you've got a stew going! A book stew. An article stew. A bottomless cornucopia of cosmopolitan political commentary and analysis. Their 2010 text, "Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War," focuses on democratization (or its lack) under authoritarian regimes. David Waldner gave a blurb:
Regimes that blend meaningful elections and illicit incumbent advantage are not merely resting points on the road to democracy; Levitsky and Way guide us along the multiple paths these regimes can take and provide powerful reasoning to explain why nations follow these distinct paths. This deeply insightful analysis of an important subset of post-Cold War regimes is conceptually innovative and precise, empirically ambitious, and theoretical agile, moving fluidly between international and domestic causes of regime dynamics. Read it to understand the dynamics of contemporary hybrid regimes; then read it again to appreciate its many lessons for our general understanding of regime change.
So: you've literally written the book on how democracies are (or are not) born. What are you going to do next? No, no, you're not going to Disneyland--you're going to witness the election of Donald Trump and stop telling people that you study the birth of democracies, but instead the death of democracies. From the Amazon page for Levitsky's (but not Way's) How Democracies Die:
Donald Trump's presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we'd be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes.
That's the preliminaries. This week, Levitsky and Way published an article, and I have to say, I found it... kinda convincing? Except, I couldn't help but Notice some things that gave me pause. The thesis of the piece, as I mentioned, was that the United States is headed toward "competitive authoritarianism." The article provides a small explainer:
The breakdown of democracy in the United States will not give rise to a classic dictatorship in which elections are a sham and the opposition is locked up, exiled, or killed. Even in a worst-case scenario, Trump will not be able to rewrite the Constitution or overturn the constitutional order. He will be constrained by independent judges, federalism, the country's professionalized military, and high barriers to constitutional reform. There will be elections in 2028, and Republicans could lose them.
But authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism--a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent's abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category, including Alberto Fujimori's Peru, Hugo Chávez's Venezuela, and contemporary El Salvador, Hungary, India, Tunisia, and Turkey. Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact. Opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they contest seriously for power. Elections are often fiercely contested battles in which incumbents have to sweat it out. And once in a while, incumbents lose, as they did in Malaysia in 2018 and in Poland in 2023. But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair.
(As an aside, Way seems to think India is doing alright, actually? Not sure where that fits in with the above but, co-authored pieces do sometimes result in these little puzzles.)
What actually struck me first about this description was my memory of posters here in the Motte discussing "Brazilification," the process by which the U.S. is, as a result of economics, immigration, and identity politics, gradually adopting the political norms of South and Central American nations. But my experience has been that it is usually more conservative, even arguably nationalist people expressing this concern. While Levitsky and Way do not use the term "Brazilification," they definitely seem to be placing the United States on that trajectory.
They elaborate on the problem at length:
Competitive authoritarianism will transform political life in the United States. As Trump's early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders made clear, the cost of public opposition will rise considerably: Democratic Party donors may be targeted by the IRS; businesses that fund civil rights groups may face heightened tax and legal scrutiny or find their ventures stymied by regulators. Critical media outlets will likely confront costly defamation suits or other legal actions as well as retaliatory policies against their parent companies. Americans will still be able to oppose the government, but opposition will be harder and riskier, leading many elites and citizens to decide that the fight is not worth it.
This is where I started to wonder, just a little, whether I was being trolled. While Trump's second term has indeed set a record pace for executive orders, Joe Biden's early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders was a greater departure from the norm. Most readers here will be well-acquainted with the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Many will also be aware of the time regulators inappropriately targeted the NRA. Conservative media outlets faced expensive defamation lawsuits (losing some, winning others). The fit with the Biden administration just seems too close in this paragraph, to be pure coincidence... but what am I supposed to conclude from that? Am I supposed to be doing a Straussian reading?
The piece continues:
[M]uch of the coming authoritarianism will take a less visible form: the politicization and weaponization of government bureaucracy. . . . Even in countries such as the United States that have relatively small, laissez-faire governments, this authority creates a plethora of opportunities for leaders to reward allies and punish opponents. No democracy is entirely free of such politicization. But when governments weaponize the state by using its power to systematically disadvantage and weaken the opposition, they undermine liberal democracy. Politics becomes like a soccer match in which the referees, the groundskeepers, and the scorekeepers work for one team to sabotage its rival.
