What is "Woke"?

[BlackDude]

On 11/8/2024 at 11:20 PM, nanana said:

With all due respect to the left, which clearly demonstrated its lack of touch with the win-strategy and its inability to channel the majority voters this cycle,  it’s much more than “just any social movement they [the right] don’t like…” the reason the right doesn’t like woke is usually 1) collectively blaming groups of people for cultural or other phenomena that preceded their lifespans, e.g., something that happened more than 100 years ago; 2) failing to see the consequences to other people’s lives of immediately stopping something perceived as a social ill, e.g., driving a gas’s-powered car; 3) shifting burdens to the public coffer; 4) misattributing an action to bigotry, hatred, or some other self-absorbed interpretation rather than to natural differences among individuals; 5) collective punishment; 6) race-based assumptions about how various groups SHOULD think. Woke failed big-time this year. I hope people who don’t understand the negative aspects of woke can evolve and appreciate how un-winning a strategy it is to blame everyone else. From what I’m seeing from most Democrats post-election, they don’t seem to be generating winning insights. “The country is more fascist than we thought.” These kinds of insights are likely to keep them on  the losing path for quite awhile and alienating them from all the people they spend their time making wrong.  I would hardly count anything the left does in the way of accusations as treating people decently. But by all means keep preaching to the choir and failing to see the good qualities of people, which exist in abundance once you become less interested in labeling people and more interested in getting to know them. 

More clarification on #1 would be nice.
 

Because if I misinterpreting it wrong, that kind of sounds like people just accept their losses and move on?

[BlackDude]

On 11/10/2024 at 4:39 PM, BootmanLA said:

That probably does happen, on occasion. But it's really about pointing out that 350 years of oppression - and the cumulative effects of that oppression in terms of things like generational wealth and advancement - are real things, and a bunch of snowflakes on the right thinking "he's blaming me for that". It's reached the point where one can't honestly point out that these problems existed for centuries and they're still having effects today without those fucking snowflakes screaming that you can't blame THEM for this and how DARE you think I should have to give up ANYTHING to make up for the way things are even if part of the reason those snowflakes aren't in the same boat is their ancestors benefitted from that oppression.

Nobody I know is calling for "immediately" stopping anything of the sort. Again, that's the snowflake rightwing exaggerating a position in order to attack it. Google "strawman fallacy". All the left has to do is hint that maybe, just maybe, X or Y or Z is something we should work on reducing or phasing out, and the right immediately accuses the left of wanting to rip X or Y or Z out of their hands immediately, forever, and with no compensation whatsoever.

Some burdens are rightfully the burden of the commons. The problem is that the right only wants the bare minimum of burden on themselves (ie through public levies) because they're perfectly comfortable ignoring people starving to death, freezing to death, dying of preventable diseases in the streets, etc. and don't want to have to pay a dime towards something that doesn't directly put at least 15 cents back into their own pockets.

Most bigotry IS about "natural differences among individuals". The classic example is same-sex marriage: not one straight person has to give up a single fucking thing if straight people get married. Not ONE thing. And yet they opposed it, in big numbers, for decades. That wasn't because of individualized dislike of particular individuals. It was plain old bigotry. Pretending otherwise is ignorant.

Again, the right thinks anything designed to ameliorate bad things that happened already is "punishment" for people today. They think all taxes are punishment. They think having to obey laws is punishment. It's a self-centered attitude that is hysterically hypocritical because those same people drive on publicly-financed streets and sue people in publicly-financed courts and use publicly-financed governmental agencies to vindicate what they see as their due. 

Although we rarely agree on anything political, I do agree with a lot of what said here. However, it is really hard to break down these peoples definition of woke when they are so vague.
 

The entire attack against woke is just rooted in a bunch of racists saying “we won and we’re not sharing any of it. Move on.” They are like children who can’t fully express themselves with words. 
 

And instead of just saying what they really want to say, because they know how ridiculous and indefensible that sounds, they have to come up with 100 different ways to explain it.
 

[NWUSHorny]

12 hours ago, ktopper said:

Wait, I thought the snowflakes were on the left? That's what Tim Pool told me. Now I'm confused.

