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Carville blames 'stupid wokeness' for De The Serious You: How Current Events Affect You

Started 11/5/21 by WALTER784; 553 views.

Msg 5 of 15 to Showtalkshowtalk

In reply toRe: msg 2

Staff

From: WALTER784

Jan-23

Wokeness is about much more...

The Woke Mob’s Destruction of the English Language

January 2, 2022

By Richard McDonough

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, a member of the progressive “squad,” recently accused those who disagree with student debt cancellation of "policy violence." That is, to disagree with the left now is “violence.” This kind of linguistic legislation by the left is now common. Words mean whatever they want them to mean in order to achieve their far-left goals.

Pressley’s statement is also an implied threat. Since violence is justified in response to violence, Pressley is letting American’s know what is coming if they do not get their way.

The venomous hatred spewed by the Woke mob in the name of tolerance and inclusivity is indefensible. That is why they do not defend it. Instead, they generally try to bully people into submitting to their demands.

Some people may express astonishment at my claim that that they do not defend their views. Are not their defenses found everywhere these days? However, when I say that they do not defend their claims I do not mean that they do not produce a lot of verbiage. I mean that in order, actually, to defend a thesis one must first formulate it properly with careful definitions and mobilize arguments and evidence in favor of it (a procedure that used to be commonplace in universities). This they do not do. Consider first Northeastern University Gender Studies Professor Suzanna Danuta Walters’s claim (in a 2018 Washington Post article titled “Why can’t we hate all men?”) that “it seems logical to hate all men.”

Walters’s article has been correctly criticized on many grounds by numerous writers, both male and female. However, my point here is different, namely, that, like those who attempt to defend the indefensible, or, to be more precise, those who attempt to promote the impression that they do so, Walters does not mean what she says or say what she means. That is, Walters only produces a semblance of a defense of her view, very similar to the semblance of argument practiced by Protagoras, Gorgias and Thrasymachus in ancient Greece.

Some writers have correctly criticized Walter’s claim that “it seems logical to hate all men” for the straightforward reason that it is as inappropriate to make such a universal claim as it would be to claim that one should hate all women, all Black people, all gay people, and so on. However, Walters’s words are deceptive. No sooner does she make that indefensible statement than she takes it back and explains that she doesn’t “necessarily” mean “non-American men” or “men of color.” That is, by “all men”, she does not actually mean all men. Since “America” is a political polity, and since she specifies she does not necessarily mean men that do not belong to that polity, and since “men of color” are expected to hold certain political views, namely views akin to hers, what her statement actually means, when decoded, is, therefore, that it seems logical to hate men that don’t agree with her politics. In other words, it is a political statement she uses in her pursuit of power for her own tribe. She makes this explicit when in her article when she asks the “men” that she hates to “step aside” so that her political group can take power.

Similarly, the word “Black” as used in the expression “Black people” no longer means black when used by the woke left. This is illustrated by Vanderbilt University Professor Michael Eric Dyson’s reaction to the November 2021 election, which caused so much distress to the left, of the Black Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears in Virginia. Employing his usual alliteration of superfluous verbiage, Dyson stated that when Sears articulates her patriotic pro-American views “there is a Black mouth moving but a white idea running on the runway of the tongue.”

Orwell, in the same work, describes the technique:

“When there is a gap between one's real and declared aims, one turns, as it were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. … All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”

Thus, when Dyson uses

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Msg 6 of 15 to WALTER784WALTER784

In reply toRe: msg 5

Host

From: Showtalk

Jan-23

Even here I haven’t seen a single liberal embrace wokeness. I’ve asked people offline and they all things it’s too extreme for them as well. In fact, my most liberal friends don’t even know what it is. Only one claims to like it, but even she distances herself from it when pressed.

Msg 7 of 15 to Showtalkshowtalk

In reply toRe: msg 6

Staff

From: WALTER784

Jan-23

Ask them what they think woke means? I bet you'll get a whole variety of answers and probably most of them are incorrect.

FWIW

Msg 8 of 15 to Showtalkshowtalk

In reply toRe: msg 6

From: The_Rock (JABRONI256)

Jan-23

Carville is exactly right and it is what is destroying liberalism. It's mostly confined to the protest movement on any number of issues but grew mostly out of environmental movements, and really any student group on University campuses, I have some experience with that.

Msg 9 of 15 to WALTER784WALTER784

In reply toRe: msg 7

Host

From: Showtalk

Jan-23

I made the mistake of trying to explain woke to her and she said I know what woke means. Then she proved she didn’t. Hypocrite.

Msg 10 of 15 to The_Rock (JABRONI256)JABRONI256

In reply toRe: msg 8

Host

From: Showtalk

Jan-23

Your comment interests me on a different level. You have criticized my opinions as being inconsistent but yours are also inconsistent. If you really are a liberal as you say you are, and concerned about climate,change, you would embrace all that comes out of the environmental movement. In this case, you and Carville agree with Walter and with me.

Beyond the liberal angles the basic problem with wokeism is changing the language so no one understands what they are taking about. I tried to explain to a friend who using the word Karen to describe someone is now racist. She just laughed and said they have all gone insane. It used to be woke to call someone a Karen, now it’s woke to refuse to do so.

As I mentioned, my most liberal friends and family, except the one friend, don’t identify themselves as woke. It doesn’t make any more sense to them than it does to us.

Msg 11 of 15 to Showtalkshowtalk

In reply toRe: msg 10

From: The_Rock (JABRONI256)

Jan-23

Showtalk said:
. If you really are a liberal as you say you are, and concerned about climate,change, you would embrace all that comes out of the environmental movement.

I am concerned about climate change but I'm a liberal, here a liberal is a centrist with centrist policies, so we do want to support climate change action and take nominal action like the carbon tax, which is dubious on effect, and join world wide accords that also have a dubious track record of effectiveness but we also continue to exploit oil resources by building pipelines that service diverse foreign markets, because it brings the country significant capital. Were I an NDP or Green supporter I'd be in the streets demanding change but unable to achieve anything, even nominal and dubious methods of combating climate change are more effective than just shouting in big crowds.

Showtalk said:
Beyond the liberal angles the basic problem with wokeism is changing the language so no one understands what they are taking about.

It's called code switching.

Showtalk said:
It used to be woke to call someone a Karen, now it’s woke to refuse to do so.

Not according to everything I see, calling someone a Karen is still the domain of the woke.

Edited January 23, 2022 12:45 pm by The_Rock (JABRONI256)

Msg 12 of 15 to The_Rock (JABRONI256)JABRONI256

In reply toRe: msg 11

Host

From: Showtalk

Jan-23

That is what I thought from reading your explanations. You aren’t a liberal in US terminology, but a centrist. Liberal is not the same thing in Canada that timid here. Here liberals are closer to Marxist than Centrists. We don’t really have moderators anymore. People tend to be left or right. It’s rare to find anyone who is down the middle.

This is what I meant about Karens

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