Nice Patrick Hamilton impression but even left wing press and media has 100s of articles and news segments on the Woke running amuck.
You mean the lying fake news media? Now you cite them? When it suits your purposes?
Just a reminder that far-right terrorism has been considered the greatest domestic threat to America for well over two decades. And in recent years this level of extremist behaviour and indeed violence has been actively encouraged and supported by senior members of the Republican party (up to and including the former President) and by pretty much all the right-wing broadcast media outlets.
Unfortunately the American right-wing has a nasty habit of projecting their sins onto the left, which is why you so often see them grossly exaggerating the violence by the left during the 2020 protests and ignoring or minimizing the violence by the right during those protests and in the events leading up to, including and following the January 6 insurrection, an event hundreds of Republicans in Congress are still desperately trying to prevent from being investigated.
This 100%.
Accurate summary.
Woke and its predecessor SJW means “Empathetic to a group of people that you may not belong to.”
Is there a thing as “too empathetic” ?
As has already been noted, one can be “too” anything. There is, however, a continuum involved here, and where one draws the line at “too much” will always be highly subjective.
Yes. Some feel other people’s emotions so strongly that they can’t deal with many social interactions very well. Also there is a thing called empathy or compassion fatigue.
Of course, this is mainly to do with affective empathy. It may not apply so much to cognitive empathy.
Yes, if it gets in the way of rational decision-making. There are lots of situations where there are no really good choices but a bunch of imperfect ones that will all hurt somebody; or where being too empathetic toward one group alienates some other group of people whose support is crucial to your being able to achieve your other goals. In my experience, people on the political left are often not great at weighing the tradeoffs involved in these situations, and have a tendency either to overthink themselves into paralysis or to deny that the tradeoff exists.
Good point. The Wokie McWokesons may aggravate and annoy and make me want to give 'em a “SNAP OUT OF IT!!” shake, but are not an immediate threat to my life and liberty.
Still, though, kind of disheartening that in the face of it I also have to be listening to someone whingeing about how I am not being a worthy ally.
On the later bit, what I often detect is a notion that there is/should be NO tradeoff worth complaining about because coming around to the “good, right” position is 100% a huge plus for anyone anytime anywhere, and everyone should want to be on the “good, right” side of every issue. Which is really more of a general human folly, it was not invented by the “left”.
What I see more than anything is that at least in today’s political landscape, the Left fixates on the empathetic/“woke” aspects of a policy, and that’s what comes out more than anything in the messaging, etc… even if it will actually benefit everyone, or at least more than just the people being empathized with. Combine that with the Democratic party’s loose hand with their politicians’ commentary and statements, and it’s not hard if you’re seeing things from the outside, to see where the Right’s contention that they don’t do stuff for the "average American’, comes from.
Of course, the Left does do things for the average American, but the rhetoric and emphasis is often on minorities/disenfranchised people/etc…
An example might be how all these voter shenanigans actually protect democracy as a whole, and are critical to maintaining our system of government. But the messaging tends to be about how it affects people of color/minorities. Which is likely to have some of the more uncurious/uncritical among us thinking “Well, my vote still counts.” and not being very concerned about it. While if they’d put it the other way, that person might be like “Hell, our way of life is being threatened!” instead.
Putting it another way, a Democratic policy might be that everyone should have X. But non-minorities are more likely to already have X, so the plan sounds like its giving minorities X and not giving non-minorities anything, at which point to some people it looks like minorities are being given special treatment not available to non-minorities.
The clearest example of this it the battle between “Black lives matter” vs “'All lives matter”, but also extends to “Why is there a black history month but not a white history month?” or “Why is black entertainment television OK, but if there was a white entertainment television it would be called racist?”
Note that a lot of this is not “What Democrats are doing”, it’s “What Republicans claim Democrats are doing”. The fault may not lie with the Democrats if the well-organized smear campaign overshadows the reality.
That’s not exactly what I’m getting at, although that’s more what the right would say.
I’m talking about the way that something like UHC would benefit everyone, but for whatever reason, the Democratic party would make a big point of how it’s going to help communities of color, etc… and never really point out the advantages to anyone else, of which there are many. So people who already have insurance but who would stand to benefit anyway, hear all this and feel like this is something that isn’t intended for them, and are then very skeptical of any tax increases, changes in their existing coverage, etc… because they don’t see the benefit of it.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t celebrate this sort of building of equity, but I am saying that they need to make a very clear point of the benefits and advantages for ALL, not just for people of color, poor, whatever. It’s a dumb political plan that expects the average person to read between the lines to see if it helps themselves or their own community- that should be very clearly spelled out for anyone and everyone who stands to benefit.
I can’t say I’ve really heard a lot of Democratic rhetoric that matches this. Do you have examples? Most of the Dem arguments for UHC I’m familiar with have been about economics and runaway health care costs, without being specific about how they’d apply to any particular racial demographic.
Yeah, Universal means Universal. I think there is a projection going on here of what the Right hears when the word Universal is used. They hear it as “those people are getting my tax dollars spent on them” because that’s how they perceive it, not because that is how it is being sold by the Democrats.
Saw this today (old article, but I hadn’t seen it before):
Dune Director Explains Why Timothée Chalamet Was His Only Choice for Paul Atreides (movieweb.com)