What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[DGuller]

Explain what?

Your strong reaction to garbon's comment about "woke" having slotted into how white people previously used "playing the race card."

Personally I can see arguments of how both of those terms are or have been used in a similar fashion. I mean, digging into them a bit I'd say there's probably some nuance differences here and there, and also occasions where they have different meanings or functions in a conversation, but I can also see how it's used as a way to dismiss folks by saying "what you're saying is disingenuous/ self-serving/ counter-productive/ too militant/ shuts down conversation by making it about race at the wrong time/ et. al.". But, like, even if garbon is incorrect I'm missing how it "condenses so much of what is wrong with woke culture into a single sentence".

Possibly because I'm too woke myself, I dunno.

Here are some things that immediately come to mind, all from one sentence:

1)  Highlighting that a white person said what I said.  Responding to an argument by having one's identity focused on is definitely a very woke thing, and it's a very toxic woke thing.
2)  Being a person who accuses others of "playing a race card" is generally not what you want to be.  Someone who is described to be such a person is never portrayed in a positive light, and often it's implied that such person is a racist.  So here garbon equated me with that kind of a person.  Shutting down discussions by making one party defend itself against insinuations of racism or other kind of bigotry is again a very woke thing.
3)  The general refusal to accept that the other party may be disagreeing in good faith, or that they may even have a point and aren't mistaken in good faith.  If the woke are feeling particularly magnanimous towards you, they'll just chalk it up to "unconscious bias", but that's about as good as it'll ever get for you.

[Sheilbh]

Neo-liberal to me just means empathetic but cognizant of the harsh realities of market forces.  "The Washington Consensus" is essentially neo-liberalism. 

And if there's one person I'd go to to understand what Jacobin means by neo-liberal it'd be you

Perhaps the UK is different than the US is because a) your woke people are not quite as strident, b) your reasonable centrists are more intimidated or fewer in number, or c) a combination.

How does that follow? There are 4-5 candidates for London Mayor primarily running as "anti-woke" candidates. From a quick Google the Daily Mail seems to run about 3 stories on some new "woke" outrage every day.

[Admiral Yi]

And if there's one person I'd go to to understand what Jacobin means by neo-liberal it'd be you

I'm pretty they use it as a way to slur and dismiss market based arguments they don't understand and are afraid will expose their house of cards.

How does that follow? There are 4-5 candidates for London Mayor primarily running as "anti-woke" candidates. From a quick Google the Daily Mail seems to run about 3 stories on some new "woke" outrage every day.

Yeah, but that's all coming from the right, yeah?

[Sheilbh]

I'm pretty they use it as a way to slur and dismiss market based arguments they don't understand and are afraid will expose their house of cards.

Of course.

Yeah, but that's all coming from the right, yeah?

Yeah - which was my point. Is yours that in the US people you'd describe as "woke" would also non-ironically describe themselves in that way? Because I don't think I've ever seen that - it always seems to be a description imposed on people normally to belittle.

On the theology point - I was listening to a podcast by two relatively prominent historians in the UK. They did an episode on the culture wars and one thought that basically all of British politics since the 17th century is basically a sort of theological culture war and it's just more extreme in America because the US is still more overtly religious, but basically the US is still in that argument among Calvinists frame of politics. The other agreed to a point but thought that the culture wars were fundamentally a theological/Christian civil war which is why people care so much. I don't know how much I agree - but I'm not entirely unconvinced either.

[DGuller]

If we are to communicate effectively, then at some point we have to assign labels to things.  I think it's generally understood what ideological cluster the people classified as "woke" belong to, so debating the term and who uses it and in what way just strikes me as diversionary.

[Berkut]

SHelf, I am not sure what your point is about people on the right using the term "woke".

So what?

If there is a problem with the left around this, then of course the right is going to beat them up with it. That doesn't make the problem something made up by the right.

I mean, if I argue with someone on the right that gun nuts are damaging the image and should chill out, and they respond "gun nut! That is what the left calls anyone who cares about the Constitution!" does that prove that the idea that there are people on the right who are gun nuts is just some leftist hysteria?