Republicans have long complained against the weaponization of government against conservatives, and Democrats have long ignored those complaints. Whether it's a county clerk jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses or the throw-the-book-at-them attitude toward January 6th protesters, conservatives regularly find the scales of justice thumbed against their interests. Similarly-situated Democrats need fear no prosecution at all.
Levitsky and Way have more to say about this sort of thing:
The most visible means of weaponizing the state is through targeted prosecution. Virtually all elected autocratic governments deploy justice ministries, public prosecutors' offices, and tax and intelligence agencies to investigate and prosecute rival politicians, media companies, editors, journalists, business leaders, universities, and other critics. In traditional dictatorships, critics are often charged with crimes such as sedition, treason, or plotting insurrection, but contemporary autocrats tend to prosecute critics for more mundane offenses, such as corruption, tax evasion, defamation, and even minor violations of arcane rules. If investigators look hard enough, they can usually find petty infractions such as unreported income on tax returns or noncompliance with rarely enforced regulations.
Tax evasion, you say? As for minor violations of arcane rules and rarely enforced regulations, well, the whole "Trump committed a felony" charade in New York was recognized well in advance as "novel" and "built on an untested legal theory."
The argument continues!
Moreover, much of the Republican Party now embraces the idea that America's institutions--from the federal bureaucracy and public schools to the media and private universities--have been corrupted by left-wing ideologies. Authoritarian movements commonly embrace the notion that their country's institutions have been subverted by enemies; autocratic leaders including Erdogan, Orban, and Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro routinely push such claims. Such a worldview tends to justify--even motivate--the kind of purging and packing that Trump promises.
Why would the Republican Party embrace the idea that America's institutions have been corrupted by left-wing ideologies? After all, just 63% of senior executives in government posts are Democrats; only 58% of public school teachers identify as Democrat; fully 3.4% of journalists identify as Republicans, and the ratio of liberal to conservative college professors is a measly 17 to 1!
I guess "believing facts about the ideological makeup of our country's institutions" qualifies as authoritarian, now?
There's more to the article--I invite you to read it. But maybe some of you want to ask, in total exasperation, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Maybe none! I am not here to do apologetics for Trump. I was just really struck by the idea that this article could have been written, almost word for word, about Biden, or even Obama. Maybe Bush! Maybe others--FDR for sure, right? But I can find no evidency of Levitsky or Way ever actually noticing, or worrying, about American competitive authoritarianism, until Trump. They think he's special. I don't think he's special! I think that, so far, he has actually committed far fewer of the sins on their list, than Biden did. That doesn't mean I endorse Trump's actions, so much as I am confused that a couple of highly-credentialed experts on the matter only seem to recognize American authoritarianism when it is coming from their right (or, more accurately, even when it might eventually be coming from their right).
Aside from that, I don't see any obvious problems with the picture that they paint. Having pundits on both sides of the aisle say similar things about our nation's political trajectory serves to increase my worry that "Brazilification" might be a real thing, and makes me wonder how quickly it might happen, and how seriously I should take the possibility.
(Insert butterfly meme: is this authoritarianism? Insert spaceman meme: always has been.)
naraburns
nihil supernum
11d ago
This is not really sufficient effort for a top level post. It's good that you at least added a link to a story in a response downthread, but that should have been proactively provided (particularly given the overt partisanship of your post) in the first place. You also haven't really explained what each of the parties under discussion actually did, or made any attempt to steelman either side.
Remember,
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light...
So low effort wishcasting is frowned upon generally, but doubly when it is a top level post.
naraburns
nihil supernum
12d ago
EA is meaningfully different.
I'm sure there are charities, including EA charities, that are better than the "average" charity along the relevant axis, sure.
But according to your own link, the managing director of GiveDirectly pulls down almost $500,000 per year. That's a hell of a grift, and perfectly analogous to my university consultant example. I'm sure the managing director has the relevant expertise, and probably is directly responsible for a healthy chunk of charitable cash transfers that would otherwise have gone elsewhere (or nowhere). But no one--absolutely no one--is doing controlled experiments in which they determine whether that $500,000 actually makes a difference, or whether there are cheaper alternatives with similar (or better) results. Personally, I know several very competent administrators who are happy to make $100,000 managing sums similar to those laid out by GiveDirectly.
