You're right. It's really lazy to use the term at this point as there isn't a shared meaning assigned to it. It's mostly used as a pejorative by the right at this point, but it's original meaning was very different and indicated a positive attribute. Whenever I'm in a conversation with someone who uses the word, I stop them and ask them to define what they're talking about. Usually they end up with something vague that boils down to "stuff I don't like".
You’re never gonna believe this but the hippie granola left were the original antivaxxers. The first places where you started hearing about measles outbreaks in the US were all affluent left leaning communities with a strong granola contingent, like Santa Monica, California.
That is kind of the point Paul is making in his essay. The most progressive people are pushing an ever evolving definition of what it means to be racist or anti-science or a bigot.
This is why Trump won. People got tired of being told they were a bigot if they expressed any concerns that were not inline with the most recent trends of progressivism.
> That is kind of the point Paul is making in his essay. The most progressive people are pushing an ever evolving definition of what it means to be racist or anti-science or a bigot.
This isn't what progressives are doing as much as it's what conservatives characterize it as what progressives are doing.
> This is why Trump won. People got tired of being told they were a bigot if they expressed any concerns that were not inline with the most recent trends of progressivism.
This isn't why Trump won, data we have access to shows that.
Just read the threads here. People are specifically saying Obama's criticism of Woke are no longer valid because the word has changed. But Paul is using the same definition that Obama used.
Is is the progressives who have decided unilaterally that woke is now a pejorative that racists use to demonize progressives and doesn't mean what it used to mean 5 years ago.
He's not using the progressive definition, hes using the conservative one, just like PG is. Both are wrong in this aspect.
>Is is the progressives who have decided unilaterally that woke is now a pejorative that racists use to demonize progressives and doesn't mean what it used to mean 5 years ago.
this is incorrect. I welcome you providing some sort of "proof" otherwise?
Yeah. If the left (and the democratic party more generally) throws out all the "anti-woke" people, there won't be many people left.
You'd lose Obama, Bill Maher, Joe Rogan (yes really.), Stephen Fry, Bernie Sanders, and on and on it goes.
I hate puritanical finger wagging. I think most people feel the same way. That has nothing to do with my political opinions on other topics, like abortion, gun control and so on.
I think the left in the US makes a massive strategic error by claiming that everyone who doesn't like "woke" is right wing. The right wing is delighted to have all of those voters.
I liked PG's attempts to define the perjorative form of "wokeness". I was disappointed that the rest of the essay didn't serve the discourse much.
What I was really hoping for was focused analysis on how to make social media more useful to the earnest helpers instead of the "loud prigs". That would have made for an interesting discussion here.
The problem is that he thinks he solves the problem by bringing 'prig' into the conversation and in reality he just paints a broad swath of people with a broad brush. A lot of folks who are in the "earnest helpers" category are also categorized by the right as "woke". That's the problem with the word right now, it can go all over the place.
"Prig" is in the eye of the beholder. What about when the "prigs" were right? I'm sure the Quakers were seen as "prigs" by the southern slaveholders/traders. The Quakers were early to the abolition party and their opposition to slavery was based on religious zeal which made them seem like "prigs" to the people in the South who's whole society and economy was built on slavery. But we now consider the Quakers were right and the slaveholders wrong. MLK was viewed as a "prig" by many southern whites for interfering in their racism. But MLK was right.
Step one is to stop the handwringing over who’s “woke”. Paul is committing every sin he claims the “woke” people are doing by obsessing over what words other people are saying instead of trying to solve actual problems.
