What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Syt]

What's the problem with being called woke, anyway? It's like being called a SJW. Yeah, I'm so offended by being called a person who supports social justice.

Or this:

The German equivalent is Gutmensch, i.e. good-person, though it seems to have fallen out of favor a bit in recent years because if you call someone a good-person, what does that make you?

[DGuller]

I think it's fairly obvious that if a positive term is used derisively, it's meant to imply that the person being derided is not as virtuous as they imagine themselves to be (or alternatively they may be virtuous about exactly the wrong things).

[Jacob]

I'm told that in Mandarin the term "White Left" is used in a similar way.

[Jacob]

I think it's fairly obvious that if a positive term is used derisively, it's meant to imply that the person being derided is not as virtuous as they imagine themselves to be (or alternatively they may be virtuous about exactly the wrong things).

Yes, that is in fact fairly obvious 

[DGuller]

I think it's fairly obvious that if a positive term is used derisively, it's meant to imply that the person being derided is not as virtuous as they imagine themselves to be (or alternatively they may be virtuous about exactly the wrong things).

Yes, that is in fact fairly obvious 

That what I started off thinking, but then I saw Solmyr being confused, so I put a weasel word in just to be safe.

[Syt]

I think it's fairly obvious that if a positive term is used derisively, it's meant to imply that the person being derided is not as virtuous as they imagine themselves to be (or alternatively they may be virtuous about exactly the wrong things).

It's these hard hitting insights and revelations why I come to Languish.

[garbon]

In the vein of people never bringing up the term woke to use as a cudgel, I give you my lastest work.

Title of the work: you called me a closet racist when you said you knew I wasn't racist (2021)
Artist: garbon
Media: found text

That is really nuts about how woke the left has become.

The immigration debate certainly went this way - once the right adopted "WE FUCKING HATE IMMIGRANTS!" as a rallying cry, the left decided anything other then "ALL IMMIGRANTS ARE OSSUM!!!" is fascist.

This is another example of how the left sabotages their own arguments. They get so wokeraged that they take basically good ideas and radicalize their message, which just lets the other side trivially point out that the left is full of shit.

Although the identity politics woke left is pretty terrifying in their own way.

It seems to me like a woke effort to make sure that the only grounds for discussion are the identity politics acceptable grounds - that it is all racism, all the time, and actual true facts that could be taken even in theory as distracting from that are to be attacked vigorously.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/

Zoupa is exactly typical of the average over-woke lefty liberal:

Male, and white, and privileged.

It's really quite amusing that the people most concerned about political correctness and the forms of racial justice rather than the actual content of it are rich white lefties. Not surprising, but definitely amusing.

This is racial identity politics as championed by the modern radical left. You are either a woke racial politics warrior, or you are in fact not just wrong, but the true enemy. For them, the Buttigieg and Berkuts of the world are in fact the real enemy, not the Trumps of the world. Trump is at least fighting the same fight, just for the other side.

I am not very woke, to say the least

Look, he clearly is not woke enough, so must be purged, regardless of his actual record on civil rights issues.

I am the #1 cheerleader on Languish for bashing identity politics and the stifling of free speech on the left.

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.

I wonder to what extent woke culture already contributed to scaring the conservatives.  It scares the hell out of me, and I'm sitting here on the verge of a stroke every time Trump's percentage goes up a point.

I think we've reached peak woke here.

I use "woke" a lot, definitely always disparagingly.  I think it's a very useful term to quickly describe the militant left as encountered on Twitter, hostile to any non-self-censored discussion of a wide range of topics.  I think it would be a very woke thing to equate the criticism of such a crowd to being a racist.

The average 'over-woke' person is male, white and privileged.

[Zoupa]

I choose to see it as a compliment when called woke, as in the original meaning of the word, before scared wypipo decided to make it derisive.

[Berkut]

In the vein of people never bringing up the term woke to use as a cudgel, I give you my lastest work.

Where did someone say people "never" bring up the term woke? I did not say that. You made a specific claim in about a specific conversation that I did, I pointed out that I did not, and now you cite a bunch of other conversations out of context where the term was used as evidence to refute a claim that was never even made about a term that has nothing to do with the discussion until YOU made the discussion about it?

And you do realize that in plenty of those examples you so painstakingly searched out, it isn't being used as a cudgel? Or isn't even being used at all?

Of course you do. You are just being dishonest at this point. You care more about being able to use your imaginary leftness to beat up on others then you do about actually solving any of the problems you pretend to care so much about.