Charity in America is Big Business(TM), and even EA is no clear exception.
naraburns
nihil supernum
12d ago
Youth groups and drag shows don't cost $6.3 million.
The administrative salaries of the people running youth groups and drag shows, the venues for youth groups and drag shows, the consulting fees for ensuring that your youth groups and drag shows are totally compliant with all applicable rules and regulations, well... that costs $6.3 million, easy.
I have seen universities pay $100,000+ to consultants to give single day seminars on grant writing. Sometimes these consultants have a history of writing successful grants, so the expertise is definitely there. And some of the grants that result can be worth millions of dollars to the university, so the expense is justified on paper. But no one--absolutely no one--is doing controlled experiments in which they determine whether these consultants actually make a difference, or whether there are cheaper alternatives with similar (or better) results. It's all part of the higher education grift; if you know the right people, and have the right friends, you can quit your underpaid research post and instead make millions telling other underpaid researchers to try harder.
I strongly suspect it is the same in every grant-driven industry everywhere. (Indeed, the whole "Effective Altruism" grift has largely consisted in insisting that EA is totally different, it's definitely going to make real change, instead of just creating new jobs and generous salaries for charismatic people who would rather attend conferences in exotic locales, than do the hard work of producing meaningful work.)
naraburns
nihil supernum
13d ago
It gave me Thomas Sowell, and when I asked for others it suggested Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Apparently I missed my calling as an economist.
naraburns
nihil supernum
22d ago
Where should I post this?
Reddit? You seem keen to make a reddit alternative, there is a whole subreddit for those.
naraburns
nihil supernum
22d ago
So, this is borderline, but on balance I am not approving this post.
It's not quite recruiting for a cause, but the reference to "infested with commies/radical leftists" kinda puts it in that territory. You're also a "new user" which kind of pings "spam" to me. Or maybe I just don't see the value in using a top post in this space to recruit for... an alternative to this space.
naraburns
nihil supernum
24d ago
What are your thoughts?
You are just continuing to privilege your own perspective on any given term, above the term's actual history and usage.
I would argue that neoliberal has more meaning than some of the terms we discussed last week because its proponents have actively adopted it and have proudly worn the label for decades.
Proponents of "woke" actively adopted it and wore it proudly for decades (though it did not "go viral" until more recently); many still wear it proudly today.
If a particular word is getting in the way of you making a substantive point clear, then by all means, taboo it. But very close to nobody is confused by the use of words like woke, fascist, or neoliberal. If those words are being used in a merely pejorative way, the audience generally understands this, whether or not they can articulate it. If I say "Hitler was a Nazi," essentially no one outside of small children and the mentally infirm is seriously confused if I later say "Obama is a Nazi." People will in general understand that the first claim is historical, and the second, rhetorical.
But deciding to taboo words should be something you do in the process of clarifying discourse on a particular point of substance. Sweeping declarations distinguishing "woke" and "fascist" from "neoliberal" would be inadvisable linguistic prescriptivism even if you had the facts and history right--and you don't even seem to have that going for you.
Rather I think there are many layers of various pillars of society going towards the shitter that I think makes some kind of collapse of Western Civilization inevitable.
Living in a material world under the known laws of physics makes the collapse of all civilizations inevitable.
History gives me strong priors that most such "collapses" are local and move slower than most individual human perception. By the standards of Western Civilization circa 1800, Western Civilization has already collapsed and been replaced with something comparatively grotesque, which we today call "Western Civilization." The prevalence of atheism, pornography, premarital and extramarital sex, illegitimate birth, etc. would shock most Westerners from the mid 20th century, never mind the 19th. By the standards of those days, we already live in a dystopian hellscape.
And yet if you spend much time talking to nonagenarians, you will often hear resignation to the idea that the world simply changes (though some will definitely tell you that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket). Humans are incredibly, almost comically adaptable. Just about anything can become a "baseline" experience for us, given sufficient exposure (and lack of exposure to alternatives).
