Is it Time to Tone Down the Wokeness, Especially about the Past?

Great Debates
412

We are talking about social changes here, not the 40 hour week. The kind that have lead to widespread divorce, a plummeting birthrate, large numbers of single parents, and way too many young people being unable to find relationships. These are things I have seen conservatives complaining about. I’m not keen to turn the clock back, but it’s also not crazy to see these as changes for the worse.

It’s not my subtext. But I refuse to waste time trying to convince anyone who would rather believe their invented subtext than try to understand my actual thoughts.

To cover it properly would be way outside the scope of this thread and I don’t want to derail it. Not sure I want to go into it at all considering it will be a lot of effort for an unsympathetic audience.

It’s not random jerks, it’s the prevailing view on the left, ubiquitous on social media, and influencing Dem leaders enough that conservative media can get their sound bites.

I know, that’s why I brought it up. Did you really never notice anyone doing this? Once I saw it, I saw it everywhere, but it would be pretty damn hard to find enough tweets from 8 years ago to demonstrate anything meaningful. Maybe I’ll spend some time looking if I have nothing better to do.

Probably not what was meant, but the answer is obviously the border.

[Album] imgur.com
413

Ok give me your laws that you want the Democrats propose to ensure that white men can find relationships and regain power you think they naturally deserve .

414

Hmm, I wonder if there was something happening in the world that might have affected those numbers. Not that those numbers even, necessarily, mean what folks want them to appear to mean.

415

I know! I know!

July 4, 2026, 250th anniversary of the United States.

If Democrats want to at least take back the House of Representatives in 2026, this should be treated as a national point of pride rather than an opportunity to reflect on the shamefulness of our history.

But I suspect this is a big ask.

416

How do you know about this influence on Dem leaders – what are the examples of policy or rhetoric in the Democratic party?

Because right now it does look a lot like an unfalsifiable claim. You can find people on the internet saying anything, and you can insinuate that the Democratic party is secretly doing their bidding but not in a way that changes policy or we can see.

No. Perhaps you mistook people disagreeing with the reasons for Brexit with snobbishness? But again, I’ve said I’m happy to be proven wrong with any example whatsoever.

Also: do you acknowledge that the Brexit campaign used the idea of “elitism” in their campaign, even though it was run by people who fit the mould of privileged elites better than anyone?

But that isn’t an example of progressive policies; little actually changed policy-wise at the border. Biden largely just went back to the pre covid policies which resulted in an influx after pent up demand.
And it’s convenient that they graph stops prior to the effect of biden’s executive actions kicking in which have cut crossings down to lower than during trump’s term.

Finally, who was it that blocked the border bill? Why isn’t he being blamed for being “woke” in blocking a conservative plan to massively beef up security?

417

That IS a social change.

Please be exact.

Was that a “policy” , can you name it? Note that Covid greatly reduced Border crossings. And those are ‘encounters’, not successful crossings into the USA. And where did that graph come from?

Right.

418

Letting women vote and own property and be independent people and have control over their own reproductive decisions is the root cause to much of that. Allowing no fault divorce. People making their lives about their happiness instead of a lifetime commitment to some asshole they didn’t really know when they got married (women can be assholes, too).

Is it young people unable to find relationships, or some young men?

419

Remember they said that women were one of the aberrant groups of humanity.

420

There is a something there there. Culturally, there is an attitude from educated urbanites stereotyping rural white folks. You know the meme - you might be a redneck if you do.

Then there’s the more venomous version, white trash.

Both of those may start with disdain over certain behaviors that are problematic - racism, sexism, whatever. But that gets wrapped up with harmless subculture elements like hairstyles and clothing, or practices that have a different context, like gun ownership.

That disdain for rural society is especially felt by the working class, the non-college educated. And that is what is perceived as elitism from the left.

What has happened is that the Republicans have been able to play identity politics and get urban working class to feel more solidarity with the rural people than with college educated urbanites. That “elitism” is the angle.

But they feed that narrative with the vocal left trying to change society to treat people better. That is wokism, and it is being criticized as self- righteous preaching, or worse, virtue signaling. The right dismisses the criticism as overly sensitive nannies who want to make everyone conform to some silly ideas about people, to accept blatant nonsense as truth.

Again that is me describing their perception, not my own judgment.

When Democratic leaders like Bernie Sanders and AOC and the squad voice liberal ideas about, say, trans rights, the right takes that as confirmation that the left is silly nonsense, or else masked danger.

That judgemental language about behavior tied to judgemental language about subculture and superficial appearance becomes noise. It becomes a source of pride to stand up for their group and oppose the judgemental group.

That’s how the Republicans have pulled the working class to support the Uber rich businessmen over the middle class promoting dems.

421

Oh absolutely. And of course there will be some subset of urban graduates who do indeed look down on “flyover country” (literally).