It's interesting that this has been neatly turned into a question not about tactics (which is where it started) but rather about identity and whether or not the word "woke" is at issue, and apparently, whether or not caring about how language is used tactically in politics makes you a racist and probably fake progressive. You could not craft a more perfect example of the entire problem with this intellectually empty approach if you hired a team of writers to do so.

[Admiral Yi]

Yeah - which was my point. Is yours that in the US people you'd describe as "woke" would also non-ironically describe themselves in that way? Because I don't think I've ever seen that - it always seems to be a description imposed on people normally to belittle.

I can't provide you with examples of people using "woke" unironically, though I do have vague recollections of it happening.  I can however give you an example of politically correct being used unironically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkzaOwAmDmA

I'm sure the exact same dynamic will play out with woke as did with PC.  It will start off with people celebrating wokeness, then once the backlash and the satire starts, they will disavow the term, claim only racists use the term, then rebrand.  Wash and repeat.

[Jacob]

Here are some things that immediately come to mind, all from one sentence:

1)  Highlighting that a white person said what I said.  Responding to an argument by having one's identity focused on is definitely a very woke thing, and it's a very toxic woke thing.
2)  Being a person who accuses others of "playing a race card" is generally not what you want to be.  Someone who is described to be such a person is never portrayed in a positive light, and often it's implied that such person is a racist.  So here garbon equated me with that kind of a person.  Shutting down discussions by making one party defend itself against insinuations of racism or other kind of bigotry is again a very woke thing.
3)  The general refusal to accept that the other party may be disagreeing in good faith, or that they may even have a point and aren't mistaken in good faith.  If the woke are feeling particularly magnanimous towards you, they'll just chalk it up to "unconscious bias", but that's about as good as it'll ever get for you.

That makes sense. I mean, I think you may potentially be reading too much into it, but I see where you're coming from. Thanks.

[Jacob]

I can't provide you with examples of people using "woke" unironically, though I do have vague recollections of it happening.  I can however give you an example of politically correct being used unironically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkzaOwAmDmA

I'm sure the exact same dynamic will play out with woke as did with PC.  It will start off with people celebrating wokeness, then once the backlash and the satire starts, they will disavow the term, claim only racists use the term, then rebrand.  Wash and repeat.

As I understand it, woke was used unironically in certain Black circles, begain seeing wider adoption among activists and social justice advocates, and then was quickly siezed upon by the right and turned into a word describing the worst of the left (both real and imagined) turning it into a smear, at which point people on the left stopped using it (though it may still be used by the original users).

It's a pretty common cycle for left-wing descriptors to be turned into a smear, as I'm sure you'll all agree.

[Admiral Yi]

It's a pretty common cycle for left-wing descriptors to be turned into a smear, as I'm sure you'll all agree.

Thinking about this, isn't this true of all self-applied labels?

[Jacob]

Thinking about this, isn't this true of all self-applied labels?

Sure, though I think it happens at varying speeds and his wider social uptake with different terms.

[Sheilbh]

If we are to communicate effectively, then at some point we have to assign labels to things.  I think it's generally understood what ideological cluster the people classified as "woke" belong to, so debating the term and who uses it and in what way just strikes me as diversionary.

Okay but for those labels to work doesn't there need to be some agreement between people over what they mean. In addition I've never seen anyone self-describe as "woke" which I think is an issue if their ideas are being given a label. I've no doubt you just mean it as a neutral adjective.

But I think in general if there is no consensus, it's mainly used by people who are opposed to whatever they're describing and it's never used by those people - then it's not a very useful label. I think it's worth so I think it needs to be labelled better and more precisely. I think it's about as helpful as the way too many on the left blame everything on "neo-liberalism" or call many things "fascist". Labels only matter if they have content.

SHelf, I am not sure what your point is about people on the right using the term "woke".

So what?

If there is a problem with the left around this, then of course the right is going to beat them up with it. That doesn't make the problem something made up by the right.

I mean, if I argue with someone on the right that gun nuts are damaging the image and should chill out, and they respond "gun nut! That is what the left calls anyone who cares about the Constitution!" does that prove that the idea that there are people on the right who are gun nuts is just some leftist hysteria?