Now, some of the more extreme climate eschatology, political alarmism, nuclear war worries, AI doomerism, etc. will be quick to remind that some collapses are more dramatic, sharp-edged, and/or final than others. This is surely true. But given the number and variety of collapses I can see through history, the collapse of Western Civilization as we know it is shaping up to be more of an evolution than a revolution, and sufficiently gradual that it will annoy me when I am a nonagenarian (knock on wood), but probably not kill me or even cause me very much suffering. At worst, it will inspire in me only deep disappointment.
At best, I will have alien descendants born on Mars, whose lives and lifestyles would shock and horrify me. But hey--Mars!
The end will come for humanity, eventually, too. It would be nice, I think, if we could escape that. But I do expect, to my sorrow, that I will not be alive to see how our story ends.
Thanks for those examples. I think they are okay. Certainly they are better than your examples from this space. What I would say I see happening in the "woke Fed" example is wokism getting generalized to leftism-writ-large, rather than applying to leftist identitarianism. It's guilt-by-association, basically. Not really a "nebulous bogeyman" but certainly a sloppy use.
The "woke Democrat DA" I would need to know more about. Leftist identitarianism often has a lot to say about criminal justice through a racial lens; was this such a case? I don't know. Certainly this could also be a sloppy case.
Give me an example of it being used as a "sneer" before 2010--which I think you are going to have a lot harder time doing. Why? Because the definition has had significant "creep" since then, which is my point.
I think you're maybe underestimating the rapid timeline on the pejoration process. Circa 2010 it was "social justice warriors," not "woke." Before that, I'm not sure... "cultural Marxism" probably, though my memory is that was more of a 1990s thing, driven in large measure by Pat Buchanan. I think maybe the first decade of the 2000s was sufficiently focused on "Islamophobia" and "Islamofascism" that maybe we didn't have a dominant shorthand meme for leftist identitarianism then? (Right now, "DEI" seems to be rising to the top as the preferred nomenclature of leftist identitarians, which is why it, too, has become something centrists and rightists mock. Once it was just called "affirmative action," and that became a bit of a sneer, too. New viral memes meet cultural immune systems every day!)
What is more common us the use of the word as primarily a sneer, but a smaller amount of truth to deride that person, object, idea, or company.
I don't really get why you're so fixated on this. I've granted that it gets used as a sneer, sometimes. But you're insisting the sneer is the "real" or "primary" definition or use, and as far as I can tell that simply isn't true. "Woke" means "leftist identitarianism" and sometimes overgeneralizes to "leftism" and rarely overgeneralizes to simply "bad." What's surprising about that? We could say similar things about "Nazi" ("German national socialist" overgeneralizes to "fascist/racist/authoritarian" overgeneralizes to "bad") or any of a host of other political identifiers.
But its primary use today (January 2025) is to tar and feather others, before finding out more about what is being described.
This is just false--especially here on the Motte. The primary use of "woke" today is to describe leftist identitarians in a single syllable. Personally, I don't blame anyone for feeling bad if they are leftist identitarians; on my view, they should feel bad, and should repent! So sure, right wingers and centrists and Marxists all probably say "woke" with a sneer, but that's because they find leftist identitarianism genuinely awful.
And this last bit in your response is an excellent demonstration of what I am talking about, and it looks like the person getting the pejorative treatment is me.
Look, you are a "new" account that fits the MO of certain ban evaders and known trolls. You show up saying you're a "long time lurker" and immediately pick a super common topic of discussion, on which the Motte has a much, much better handle than the wider world of so-called journalists writing on the topic. Then you steadfastly insist that the stupidest possible interpretation of "woke" is the "real" one, which is exactly the position woke people are taking right now, because the word has become an effective way to limit their political power--in the face of multiple well-considered explanations for why you're mistaken.
If you are not yourself a leftist identitarian, then I don't know why you would take that position--unless you are trying to make a particularly pedantic argument about language, in which case I would expect you to bite the bullet and also argue that "Nazi" and "alt right" and "Communist" and "Neoliberal" and the like are all just meaningless slurs, given their common deployments, despite the possibility that they once had analytic content. But you don't appear to have found that angle interesting.
Conversely, if you are a leftist identitarian, then several people have given you very clear answers to your question which defuse your complaints entirely; you would be better off learning from those responses, I think, than stubbornly sticking to the current dogma as promulgated by MSNBCNN.
naraburns
nihil supernum
29d ago
I defined it that way, simply because that is the way it is most commonly used.