But, as you say, a lot of this has been exaggerated and caricatured for political gain by the GOP. Just as the millionaire privately-educated sons of newspaper editors and hedge fund managers in my native UK managed to sell themselves as working-class heroes fighting the “elites”, so it is with ivy league law graduates in the US (let alone trump himself).

It’s so sad to see it working time and again. Some of the poorest parts of America being tricked into attacking the wrong enemy and voting against their own interests.

422

And that’s not mentioning how conservatives, among others, have weaponized harmless subculture elements like hairstyles and clothing.
See: Cornrows and sagging et al.

423

I’ll reply to the rest later, but come on. Biden’s ‘post Covid surge’ is bigger than any time during Trump’s presidency, most of which was pre-Covid - and numbers stayed that way right into 2024. We know Biden could have done something about it, because he just did. He’s successfully reduced the flow via executive actions. Why didn’t he do that in 2021 or 2022 when it would have made far more difference? Why didn’t the Dems try to pass the border bill years ago, when the Republicans probably wouldn’t have blocked it, or if they had there would have been years to put the blame on them? It’s easy for their base to forgive them delaying action for a few months in order to get elected, far less so if it had gone on multiple years with more and more migrants arriving. IMHO this is the single thing the Democrats could have done that would have made the most difference.

They knew damn well that immigration and the border was a significant factor in Trump’s first election, so why didn’t they act?

424

The very first bill Biden proposed was to strengthen border security and reduce the asylum backlogs. It was rejected by the Republicans because it was too nice to the people already here.

Immigration policy of the Joe Biden administration - Wikipedia.

425

The first thing the article says is:

Sure sounds like it was policy to me.

This is how Wikipedia describes the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021:

This seems to be mostly about granting citizenship to existing illegal immigrants, something that would act as a huge pull factor encouraging further illegal immigration. It included a few provisions on the border, but it’s not a border security bill.

Progressive policy in action.

426

No bill involving immigration is a “border security bill”, because immigration isn’t a security problem in the first place. It’s a bigotry and labor exploitation problem.

427

Trump had set up literal concentration camps for undocumented immigrants. They were immensely unpopular and, more importantly, horribly inhumane. Of course Biden’s first order of business was to undo many of Trump’s horrible policies. He didn’t undo enough of them.

And yes, Biden also set up a “path to citizenship” as opposed to the militarized deportation nightmare that Trump is proposing. In addition to being far more humane, this proposal is significantly more popular:

The crucial point remains: Democratic policies tend to have more public support, when the public hears them without partisan nonsense.

You still don’t have a definition of “woke,” but given that this is what you’re now talking about in a thread about wokeness, I’m assuming you think the “path to citizenship” approach is woke? If so, Democrats won’t win by abandoning this popular proposal. They need to do something else.

428

So, the dems should turn bigot and Xenophobe because the MAGAs are?

Yep.

Exactly. You know what Border Security is? The Maginot Line.

429

Okay, I looked at some right-wing articles to see what they are claiming as woke policies from Biden:

An executive order in June 2021 calling for federal agencies to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion in recruits and when considering promotions.

Allocating Covid recovery funds on the basis of race and gender:

(Spoiler: it was not constitutional)

Opposing the lawsuit alleging that race-based affirmative action at Harvard and UNC was unconstitutional.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-administration-asks-us-supreme-court-reject-harvard-affirmative-action-2021-12-09/

Reinstating Obama-era rules that remove due process for anyone accused on sexual assault or harassment on university campuses:

There are a few more similar but I’m getting tired.

Sure. And many of them were planning to turn London into Singapore-on-Thames or something, which was not at all what most Brexit voters wanted. But despite the hypocrisy, I think there was something to the charge. As far as my research could tell, the EU really did economically benefit skilled/higher social class workers far more than low skilled/lower social class ones, while the later bore the brunt of the social and structural problems from mass migration as usual. We get to pay less when we need a plumber or building work, they get lower wages and fewer opportunities.

Illegal immigration in the US is similar: employers get cheap labour, poorer people see lower wages and more competition (probably the reason some Latino citizens are not big fans).

Pretty much everyone I have seen agrees that the border was a major reason Harris lost the election. Whatever they say in surveys, Americans are clearly unhappy with the current results. :woman_shrugging:

Not in itself. This is woke:

Accusing people of xenophobia or bigotry for wanting to be able to decide who moves to their country and in what numbers is very woke.

430

Except they don’t get “lower wages and more competition”, because undocumented workers do jobs that Americans won’t.

And they “aren’t fans” because they are hypocrites, bigots and/or self destructive fools who don’t think the leopards will eat their faces.

You are moving the goalposts; deciding “who moves to their country and in what numbers” is not a security issue.

Thinking that it is, is xenophobia and bigotry. It’s buying into all the ranting about “Mexican rapists” and the “Great Replacement”. We are the ones exploiting them, not the other way around.

431

If you don’t enforce it then you are not actually deciding.