It doesn't help understand what the issue is. It's like socialist I suppose in the US - there are socialists on the left, there's a lot of thought around what socialism is but if I see a Republican or someone on Fox News complaining about socialism I have no idea what they mean because it can cover almost anything and just means something the speaker doesn't like. That's a useless label for someone to try and understand what they're talking about.

It's interesting that this has been neatly turned into a question not about tactics (which is where it started) but rather about identity and whether or not the word "woke" is at issue, and apparently, whether or not caring about how language is used tactically in politics makes you a racist and probably fake progressive. You could not craft a more perfect example of the entire problem with this intellectually empty approach if you hired a team of writers to do so.

I totally agree with Carville's take on tactics. But I don't think they really had much to do with "wokeness" except in what I'm saying - I read them as speak in plain English. Don't use the language of academic seminars or critical theory. They may be helpful - in the same way as academic seminars on neo-classical endogenous growth theory might be helpful for the Clinton administration but the job of the politician is to communicate those ideas in a way that people can understand, tell a story they buy into, win power and deliver.

I think Latinx is a great example (and it's a bit like "woke" in this sense) - I remember some polling that only a tiny minority of people who are Latinx would ever use that word. It's developed from English (Mx) and is not used by the people it is describing. I don't think that's a helpful label - I think it's mostly used to signal to your peers "I've done the reading", rather than to engage with the people you are trying to describe.

Even in that interview Carville didn't use "woke" until he was prompted: "sound's like you've got a problem with wokeness." "Wokeness is a problem" (headline). Isn't this his core point:

We have to talk about race. We should talk about racial injustice. What I'm saying is, we need to do it without using jargon-y language that's unrecognizable to most people — including most Black people, by the way — because it signals that you're trying to talk around them. This "too cool for school" shit doesn't work, and we have to stop it. [...]

James Carville

Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it. It's hard to talk to anybody today — and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party — who doesn't say this. But they don't want to say it out loud.

Sean Illing

Why not?

James Carville

Because they'll get clobbered or canceled. And look, part of the problem is that lots of Democrats will say that we have to listen to everybody and we have to include every perspective, or that we don't have to run a ruthless messaging campaign. Well, you kinda do. It really matters.

I always tell people that we've got to stop speaking Hebrew and start speaking Yiddish. We have to speak the way regular people speak, the way voters speak. It ain't complicated. That's how you connect and persuade. And we have to stop allowing ourselves to be defined from the outside.

This is exactly the point I'm making - wokeness is a definition from the outside being imposed on Democrats and I agree with him on the academic style speech. I think this is an issue of the Brahmin left in general. I'd reject the talk of wokeness from the outside and bring it back to the issues and the examples around racial justice or gender equality - always take the critic back to the point and work out which bit of "wokeness" they oppose.

The language matters because it goes your message.

[Jacob]

You and I can look at these various police videos and have a back and forth about which police actions were justified and which were not.  I can acknowledge the vallidty of your points, even if my position remains unchanged.  Hopefullly the same is true for you.

[Sheilbh]

Thinking about this, isn't this true of all self-applied labels?

Sure, though I think it happens at varying speeds and his wider social uptake with different terms.

Yeah and if we're at the stage where I was in a book club using "woke" as a joke about a decade ago and the British government is briefing that they want a "war on woke" I think we're past the point of it having any real currency

Edit: Oh and Boris Johnson saying there's nothing wrong "with being woke" when asked if his stance might hurt his relations with the "woke President" (Joe Biden! )

[Admiral Yi]

Shelf, I think your request for more precision and concensus on the meaning of woke is a defense lawyer's tactic. 

No definition of woke that includes negatives is goiing to be acceptable to the woke community because they don't see themselves as flawed.  They think they are doing the work of the almighty.

But I think outrage is a good starting point.  I think there's a large overlap between woke and outrageaholic.  Outrage about perceived social injustice.  Outrage that others don't perceive it the same way.  Outrage that others mock their outrage.