I don't think so. In your previous comment you suggested two examples of people using "woke" as a mere sneer, when in fact those were both perfectly coherent criticisms of left wing identitarianism.
Those are good examples, but I can provide hundreds if not thousands of counter examples where it is folks right of center using the term to describe progressive or anti-racist ideas, policies, goals or activities.
I suspect you might, and yet so far you have failed to even provide one clear example. In particular, I would be interested to see an example of someone using the word "woke" to describe something, anything, that is not at all plausibly left wing identitarianism. Like, someone taking a bite of pistachio ice cream and then saying, "ugh, disgusting, this ice cream is so woke." That would be pure pejorative, and is probably too much to ask, but so far the closest you've gotten is an example, not of someone using the term as a pure pejorative, but using it to describe left wing identitarianism without apparently knowing a better phrase than "woke" to describe it.
Furthermore, if we look in the last 5 years or so, this is almost exclusively the case. If there has been a muddying of the waters of the term since the mid-20th century or even 2018 to now, would that not be by the folks who are constantly referencing, writing and talking about it and not those who have nearly ceased using the term?
The term hasn't been particularly muddied in the last 5 years, it has just been used to accurately describe the ridiculous policies that result from left wing identitarianism. The absurd response (your response, here!) has been to try to argue that it doesn't mean anything in particular at all, and that it is just an empty smear. But it's not; it's a word that left wing identitarians used to describe themselves, and so it became a pejorative because left wing identitarianism is (it seems to me, and many others) objectively terrible.
It's like... imagine you meet someone who wishes to restore Germany to nationalistic glory, in part by stripping Jews of citizenship, socializing the German economy, et cetera. And you say... "damn, fella, you sound like a Nazi!" And he responds, "oh, get out of here with your nebulous bogeyman terms. People just use 'Nazi' as an empty smear. Sure, maybe it was once used to describe certain political beliefs, but in the last fifty years, the most common usage has just been to tar your political opponents."
I don't know about you, but I feel like the appropriate response would be, "well, true, I would like to see fewer people using the word 'Nazi' as an empty smear. But it does have an actual meaning, and expelling Jews from Germany is kind of a key aspect of that. In fact, it seems like you don't want me to call you what you are because you know that this will probably help some people realize that they do not like your policies and do not wish to vote for you."
To be frank: I think your engagement on this issue is disingenuous. I think you are very much like a Nazi who is complaining about people misusing the word Nazi. Yes, there is a motte here: the word "Nazi" definitely gets used as a nebulous bogeyman! And yet when actual Nazis use that argument, I think it is reasonable to be very suspicious of their true motivations! Because the bailey is that it's more difficult to criticize a political coalition that is constantly shifting its identity in an attempt to evade accountability and criticism.
So it is with "woke." Are there problems with how the word gets used? Sure, that's reasonable. Does that mean that all or even most use of the word "woke" is just empty rhetoric? I have seen (and you have provided) no actual evidence of that.
To me, wokism or calling things woke is a catch all term that someone right of center calls a social activity or value that someone left of center espouses.
It does sometimes get used that way, but I don't know why you would elect to espouse the least clear and useful version of the word as the archetype of the concept. Most people, right or left, are kind of stupid, and when they say political things they are mostly just signalling virtue by parroting something they heard somewhere. Children use words they can't define, sometimes properly, sometimes not; this does not actually muddy the underlying concepts.
So I can't figure out why you're in one breath complaining about people using the word in vague or merely pejorative ways, and in the next breath saying that, to you, that actually is what "woke" means. Any time you see the word in the wild, just substitute "left wing identitarianism" and it should be pretty easy to see whether the person speaking is using the word meaningfully, or just as an empty sneer. In the examples you pulled for me, I don't see any use of the word "woke" as a "nebulous bogeyman." The first two are pretty clear and direct criticisms of left wing identitarianism and the political activities of left wing identitarians. The third is just one person admitting that they aren't sure what "woke" means, precisely, but they can see what it has accomplished.
For instance, I don't think I have ever heard in person or seen online someone left of center that uses it to describe an action or an ideology.
