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Matthew Stanley's avatar

"That’s how I saw some of the wokeness stuff, for a while: this is what the people are doing, and it would be pointless to tell them they’re wrong; instead we have to use it the best we can and educate them toward a higher version of it." <- to have thought that "this is what the people are doing" can only be a function of remaining within within an insulated bubble. Woke was never been popular with the majority of people, but since political movements, activists, journalists, managers, and consultants were injecting it into every area of folks' lives, they suddenly were forced to take an interest in it (because it was interested in them!). These books flying off the shelf, which David talks about, was not evidence of mass resonance, but was a coping mechanism for people to get up to speed in the face of a massive cultural and institutional shift which was being pushed from society's power centers. The size and scale of the Floyd protests is no argument on this front either -- mass protest, looting, and rioting has no ideological directionality to it, and thus does not supply evidence of support for any particular idea or agenda. Wokeness has never been organic. It has always required a small group speaking up and causing havoc to coerce authorities into imposing the minority report's agenda. Further, such movements and organizations have often been funded by government money and wealthy donors.

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Selden Lawrence's avatar

David’s summary points 1-3 are not only half-right; they don’t go far enough. Any brief survey of academic and intellectual output (or body count of careers sacrificed) during the period will confirm that the intellectual left largely recited the latest catechism unaltered. The only unanswered question is how many were true believers, how many charlatans, and how many cowards.

The first step to regaining relevance for the intellectual left is to choose not to speak lies — not primarily because they are not strategic (although that appears evident) but because lies corrupt both speaker and listener.

The second step is — acknowledging that a decade of lies have corrupted leftist thought — to look not outward to persuade, but inward to begin reckoning with the truth. Take the next four years off and return with a vision for what it would mean to live in a just — as well as a literal and real — world.

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