I really appreciated this analysis Carol. On “thinking more incisively into how its own internal problems have precipitated and even rewarded such infiltrating attacks” I’d recommend this essay by Hazony (https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/) as a helpful companion taken from the perspective of a Burkean conservative. He lays out the inherent contradictions and weaknesses within PL and its stated goals of freedom and equality and how PL and PLP are engaged in a sort of dance in which PLP wins on rationale. I may not agree with his conclusion but it provides a helpful lens to re-imagine how to maintain democracy and pluralism in this uncharted territory. This to me is the existential question and I think it will require some courage to synthesize what are valid critiques of
Gonna re-read this over and over until it settles in. I’ve gotten into the habit of oversimplifying what I have been experiencing and this article gives it all a much deeper historical and academic context. Thank you.
A very inciteful and instructive assessment. Thank you. Sadly, your observation that supposedly liberal institutions aren't nearly as liberal as they claim hits home.
I see your points, and I appreciate your acknowledgement regarding regressive-progressives. However, I am the wrong person to answer your questions. I was born and raised in California—the Bay Area, specifically. After 63 years of watching my beautiful home state reduced and dismantled to its present Democrat dystopia, I along with thousands of other middle-class California refugees, left the state to somewhere less authoritarian, and where my tax dollars would be more wisely used.
California has been dominated by a super majority Democrat legislature for decades, and we all can see the horrific damage done when one political party has too much power with no checks or balances to guard from its own excesses. I would also say the same thing about the spineless, posturing, self-serving Republicans too. Right or wrong, I believe this was the main reason for Trump’s appeal to so many people.
I am hoping that the left’s excesses will help to develop a new party or movement that can embrace old-time liberalism pertaining to self-governance, free speech and free exchange in the marketplace of ideas, civil liberties, etc., in a spirit of working together while also showing a willingness to discuss and to compromise with those who have conservative ideas. The hate and vitriol (with its totalitarian and authoritarian methods) coming from the current tribalistic left is not the answer.
Thank you for responding to my comment and speaking so eloquently.
I know this is going to sound completely uninformed, but stick with me.
#1. There is not a single "woke" position - not ONE - that I did not here copiously, endlessly discussed in New York City's East Village back in the 1970s. Not one. I suppose people in those circles are insular enough to think everyone in the universe must be aware of what they're aware of.
To me, I found these discussion unfathomably boring; mostly because they were issues that I knew about .00001% of the population would care about.
But I did make a prediction - I should add, I'm usually TERRIBLE at making political predictions (I insisted right up to election day that NOBODY was going to vote for Reagan).
I predicted that the Right would get ahold of some obscure academic hyper marxist nonsense and make it SEEM like the whole LEFT was about this.
There was a budding anarchic movement that was profoundly open to spirituality, totally different from Marxism, and I said, if the Right gets hold of this, BOTH the left in general AND the budding spiritual movement would be set back by about 50 years.
Well, that was 50 years ago and I hate to say I was right.
in the early 1990s, ex Leftist turned fascist reactionary David Horowitz was hired by some very wealthy think tanks. His express mission was to find the most bizarre left wing academics and write as if they represented the mainsream left.
If you don't believe this, Horowitz wrote a tellall in the early 2000s saying that's exactly what he did.
And it's 20 years later, and even people on the Left think the party's been taken over by wokeism.
Carol, I know you think I'm naive, but I've steadfastly challenged people who believe as you do, that wokeism is a big thing, or even that it's a real thing, and so far, NOT ONE PERSON HAS BEEN ABEL TO ANSWER THE CHALLENGE.
So here it is:
Don't count ANYTHING you've read. Nothing. Not in the most respected academic journals (especially the most respected academic journals. Not in social media, newspapers (paper or cyberspace newspapers). Anything.
Don't count anything you see on TV or in the media.
Don't even count what personal friends and acquaintances tell you about what happens in their schools or workplaces.