Then you haven't been paying attention (or maybe you're just late to the party). "#StayWoke" was a pretty early example of hashtag activism, circa 2012. The Wikipedia entry on "Woke" has a 2018 picture of former U.S. Representative Marcia Fudge holding a shirt that says "Stay Woke: Vote." The term itself originated back in the mid-20th century and was very much tied to the identity politics of black Americans, and its circuitous path to "viral hashtag meme" generalized rapidly to leftist identity politics generally. None of this is mysterious, and every news article out there complaining about the vagueness of "woke" ignores the well-established history of the meme in an attempt to muddy the waters of discourse, exactly as the political left has always done with words that capture its essence and expose its ridiculousness.
I would define socially conscious as the ability to identify differences in race/ethnicity, class, religion, etc, in addition to individual differences.
If that is your definition, then no, "woke" does not mean "socially conscious." To be "woke" requires a particular political attitude toward those differences; the ability to identify them is not sufficient, for the reasons I already outlined. Specifically, the identitarian right is definitely able to identify such differences, and is definitely not "woke."
naraburns
nihil supernum
30d ago
We’ve had several posters trying to get people to define woke in the past couple weeks — is this just the current meme again?
Seems to be. I assume that the leftist prospiracy is working to muddy the waters on "woke" because it has become a useful cudgel for rightists, which is a pattern that has been repeated for a while now.
It seems like there’s been a large increase in trolls and insincere posters as well.
I haven't noticed this, myself, but I haven't been able to spend as much time here lately as I used to.
I have noticed that many posts seem to point to an increasingly nebulous boogeyman
For our benefit, please provide an example of where you think the word "woke" was used as a "nebulous boogeyman" and explain how you think that nebulousness reflected an "increase" from previous use cases.
Because it seems to me that "define woke" is a question posed (mostly by trolls) all the time around here. I've never actually seen this community struggle, even a tiny bit, with what is or is not "woke."
What is woke?
"Woke" is a convenient handle for left wing identitarianism, broadly construed. It is often in tension with left wing materialism, so e.g. Marxists are often anti-woke leftists.
This can be confusing because "woke" is predominantly what was once called "cultural Marxism" (e.g.)--before that phrase got memory-holed into an "anti-Semitic conspiracy theory." Cultural Marxism, in turn, is the application of "critical theory" and redistributionist tendencies to "social capital" instead of monetary capital. This is one reason Marxists are often at odds with wokists; Marxism is a modernist and materialist philosophy, while wokism is postmodern and sociological. Classical Marxists will tell you that cultural Marxism is not even Marxism at all... but they still typically vote for the same people and policies.
One way in which "woke" may be somewhat evolved beyond cultural Marxism is that it seems to have incorporated a decentralized ethos impossible prior to the advent of social media; what counts as "woke" today can change rapidly depending on what is trending and who is getting cancelled. While "purity spirals" are evidenced in e.g. classical Marxist circles, "woke" (plus tech) seems to take this to unprecedented levels.
Is there a difference between one that is socially conscious and someone who is woke?
How would you define "socially conscious?" I am definitely conscious of the social issues that consume wokist thought, and yet it would clearly be a mistake to identify me as "woke," because I am not a left wing identitarian. Most people who are obsessed with issues of race or gender, and who regard those differences as central to all political questions, are left wing identitarians, but some are right wing identitarians, and those are not "woke" either--that's the "alt right"--or, better, the "identitarian right."
I wouldn't mind too terribly if the word "woke" went away, but in my experience the only people who would benefit from having it go away, and who really want it to go away, are left wing identitarians, and "left wing identitarian" is admittedly something of a mouthful.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
Thanks for digging those up!
Have you got any tips for finding such things? I feel like it should be a lot easier, in the 21st century, for me to find such documents. Most news outlets don't even link to the White House announcement page, much less original documents. SCOTUS makes it pretty easy to see their official opinions; Congress is a bit more complicated, especially with bills that aren't yet laws, but usually I can manage there. The White House seems much less interested in even a hint of transparency.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
My apologies. I'm sure if you have the ability to improve the codebase, you'd be welcome on the development Discord.
As for the post, looks like they've deleted it, so, I guess it's a moot point.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
...did you have a point you wanted to make?
