Kevin Drum

I keep reading people—progressives, of course—asking "What do they mean by woke, anyway?" Well, I'm here to help.

There is, naturally, an original meaning of the word from progressives themselves. It's an old metaphor that was re-popularized by Black Lives Matter after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. It meant, roughly, being perceptive of racial prejudice, especially in the criminal justice system and more generally in the area of social justice.

Simple enough. But what does it mean to modern conservatives who use it pejoratively? I don't think this is much of a mystery either. It refers to a good idea that's been taken way too far.

This is a common dynamic. Once an idea is let loose on the world, there will always be a cadre of supporters who try to push it to its hyperlogical endpoint. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. Human nature being what it is, it's usually the latter in the short term but sometimes the former in the longer term.

Woke is still in the short term, so naturally as people experiment with more and more unusual interpretations in order to test boundaries, it's going to inspire lots of pushback. This is because some of these interpretations really are dumb, while some is because conservatives have an unfortunate animus toward being perceptive of racial prejudice of any kind, even when it's pretty obvious.

Anyway, that's what woke means to conservatives. Its overall proximate cause is a dislike of anything that suggests white people sometimes act badly, while its case-specific causes are usually just matters of cherry picking the dumbest and most extreme examples of progressive attempts to promote less obtuse language. This will probably never change since it has the happy effect of allowing conservatives to ignore the problem being addressed.

Hey, do you remember that one of the world's largest and most trusted crypto firms crashed earlier this year, prompting plenty of assertions that crypto was ruined for good? It did and it did. But a mere four months later, when FTX went belly-up due to very similar business practices (i.e., embezzlement and fraud¹) it seemed like that had all been forgotten. It was just SBF and his pals who were ruining things.

We sure don't learn from the past, do we? When Binance cracks up I wonder what we'll think then?²

NOTE: I was aroused to write this post after noticing that the Three Arrows affair apparently didn't even draw much attention in real time. No wonder no one remembers it.

¹Alleged embezzlement and fraud, of course.

²I don't have any inside information. Or even an expert opinion. But I'll give odds on a bout of ill health with extreme prejudice before long.

Let me get this straight. It turns out that most of the groups dedicated to helping migrants don't actually object to red state governors busing them to other states. They don't even really object all that much to migrants being dropped off in freezing weather in Washington DC. They won't be there for long anyway.

Mostly they object to Texas and other states doing this without coordinating with anyone. If they did, advocates say, the buses would be a good way of getting migrants where they want to be. That's generally why they're on the buses in the first place.

As for dropping them off in front of Kamala Harris's official residence, that's obviously just juvenile partisan grandstanding. But that wasn't the intention in the Christmas Eve case. The buses were supposed to go to New York but were rerouted due to cold weather and closed roads.

I don't even know if this makes things better or worse. It turns out that with only minimal effort these red state governors could make their migrant busing programs into a win for everyone, but they still won't do it. They want it to seem callous and ugly, the same way they deny Medicaid expansion for poor people even when it's practically free.¹

Cruelty may or may not be the point, but the appearance of cruelty sure is.

¹In fact, when you count all the costs it's less than free. Most states literally lose money by turning down Medicaid expansion.

This comes via Neville Medhora and shows what we've been searching for on Google during 2022:

NFTs got a fair amount of sustained attention, but I'm heartened to see that the biggest and longest attention-grabber was Wordle. This is not because I care about Wordle one way or the other, but it seems nice and normal compared to so many of the others.

Who loves Christmas more than cats? From top: Charlie investigating a new cat toy from Aunt Gin; Hilbert seemingly aware that this box has some new pillows; Hilbert getting ready to play amidst the wrapping with Charlie; Charlie peeking out from behind a mountain of tissue paper.

The Wall Street Journal says that Santa has delivered a wonderful gift this year. For the first time since the pandemic started, our supply chains are finally in great shape:

Gone are the weekslong backlogs of cargo ships at large ports. Ocean shipping rates have plunged below prepandemic levels....In the U.S., retailers have ample inventory. Railroads averted a labor strike and package delivery trucks have plenty of spare capacity....Parcel carrier FedEx Corp. and other regional carriers are having an easier time delivering packages this peak season, with additional capacity and steady parcel volume.

....Procter & Gamble Co. [] expects to spend $100 million less than it had anticipated on transportation and warehousing in the fiscal year ending in June 2023....After more than a year of paying ever-higher prices for goods, Walmart Inc. and other large retailers are canceling manufacturer orders, resisting price increases and in some cases asking suppliers to provide discounts....Dollar General Corp., after years of citing high transportation costs as a drag on the business, said in December that falling transit prices could begin lifting the company in 2023.

The spirit of Christmas has truly returned this year.

I was mulling over Wednesday's post about whether we should call ourselves Americans—which is allegedly offensive to other residents of the Americas—and came up with this:

If not American, what do we put in the blank line at the bottom? "A US resident"? That's pretty awkward, no?

We are not the only country with this problem. What do the people of New Zealand call themselves? According to Wikipedia, the official demonym is New Zealanders. Does that mean they'd say "I am New Zealandish"?

Maybe, but even that avenue is cut off to us. "I am US-ish?" I don't think so. "I am a citizen of the US"? That sounds like you're a Roman centurion or something. "I'm from the US"? That might be doable.

But overall, I dunno. Assuming you buy this linguistic criticism in the first place, are there really any good solutions here?

The federal budget passed today. It's cold back East. There's nothing new on the SBF or Twitter fronts. Donald Trump remains guilty of inciting an insurrection to keep himself in power even though he lost the 2020 election. Meh.

So here's a couple of additional charts that show consumer spending through November. First up is services vs. durable goods:

Purchases of durable goods have gone through big swings since the start of the pandemic, and the trendline decline this year is mostly an artifact of huge growth in January. Take that one month away and the trend is actually up. The much larger services sector is less volatile but has been declining a bit all year.

Here is overall personal expenditure growth:

It's been running at about 2.4% since mid-2021, almost identical to the 2.5% growth rate before the pandemic. As you can see, the November figure was very low but appears to be mostly noise. Generally speaking, consumer spending has stayed pretty steady so far even as wages have dropped and savings have been used up.