Putting all that aside, have you ever ONCE, in your entire life, been adversely affected by anything remotely to do with "wokeism.". I mean, has it affected your ability to eat, to find a place to live, to conduct any of your affairs, to earn money, to invest, to do ANYTHING that normal people do?
Now, I've asked this of people of all walks of life, on the Left, on the Right, in countries around the world, in states around the US, and so far NOBODY HAS BEEN ABLE TO GIVE ME EVEN ONE TRULY SIGNIFICANT ANSWER.
I'm not talking about someone getting annoyed at you because you said him or her instead of them.
I'm talking about real life.
I've been hearing about these "woke" issues since my 20s. I remember a particularly annoying moment in grad school when a feminist teacher pointed to a quote from Walt. Whitman I posted on a bulletin board and read it out, spitting out the word 'Him" and "He" which referred to all of "mankind."
Doesn't count. Apart from 3 seconds of irritation, it had absolutely no effect on my life.
I remember in the 90s, in my doctoral program, a very proper leftist student complained the ethnic studies (this guy was white and the teacher was black) was "racist" because it attemped to ascribe specific cultural characteristics to a specific cultural group.
Apart from 3 seconds lost from my life having to waste it hearing this kind. of nonsense, it had no effect on my life.
I read about wokeism all the time. I lived in New York City for 30 years; never encountered it directly, not once, in any way that had any real impact.
I lived in South Carolina for years, where all you heard (without the word "woke" back then) was all these horrific things the Left was doing. Asked people to give me examples in their own lives - couldn't do it)
Now I'm in "progressive" Asheville, and I DO hear people refer to it. And then I say, "oh gosh, that sounds terrible, has it had a negative impact on you personally?
no.
So, has it had a negative impact on you personally? I don't want to hear any statistics. I studied statistics and have used it in scientific research and can tell you from personal experience, in the social sciences, you can use statistics to prove virtually anything (actually, my friend who wrote a college textbook on quantum mechanics tells me it's not as far from that even in physics as people might think).
I really appreciated this analysis Carol. On “thinking more incisively into how its own internal problems have precipitated and even rewarded such infiltrating attacks” I’d recommend this essay by Hazony (https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/) as a helpful companion taken from the perspective of a Burkean conservative. He lays out the inherent contradictions and weaknesses within PL and its stated goals of freedom and equality and how PL and PLP are engaged in a sort of dance in which PLP wins on rationale. I may not agree with his conclusion but it provides a helpful lens to re-imagine how to maintain democracy and pluralism in this uncharted territory. This to me is the existential question and I think it will require some courage to synthesize what are valid critiques of
Gonna re-read this over and over until it settles in. I’ve gotten into the habit of oversimplifying what I have been experiencing and this article gives it all a much deeper historical and academic context. Thank you.
A very inciteful and instructive assessment. Thank you. Sadly, your observation that supposedly liberal institutions aren't nearly as liberal as they claim hits home.
I see your points, and I appreciate your acknowledgement regarding regressive-progressives. However, I am the wrong person to answer your questions. I was born and raised in California—the Bay Area, specifically. After 63 years of watching my beautiful home state reduced and dismantled to its present Democrat dystopia, I along with thousands of other middle-class California refugees, left the state to somewhere less authoritarian, and where my tax dollars would be more wisely used.
California has been dominated by a super majority Democrat legislature for decades, and we all can see the horrific damage done when one political party has too much power with no checks or balances to guard from its own excesses. I would also say the same thing about the spineless, posturing, self-serving Republicans too. Right or wrong, I believe this was the main reason for Trump’s appeal to so many people.
I am hoping that the left’s excesses will help to develop a new party or movement that can embrace old-time liberalism pertaining to self-governance, free speech and free exchange in the marketplace of ideas, civil liberties, etc., in a spirit of working together while also showing a willingness to discuss and to compromise with those who have conservative ideas. The hate and vitriol (with its totalitarian and authoritarian methods) coming from the current tribalistic left is not the answer.
Thank you for responding to my comment and speaking so eloquently.