Your post seems to be a stream-of-consciousness panic dump, ticking off a laundry list of fears of varying degrees of plausibility, rhetorical questions and sweeping pronouncements without the slightest effort toward evidence or even argument, to say nothing of focus.
Donald Trump will not be the President of the United States for another 105 minutes, at this writing. Pick an issue, make an argument. Trying to fit everything you're scared of (or every news media talking point) into one post is not really conducive to productive discussion.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
Are "Darryl" and "Darrell" Chambers the same person? Five minutes on Google has not cleared this up for me in any way.
President Biden has "pre-emptively" pardoned
General Mark A. Milley, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Members of Congress and staff who served on the Select Committee, and the U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers who testified before the Select Committee
Or at least, he has made a statement to that effect; compare the Hunter pardon, which was fairly detailed, complete with dates. The "pre-emptive" pardon announcement has no details. What are they pardoned for? During what time periods? This appears to be a blanket memo to the future: "these people are immune from prosecution, for whatever, because fuck you that's why." It's not quite at the gobsmackingly presumptuous level of inventing fake Constitutional Amendments, but it seems like yet another example of the Biden administration (and its propaganda arm, the mainstream press) being everything it ever accused Trump of potentially being someday.
I admit: I do not have high hopes for the Trump administration. Mostly I'm hoping that Justices Alito and Thomas have the good sense to step down from SCOTUS before the Democrats are able to take back the Senate. Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised? But the outgoing administration is acting like it has been dipping into the till and never expected it might actually be held accountable for that. In particular, the possibility that the January 6th riots were fomented by justice department lackeys, whether as a conspiracy or a prospiracy, is something the Biden administration absolutely does not want anyone looking into.
Biden insists:
The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.
Historically unprecedented, although the Hunter Biden pardon definitely moved things in this direction. Malicious prosecution of political enemies has long been a standard play for Democratic politicians and bureaucrats--the failed prosecution of Trump himself, of course, but also the well known IRS prosecution of conservatives, throwing the book at local conservative officials who defy federal law while winking at local progressive officials who defy federal law, et cetera.
Of course, the famous MAGA "lock her up" chant should not be forgotten, and Trump has indeed suggested on many occasions that certain people should probably be investigated for wrongdoing. But the presumptions on display--"Trump (who has never actually carried through on these threats) is just doing this illegitimately for political gain, but Democrats doing the same thing (and actually doing it) to their political enemies are just rooting out corruption, which is totally legitimate"--seem clear. I don't doubt that corruption is fairly rampant in DC, on both sides of the aisle. Politicians in general make my skin crawl. But I feel like the Democratic Party's catchphrase has very thoroughly become: "It's Different When We Do It."
If Trump doesn't blanket pardon everyone convicted of an offense on January 6, 2021, I will be disappointed in him. And if he does, the propagandists in the news media will cry bloody murder about it. I wish I was in a position to extract shame or embarrassment from them for this, because I feel like the world would be a better place if more journalists paid a heavier price for pretending to be "neutral" when they are actually functioning as shills.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
Just last month, 120 Democrats in the House and 46 in the Senate signed letters asking Biden to take this step, since, in their view, the amendment was already validly approved.
I have a hard time believing that attitude is anything but kayfabe. If it wasn't an amendment they liked, I don't think they would have the same view on the ratification process.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
He will not be president long enough to be impeached.
Correct. Which is why he's doing this now.
In practice, the Supreme Court needs to be convinced that that bureaucrat had grounds to publicize it. They won’t be. This is extremely silly.
This is an attempt, effectively, to fork the Constitution. This creates and purports to legitimize a blue-tribe consensus that there is a 28th Amendment and that it is the ERA, while the red tribe continues to operate under the view that there isn't such an Amendment.
Will it work? I don't know, but someone clearly thinks it has a chance of working. How many people have to act as if something is the case, before it becomes the case? Might this go nowhere? Sure, it might. But all by itself, Biden's and Harris's willingness to try it is shocking and disturbing.
That was ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek bait for the enjoyment of McGill stans. Though my understanding is that they are close in many ways--U of T generally ranks higher in U.S. News, but McGill is both slightly older and generally held to have the finer medical school.
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