Those poor young white men, won’t anyone think about their problems? Sure, they (white males age 20-29) have the highest earnings of any age 20-29 demographic, but we’re not doing enough to make things even better for them.
Members of Congress have their own individual bathrooms, and there are also unisex bathrooms. They are saying that Sarah McBride shouldn’t use the women’s bathroom.
Should I be permitted to weigh in on Native American burial mounds if I want to?
Should I be permitted to weigh in on what bathroom you are allowed to use?
What the fuck does this have to do with banning a woman from using the women’s room?
Weigh in on whatever you want.
@DemonTree, should the Democrats roll over on that proposal to ban McBride from using the women’s room, so they don’t appear too woke?
Of course you should. And if you say something stupid and bigoted about it, I should be permitted to weigh in on those hypothetical stupid and bigoted comments you make. If you say something stupid and bigoted, and I criticize you, and you complain that I’m bullying you for saying something stupid and bigoted–well, you’ll have company. It’s a pretty well-established right-wing ploy at this point.
The first part answers your questions pretty well. “Wokeness” is anything MAGA doesn’t like that involves treating marginalized groups like real people.
As others have said, that’s not a real thing at all but it’s a powerful tool to drive fear and rage.
Every single IRL person I’ve asked to define “woke” has failed to provide a definition. The general feeling that most of them seem to get to is “why should I have to feel bad for being white?” (Which is hilarious to me because where are all of these guilty white people at? And why haven’t they dismantled all of the systems of racism to assuage their guilt?)
I’ve also had this conversation with a few guys who felt that they should have free speech with no consequences. Both seemed rather surprised when I told them to drop as many hard 'R’s as they want, but I have no control over how the barstaff will react.
Of course not, but if you work with the public and the images were made public, then I would at least expect a half-assed “I’m sorry for anyone that I may have offended. I was young and I didn’t know better but I’m learning” kind of statement.
For a private company? It really shouldn’t matter unless it’s something that their coworkers would be forced to interact with. In other words, I don’t give a damn if you wear blackface every year for Halloween as long as you don’t display the pictures around your office or in your cubicle.
Why do the trigger/discretionary warnings need to go? I truly think that this is one of the better solutions to be enacted. It’s ridiculously easy to skip a one slide warning at the beginning of a show or movie. Personally, I think it’s wonderful that I never have to sit through another surprise lynching or rape scene.
I don’t know how to discuss this subject, because while I happen to agree with you in this particular case (gay marriage), I do not agree that every group loudly insisting that something should be a right are correct or should get their way. There’s no universally agreed philosophy or moral system that spells out what should be a right and what shouldn’t be. It’s something we’re always collectively trying to agree on and negotiating. The things we agree to hold as rights affect other people and society as a whole, so it’s unavoidable that the general public get a say in them (unless you want to live in a dictatorship).
I’m purposely not bringing up examples here because I know everyone would discuss them instead of the general principle. But it’s pretty much a given that someone somewhere thinks something should be a right that you don’t believe should be. And that goes for everyone here.
What has changed as far as I can see is the reaction to a majority or large minority disagreeing with progressives on these issues: from persuasion and asking for tolerance to condemnation and attempts at suppression. This is one strand of what the op is talking about - if you believe you’re better than other people and don’t hide it, they are going to dislike you and be less likely to vote for you. I’m pretty sure many people expressed disappointment with Obama’s position in 2008, but I don’t remember activist groups loudly denouncing him - and those voters who agreed with him - as homophobes, and I think if they had it would have alienated voters and hampered his campaign similarly to what ‘woke’ activists are doing today.
Or perhaps they did, and it just wasn’t as well known due to the much lower prominence of social media?
It’s the other way round. We should default to letting adults do anything that doesn’t affect others. Trying to force people how to live because others find the notion of changing gender uncomfortable is oppression.
Again, most people’s views have been formed by the absurd maga talking points, and have very little or nothing to do with what progressives are actually saying.
It’s true that democrats need to consider how the electorate will respond to certain issues and pick their battles. It’s just got very little to do with what happened in this election, where zero battles were picked and they lost to the disinformation.
Everything we do affects others. I think we should take a liberal approach as a principle, but I can still recognise that.
You cannot possibly deny that the average progressive thinks they are better than the ‘bigoted’ or ‘unenlightened’ or ‘voting against their interest’ people who elected Trump. (Or Brexit voters, for that matter; the blatant snobbery so many Remainers exhibited towards them was pretty gross.) That’s a major PR problem IMHO, far beyond the actual issues.
And if anyone in the Democratic party wants to change this, there isn’t a lot they can do. It’s coming from the most committed and politically active part of their base, and they don’t control those people; if anything it’s the other way around.
I think the idea was that “Wokeness” did not made much of a difference, but now it does?
As pointed out before, it was not a factor during the reelection of Obama, even though a lot of “woke” ideas were in the mix in those days.
When it comes to these “cultural issues …” I think there’s a lot of wisdom to be gleaned from this study:
A study by scientists at New York University and the University of California, Los Angeles, found differences in how self-described liberal and conservative research participants responded to changes in patterns. Participants were asked to tap a keyboard when the letter “M” appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a “W.” The letter “M” appeared four times more frequently than “W,” conditioning participants to press the keyboard on almost every trial. Liberal participants made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw the rare “W,” indicating to the researchers that these participants were better able to accept changes or conflicts in established patterns.
