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While I find the argument "you have to let the democrats win in order to fight wokeness" to be wishcasting at best (and disingenuous depending on the source), there is something that is undeniably true: The Trump years were a bonanza to the NGO industrial complex, news media companies and other related grifters.
Will this resume again in Trump pt II? There have been claims that the mood is different now, more deflated and tired. But things are often different until they aren't, specially if Trump ends up being more effective this term.
I definitely think it'll experience something of a modest second-wind, but that it won't be nearly as prominent as during peak woke of the 2017-2020 era. Thermostatic equilibrium is one of the most enduring phenomena in politics that's survived even the extremely polarized environment of the US. Trump will try to crack down on immigration in a hamfisted way, somebody will take a picture of a migrant child in a cage or dead in the desert or whatever, and public opinion will swing back towards being somewhat pro-immigration.
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I hope Trump is more shameless about shit canning people in the executive working against him. Everyone was ready to pop off if he fired people at the DOJ investigating him just like Nixon did. This time around, he'd be a chump not to do it given he was ultimately totally vindicated last time around, and there is zero pretense of things being anything other than a fishing expedition this time around. The MSM will bleat about it, but the massive rightward shift of every demographic I think finally shows their power is broken. Maybe they'll recover, but while Trump has mastery he needs to use it to the fullest extent possible.
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This is in large measure a legal question. An aggressive, competent, and creative Trump DOJ could throw many monkey-wrenches in the works, to say nothing of tax legislation changing the rules around philanthropic foundations and non-profit status.
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It's a very difficult problem for anyone who is anti-establishment.
The default is that being president is really being elected to be the scapegoat. The president does not actually have that much power to change the big trends that make people happy or unhappy with their situation.
So if you have a woke/establishment president, they end up cementing woke rule with their court picks, administrative rulings, funding decisions, DoJ prosecution decisions, EEOC appointments, etc. And then when you elect a fire-breathing ant-establishment politician they spend all their energy thrashing and on petty beefs, get nothing done, and then end up the scapegoat for all the problems that have accumulated over the past ten years.
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I think wokeness was on the ascent prior to Trump descending the escalator. While it did get turbo-charged under Trump, it also clearly revealed itself and was increasingly unable to sanewash its prescriptions through anodyne description (ie. "Do you seriously take issue with an academic approach to female representation in media? Seriously, a problem with academics?"). Without Trump, I think the poison pills could have gone unnoticed for longer.
And 2024 is not 2016. There was a period where culture makers could more freely indulge their fantasies of a mythical Modern Audience that would monetarily reward their tainted output. In the time since, we have had major, recurring flops across multiple industries, and some clear indicators that audiences aren't chomping on this hook. There will be some token displays of staying in the fight, but this experiment has mostly failed. Important money men will want to pivot away.
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