While there are more than enough snowflakes on the left, the MAGA right takes snowflake fragility to a new level. Any minor disagreement with them or their leader sends them into an immediate emotional meltdown. No discussion, no debate, and absolutely no trying to determine what the actual probable or verifiable facts are.

[ktopper]

4 minutes ago, NWUSHorny said:

While there are more than enough snowflakes on the left, the MAGA right takes snowflake fragility to a new level. Any minor disagreement with them or their leader sends them into an immediate emotional meltdown. No discussion, no debate, and absolutely no trying to determine what the actual probable or verifiable facts are.

Yes, I have noticed that about them also. No rational responses like the left is known for, such as those nice ladies behind the 4B movement, or the MATGA fantasies. MATGA stands for Make Aqua Tofana Great Again. It calls for poisoning men with a poison invented by some woman in Italy back around the 1600s. You can't call those ladies fragile snowflakes. You go, girls!

[hntnhole]

"Woke" is a transitive verb (usually, but can be intransitive depending on usage).  Basically, it's another word for "awakened", if more clumsy.  

These days it refers to those folks who were previously either unaware or have recently become aware of the deeper (or perhaps more deeply buried in our collective consciousness) problems, and potential fixes to these problems. 

Some would say it refers to those who have been "aware" of these cultural ethnic divides for many years; those who have been actively doing their best to ameliorate the wrongs of the past.  

Thus, the anti-woke'ers are those who would rather excuse age-old wrongs, imagine they have not benefitted from whatever the particular inequity in question happens to be, and therefore refrain from any possible progress.  

I agree it's a vulgar (in the actual sense of the word) term, awkward to pronounce, even more so to explain, but it's what the collective 'we' have to work with. 

Personally, I much prefer this concept as enunciated by J.S. Bach in the famous cantata Wachet Auf (literally, "Wake Up"),  BWV 140.

Edited November 12 by hntnhole

[BootmanLA]

15 hours ago, ktopper said:

Wait, I thought the snowflakes were on the left? That's what Tim Pool told me. Now I'm confused.

Tim Pool was (unknowingly, he claims) funded by the Russian FSB to sow dissention in American politics. If he's too fucking stupid to know where the enormous checks he was getting for spewing his garbage opinions were coming from, I don't put ANY stock in his ability to know who the snowflakes are. 

[Erik62]

7 hours ago, BlackDude said:

Although we rarely agree on anything political, I do agree with a lot of what said here. However, it is really hard to break down these peoples definition of woke when they are so vague.
 

The entire attack against woke is just rooted in a bunch of racists saying “we won and we’re not sharing any of it. Move on.” They are like children who can’t fully express themselves with words. 
 

And instead of just saying what they really want to say, because they know how ridiculous and indefensible that sounds, they have to come up with 100 different ways to explain it.
 

Racism is not actually a cornerstone of "WOKE". To any "woke" person RACISM is an absolute NO, NO. 

[ktopper]

8 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

Tim Pool was (unknowingly, he claims) funded by the Russian FSB to sow dissention in American politics. If he's too fucking stupid to know where the enormous checks he was getting for spewing his garbage opinions were coming from, I don't put ANY stock in his ability to know who the snowflakes are. 

LOL!

Cue up Warren Zevon:

"I went home with a waitress the way I always do

How was I to know she was with the Russians too..."

[nanana]

12 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

Tim Pool was (unknowingly, he claims) funded by the Russian FSB to sow dissention in American politics.

This is disingenuous. Again, a face-value-quality interpretation. Democrats are so desperate to pretend that all dissent from their policies originates from bad foreigners. Tim Poole didn’t get his ideas from Russia. And so what if he did? Any NPC who gets his ideas from NPR is falling for British bullshit propaganda. It may be hard to see this since Britain has such pervasive mind control over its ex-colony. Democrats have their cold-war Russian boogeyman; Republicans have their Chinese boogeyman. Two mirror parties channeling mirror fears and aggressions. 