The participants were also wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in their anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency and a more appropriate response. Liberals were significantly more likely than conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts during the experiment, and this correlated with their greater accuracy in the test.
“Social conservatives --” are generally uncomfortable with this kind of change – the kind of societal change that’s been going on since fire and the wheel hit the scene. They cling to the constancy and stability of the Bible, for example, and decry every single thing that – in their view – differs from it, because … anything other than what THEY view as the Bible’s position … causes them significant upset.
But the same people always talk of “personal responsibility.” Well … I’m sorry that society marching on causes such cognitive stress for you, but I would argue that that is NOT society’s responsibility to manage. It’s the social conservatives’ responsibility.
Brains of liberals, conservatives may work differently, study finds
“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
–The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (questionable attribution)
It seems like the sole focus of today’s GOP is to bend it back.
Clearly it didn’t, since they did condemn him, loudly and angrily. “Bush in Blackface” being one of the insults I recall being thrown around. He was being condemned as homophobic from the very start.
I forgot to add: when one looks at the huge defeat of the Conservative Tories in England, The main issues for the change were caused by inflation and other economical woes, as it was in the US, the incumbent party got the blame for not doing more for the people that live with hardships. Like in Britain, it is very likely that the ones that made the difference in the last election in the US will change when they will notice that there was little change regarding prices or immigration.
So yeah, the “snob” ones in favor of Remain were correct. They were the ones with the right idea instead of the ones that had the real gross ones. And being “Woke” was less of an issue.
Thing is, when one side is blatantly bigoted, ignorant and malignant it’s unrealistic to expect their opponents to not express disdain for them. It’s also bad politics, since refusing to condemn your opponents looks like an implicit admission that they are right and you are wrong.
And if the Republicans have demonstrated anything, it’s that being negative about your opponents works.
The part of their base that complains that the party never nominates anyone progressive left enough and, apparently, couldn’t be bothered to come out and vote against Trump in two elections. They control the Democratic Party???
Or is it the other thing, ya know, where the party is controlled by ‘’‘those’‘’ Democrats and Progressives can’t get their side nominated except is districts that could go either way.
…yeah, but:
Without specifics, this isn’t a given at all. What is it do the woke need to tone down then? How do I stop woking if I don’t know what woke you want me to stop?
Yeah. Mind, it is true that the Democrats can’t shut progressives up; but the idea that the progressives are in control is right wing nonsense.
One more that I hope can provide a bit of context for pretty much any conversation (that has taken place in the US since about 1776) about ‘culture war’ issues:
One of the innumerable consequences of the obstinacy and cognitive rigidity of social conservatives as a group is their seeming inability to grasp a sense of relevant history.
As each group that they’ve aggressively tried to marginalize began to get equal rights, the sky simply didn’t fall. The social conservatives – as is pretty much always the case – were utterly and completely wrong.
Oh, they seethe and writhe and say horrible things when nobody’s listening (or when people are listening), but the apocalyptic predictions … never come to pass.
Period. End of story.
But rather than do just the barest amount of introspection and reflection, the social conservatives simply set their sights on whatever their next vulnerable bogeyman of choice must be.
As “God” needs the “Devil,” these social conservatives constantly need some shadowy figure to rail against.
And – yes: I love the LBJ quote, too:
If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.
–Lyndon B. Johnson
No, they didnt. The vote was based upon Inflation and xenophobia. Not “wokeness”. The only people who rail against that are died in the wool racists and bigots who vote a straight MAGA ticket. The elections was not about that at all. It was about inflation and xenophobia.
Correct- if your party has inflation during it’s firs 2-3 years in office, it gets voted out- even tho of course they can do damn little about it.
The last 4 years proved the GOP cant shut the radical MAGAs up.
And why should they? This is America, let them give their opinion.
Everything affects others to some degree, but are you making the claim that we should prevent adults from choosing their own gender presentation because it makes other people icky?
You know what, too many piercings make me icky and I don’t like some of the music young people listen to, can we ban those too? Hair styles next?
Firstly, irrelevant.
Secondly, yeah I can dispute it. There’s a difference between thinking people made a stupid decision for dumb reasons and thinking I’m superior to them – clearly there will be many people in that group who are doing better in life than I am and may well be smarter than me in general and more attentive lovers.
I’m only criticizing the misconceptions, disinformation and (often) hypocrisy behind voting trump.
Thirdly, bear in mind that republicans leaders – not just trump – repeatedly referred to democrats as pedophiles, low IQ, the enemy within etc. Democrats didn’t do that (apart from biden’s slip of the tongue, which he apologized for, unlike republicans).
Because, finally, yes of course we can find examples of people on social media calling the other side idiots. You can do that for every side of every election, in every country. What matters is what the people with a platform did.
I’d file that under the same disinformation as this election.
Eton alumni like Johnson and Rees-mogg absurdly managed to run on a line of being against the “elites”. While the editor of the Mail, who has basically never paid any tax (as his official domicile has moved around and I think is now Monaco) ironically talked about the euro elites taking advantage of Brits.
Nonetheless I don’t recall snobbishness from the other side in the run up to the vote. Cite?