Over at Vox, James Carville takes a shot at identity politics:
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.
This is what you'd expect Carville to say, and I'm not going to take sides on it at the moment. But one thing that's clear is that Republicans sure think that attacking wokeness is a winning strategy. Off the top of my head, the past few weeks have produced the following three-day wonders from the conservative noise machine:
- Liberals are banning Dr. Seuss!
- John Kerry is giving away our secrets!
- Joe Biden is going to ban red meat!
- You should call the police if you see a child wearing a mask!
- Kamala Harris's book is being passed out to illegal immigrants!
- Woke capital is ruining our country!
- Vaccine passports are the beginning of a liberal police state!
- Baseball is un-American for objecting to voter suppression in Georgia!
If I could be bothered to hit up Google I'm sure I could double this list in a minute or two. And I'm not even counting the big, sustained jihads about the election being stolen or the COVID-19 vaccine being a hoax of some kind. Even for Republicans, this is a helluva list.
For whatever it's worth, this means that Republicans are putting their money on Carville. That doesn't mean they're right, but it's worth thinking about.
Good morning - I hope everyone, especially Kevin, are well. Pardon me for coming late to the party.
I want to talk about "politically correct". . Think of the idea of demagogues who take the low road and win elections by focusing on denigrating or scaring people about "the Other". I'm old enough to remember what typical Southern elections were like before 1965 - when the N word and worse was a normal part of Southern political speech - and since Black people couldn't vote and werent "seen", their was absolutely no political consequence. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 changed that. Suddenly, that kind of political behavior had a consequence by alienating a large bloc of newly-franchized voters. The new non-ovettly -racist behavior that Southern politicians had to observe became known as "politically correct" - if you continued to use the old overtly racist rhetoric, there were political consequences. It was a symbol and reminder that times had changed. The old denigrated non-voters had to be shown a fundamental minimum of respect because they now could vote. Even George Wallace eventually got on board. Yayyy our team!
Now fast forward 50-60 years - does anybody know or remember the meaning or reason for the term "politically correct"? I doubt it. Its meaning has been changed so much that the original context of specifically calling out racism in the public forum has been diluted so much that it has mostly disappeared.
My point is that that wasnt by accident. I guess probably because the left has never built up a talk radio structure to match that of the right (and thereby has abandoned influencing those who spend countless hours each and every week in their cars), we almost automatically lose the language wars. Just through constant repetition, the right is able to spin meanings away from their original use and define the terms on the dialogue. Did anybody ever talk about "the unborn" before the 1970s and 80s? No - they were fetuses. They went from being something that was different from and wasnt yet a "person", to a person - like you and me but with a definibg adjective in front to identify them just like any other group of people. Why doesnt the term or idea of "identity politics" include "unborn persons"? Anyeay my point is that the Right tends to control the terms of the discussion.
How often in the current discussion of being "woke" is the idea of what "woke " is - that is awareness of white Male privilege and inviting to a place at the table and otherwise respecting women and social minorities - brought up? How much in the outrage over Dr Seuss was the fact that the drawings in question actually were racist brought up? H9w often in the denunciation of "wokeness" is it actually brought up that those who are against wholeness are, in fact, specifically aligning themselves with sexism and racism? We need to hang on to and constantly remind what "wokeness" is - otherwise it becomes anodyne and toothless like "politically correct". Dont let "them" control and disguise the meaning.