[hntnhole]

On 11/12/2024 at 11:30 AM, BlackDude said:

More clarification on #1 would be nice

Agreed.  I'm wondering about that statement too.  

Edited November 13 by hntnhole

[PozBearWI]

9 hours ago, nanana said:

This is disingenuous. Again, a face-value-quality interpretation. Democrats are so desperate to pretend that all dissent from their policies originates from bad foreigners. Tim Poole didn’t get his ideas from Russia. And so what if he did? Any NPC who gets his ideas from NPR is falling for British bullshit propaganda. It may be hard to see this since Britain has such pervasive mind control over its ex-colony. Democrats have their cold-war Russian boogeyman; Republicans have their Chinese boogeyman. Two mirror parties channeling mirror fears and aggressions. 

@nanana my friend, I think you misread BootmanLA's post then.  He didn't assert that Poole got his ideas from Russia.  He said Poole was funded (unknowingly) from Russia.  

[hntnhole]

9 hours ago, nanana said:

It may be hard to see this since Britain has such pervasive mind control over its ex-colony

I may be the only guy that needs some basis for this comment, if you care to offer any?  

[nanana]

2 minutes ago, PozBearWI said:

@nanana my friend, I think you misread BootmanLA's post then.  He didn't assert that Poole got his ideas from Russia.  He said Poole was funded (unknowingly) from Russia.  

Hi @PozBearWI, thanks for the clarification the (and for implanting the idea of being your friend 😀).  There has been a lot of monkey business with the Democrats outright lying and misleading the voting public about the Republicans and Russia. While I am ABSOLUTELY sure that Russia, China, Iran Britain and many other countries have deep states comparable to that of the United States, I can’t get very excited about a vague line of argumentation that demonizes an entire nation and implies a nefarious purpose, all at the same time UK Labour Prime Minister Kier Starmer sent UK bureaucrats to campaign for Kamala Harris. I am sure that US-based NGOs have manipulated many a foreign election and fomented many a color revolution. 

[nanana]

On 11/12/2024 at 11:30 AM, BlackDude said:

More clarification on #1 would be nice

 

On 11/12/2024 at 11:30 AM, BlackDude said:

1) collectively blaming groups of people for cultural or other phenomena that preceded their lifespans, e.g., something that happened more than 100 years ago

Sorry, didn't pick up on what you meant by #1 until right now when I was supposed to be working on some deadline, oops.

The "Slave Reparations" movement is a great example, but people could argue that it is a straw man for the point, since I  am not aware that any jurisdiction has passed "Slave Reparations," so I pick it more because it is a clear illustration of what I  was talking about rather than because it is more than a wish of a few percentage of our fellow citizens.  There are many muddier examples, but let's get the water out of the mud until it is crisp pottery that makes a good illustration.  

There have been periodic attempts to get various states and/or the federal government to pass a law to remunerate descendants of slaves for the agreeably unjust conditions and economic deprivations they experienced.  Since slavery was outlawed in 1865, a day-old slave-owner when the amendment passed would be 158 years, 11 months, and 8 days old.  It is unlikely that a 1-day-old would have achieved a high level of agency, so let's pretend that 18-year-olds whose families owned slaves (a tiny minority even in the South) who had reached their majority and who were in a position to actively REJECT the lives they had been born into were able to make full use of their "agency".  They would be 176 years, 11 months, and 8 days old).  It is unlikely that even very good gene therapy or vampirism would have enabled any slaveowner to live that long.  So, there's no way to apply reparations to anyone who had any agency at that time.  

Lest people wonder whether I deny the potential legacy to the progeny of slaves, I do not.  I am sure it has a multi-generational effect.  But when I  try to translate that into a percentage effect, and when I try to get the state to levy reparations against all citizens, many of which were not progeny of slaveholders, many of which were post-1865 immigrants with no direct or indirect role in slavery, I  find the traceability, onus, and practicality problematic.  

Let me also say that there have been many subsequent injustices, racial and otherwise, since 1865 (limiting myself so I don't overtax the patience of you gorgeous bareback sluts, inseminators, and receptacles) to African Americans (but I could pontificate on the Irish, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Italian, the Mexican Bracero dues-paying that happened).  