[Sheilbh]

I choose to see it as a compliment when called woke, as in the original meaning of the word, before scared wypipo decided to make it derisive.

In a weird coincidence I just saw a centre right person in the UK tweeting that they would like it if there was a word they could use to criticise what is meant by "wokeness" without having to be associated with the people who use the word "woke"

[Berkut]

I choose to see it as a compliment when called woke, as in the original meaning of the word, before scared wypipo decided to make it derisive.

You should - if someone used it about me as a compliment, I would certainly take it as such. Why not?

It is vague enough that it can be used either way.

To the extent that it is a useful label is that it is ever so perfectly suited to describe those who care more about signalling their ideological purity then they do about actually doing anything about the actual issues and ideas, or actively working against solutions by caring more about proper signalling then actually accomplishing anything.

Note the anger and vitriol towards Carville for suggesting that actually winning elections is important, and not a peep from you all about a prominent politician communicating that we should abolish the police. It is perfectly illuminating that you find "We should consider how our language can be used to effectively convince people to vote for us" as a issue to spend vast time combatting, but "ABOLISH THE POLICE" as perfectly fine coming from a actual politician.

Signaling >>>>> winning.

Now lets have a 16 page discourse on the abuse of the word "signalling" and the sins of those who culturally appropriate that word. Because that is what is really important.

[Berkut]

I choose to see it as a compliment when called woke, as in the original meaning of the word, before scared wypipo decided to make it derisive.

In a weird coincidence I just saw a centre right person in the UK tweeting that they would like it if there was a word they could use to criticise what is meant by "wokeness" without having to be associated with the people who use the word "woke"

Meta signalling!

It goes to show how effective the left is at really getting at what is important - demonizing people who don't use *their* words the right way!

[garbon]

In the vein of people never bringing up the term woke to use as a cudgel, I give you my lastest work.

Where did someone say people "never" bring up the term woke? I did not say that. You made a specific claim in about a specific conversation that I did, I pointed out that I did not, and now you cite a bunch of other conversations out of context where the term was used as evidence to refute a claim that was never even made about a term that has nothing to do with the discussion until YOU made the discussion about it?

And you do realize that in plenty of those examples you so painstakingly searched out, it isn't being used as a cudgel? Or isn't even being used at all?

Of course you do. You are just being dishonest at this point. You care more about being able to use your imaginary leftness to beat up on others then you do about actually solving any of the problems you pretend to care so much about.

Oh darling, I wouldn't do anything that recalled painstaking effort for you. I did a search on one term and two posters. We are talking about 10 minutes worth of effort.

[garbon]

I choose to see it as a compliment when called woke, as in the original meaning of the word, before scared wypipo decided to make it derisive.

In a weird coincidence I just saw a centre right person in the UK tweeting that they would like it if there was a word they could use to criticise what is meant by "wokeness" without having to be associated with the people who use the word "woke"

It feels like the issue is that it is being used to describe a largely amorphous set of despised behaviors. After all it is being used to describe negatively black people calling for de funding the police all the way to 'privileged' individuals like Zoupa as the prototypical example.

[Sheilbh]

Meta signalling!

That's what we do with language - U or non-U as updated to modern tastes. Tea/dinner/supper - who do you want to be associated with or, more importantly, who don't you want to be associated with? It's just political Hyacinth Bucket-ing.

I mean we do it with opinions too - most people because they're sensible and have busy lives don't really look into any political issues or necessarily see all the films they talk about. We borrow opinions just like we borrow words from people we want to associate with - received wisdom or common sense is normally nothing more than high status opinions (and we've seen a few of them go through the wringer this year).

It goes to show how effective the left is at really getting at what is important - demonizing people who don't use *their* words the right way!

I think that's nonsense. The left is no more effective at shaping the discourse than right-wing tabloids. They're part of it but more typically if a word is only used non-ironically by one community (in this case, gammons) then it'll be associated with them - and people who don't want to be associated with that group will avoid that word even if they kind of agree with what it's getting at. As I say I think Latinx is actually another example of this.

In terms of the background to the word Garbo posted - it makes me think of "right on" which was a real phrase in the 60s. I think again it came from jazz circles and the black community, I think it then moved to being used to sort of describe the white kids hanging around jazz circles. It's still used in the UK but exclusively by right-wing tabloids normally to describe "right on lefties" or "right on human rights lawyers" etc. It's not been used by normal people in probably the last 50 years but is part of tabloid langauge