So what IS wokeism? Calling it by another name doesn't define it.
Hi, old progressive here.
I know this is going to sound completely uninformed, but stick with me.
#1. There is not a single "woke" position - not ONE - that I did not here copiously, endlessly discussed in New York City's East Village back in the 1970s. Not one. I suppose people in those circles are insular enough to think everyone in the universe must be aware of what they're aware of.
To me, I found these discussion unfathomably boring; mostly because they were issues that I knew about .00001% of the population would care about.
But I did make a prediction - I should add, I'm usually TERRIBLE at making political predictions (I insisted right up to election day that NOBODY was going to vote for Reagan).
I predicted that the Right would get ahold of some obscure academic hyper marxist nonsense and make it SEEM like the whole LEFT was about this.
There was a budding anarchic movement that was profoundly open to spirituality, totally different from Marxism, and I said, if the Right gets hold of this, BOTH the left in general AND the budding spiritual movement would be set back by about 50 years.
Well, that was 50 years ago and I hate to say I was right.
in the early 1990s, ex Leftist turned fascist reactionary David Horowitz was hired by some very wealthy think tanks. His express mission was to find the most bizarre left wing academics and write as if they represented the mainsream left.
If you don't believe this, Horowitz wrote a tellall in the early 2000s saying that's exactly what he did.
And it's 20 years later, and even people on the Left think the party's been taken over by wokeism.
Carol, I know you think I'm naive, but I've steadfastly challenged people who believe as you do, that wokeism is a big thing, or even that it's a real thing, and so far, NOT ONE PERSON HAS BEEN ABEL TO ANSWER THE CHALLENGE.
So here it is:
Don't count ANYTHING you've read. Nothing. Not in the most respected academic journals (especially the most respected academic journals. Not in social media, newspapers (paper or cyberspace newspapers). Anything.
Don't count anything you see on TV or in the media.
Don't even count what personal friends and acquaintances tell you about what happens in their schools or workplaces.
Putting all that aside, have you ever ONCE, in your entire life, been adversely affected by anything remotely to do with "wokeism.". I mean, has it affected your ability to eat, to find a place to live, to conduct any of your affairs, to earn money, to invest, to do ANYTHING that normal people do?
Now, I've asked this of people of all walks of life, on the Left, on the Right, in countries around the world, in states around the US, and so far NOBODY HAS BEEN ABLE TO GIVE ME EVEN ONE TRULY SIGNIFICANT ANSWER.
I'm not talking about someone getting annoyed at you because you said him or her instead of them.
I'm talking about real life.
I've been hearing about these "woke" issues since my 20s. I remember a particularly annoying moment in grad school when a feminist teacher pointed to a quote from Walt. Whitman I posted on a bulletin board and read it out, spitting out the word 'Him" and "He" which referred to all of "mankind."
Doesn't count. Apart from 3 seconds of irritation, it had absolutely no effect on my life.
I remember in the 90s, in my doctoral program, a very proper leftist student complained the ethnic studies (this guy was white and the teacher was black) was "racist" because it attemped to ascribe specific cultural characteristics to a specific cultural group.
Apart from 3 seconds lost from my life having to waste it hearing this kind. of nonsense, it had no effect on my life.
I read about wokeism all the time. I lived in New York City for 30 years; never encountered it directly, not once, in any way that had any real impact.
I lived in South Carolina for years, where all you heard (without the word "woke" back then) was all these horrific things the Left was doing. Asked people to give me examples in their own lives - couldn't do it)
Now I'm in "progressive" Asheville, and I DO hear people refer to it. And then I say, "oh gosh, that sounds terrible, has it had a negative impact on you personally?
no.
So, has it had a negative impact on you personally? I don't want to hear any statistics. I studied statistics and have used it in scientific research and can tell you from personal experience, in the social sciences, you can use statistics to prove virtually anything (actually, my friend who wrote a college textbook on quantum mechanics tells me it's not as far from that even in physics as people might think).
I'm eager to hear.