After 1865 at the hands of state and Federal government, trotted Jim Crow laws, FDRs creation of Social Security for whites and Welfare for blacks, the redlining of black neighborhoods by FDR's administration, Brown versus the Board of Education, the Civil Rights era, the "Great Sociaty" reforms of LBJ that may have had the unintended consequences of making black families jump through government hoops to qualify for subsidies, Dixiecrats, etc.  

Each of these injustices should be subjected to the same analysis of whether it is possible to trace the injustice to an ACTUAL PERSON OR GROUP OF PEOPLE and levy their profits from the bad behavior.  If it can be done, then okay for all of us.  If there were a way to have a more traceable payback to the source of injustice, I  would not at all be opposed.   The more diffuse and collective and involuntary the payback becomes, the more I  oppose it.  Let me be accountable for things I DID, but let me question the collective punishment I suffer when the real criminals or sources of injustice were just people who LOOKED like me.  (I'm mostly Caucasian by the way.)

I am VERY EXCITED, however, to be part of VOLUNTARY solutions that help all of God's children see and achieve their full potential.  

I  would also say, however unfortunate it may be from an individual perspective, that bloodlines have an effect on the POSSIBILITY to access past generational investment and the mindset of investment in FUTURE generations.  For example, if I  were born a princess as high-born as many of you are, you beautiful pixels, my parents might have indoctrinated me into a view that I was a 32nd-generation-prince(ss), which may have affected my allegiance to my class, my burden to carry the bloodline forward, and my desire to conform to (or potentially rebel against) my predecessors' expectations, including (happy or unhappy) impregnation of a (willing or unwilling) female spouse, and multi-generational accumulation wealth and capital.  If I  were an orphan (or academic middle-class trash like I actually am), I may have less consciousness that my decisions were a multi-generational investment in my 7th generation (to cite the time-horizon of native American tribal decision-making).  There may have been a contribution to my mentality of discrimination in the past that deprived me of my multi-generational consciousness that gained me access to past wealth (perhaps finagled from others) and gave me a consciousness to pay it forward so future members of my family could benefit.  There may be much injustice in this, but I  am not at all convinced that I  could quantify the portion gained from finagling (BAD & WRONG, BUT MAYBE SO FAR IN THE PAST IT BECOMES TOO WOVEN IN WITH OTHER VARIABLES) versus multi-generational investment consciousness (NOT BAD, PERHAPS UNDESERVING OF PUNISHMENT). (THIS MORALITY IS MUCH MORE RELEVANT TO BREEDERS than to most gay culture, which has mostly opted out of the gene pool, though please accuse me of simplifying if you think this diatribe is too short...). As much as DISCRIMINATION plays out in inter-generational wealth, so does a MULTI-GENERATIONAL investment consciousness play out.  

Without suggesting that people are immutable, and also without suggesting that thieving bigots of the past may have discouraged people from maintaining a multi-generational investor consciousness, it is hardly fair to expect the most far-sighted investors to adopt the habits of the most happy-go-lucky, here-and-now investors.  

Lady Fortune is a multi-generational bitch, and if we stay at her roulette table, Washington of the 22nd century may finally rival Baghdad of the 11th century or Giza of the 10th century BC.  

[PozBearWI]

@nanana honestly I think the same lying case can be made for Republicans as well.  

5 hours ago, nanana said:

Hi @PozBearWI, thanks for the clarification the (and for implanting the idea of being your friend 😀).  There has been a lot of monkey business with the Democrats outright lying and misleading the voting public about the Republicans and Russia. While I am ABSOLUTELY sure that Russia, China, Iran Britain and many other countries have deep states comparable to that of the United States, I can’t get very excited about a vague line of argumentation that demonizes an entire nation and implies a nefarious purpose, all at the same time UK Labour Prime Minister Kier Starmer sent UK bureaucrats to campaign for Kamala Harris. I am sure that US-based NGOs have manipulated many a foreign election and fomented many a color revolution. 

The democrats lied and thus, implicitly you believe the Republicans didn't?  Listen again then...