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Here's why I think wokeness has already peaked and is in decline (with the caveat that we're looking at a minimum of 15-20 years before institutions are 'back to normal')

1) Those "vast subsidies to the universities and non-profit foundations" were really only possible because interest rates from 2009-2021 were the lowest in 5000 years https://www.marketwatch.com/story/interest-rates-havent-been-this-low-in-5-000-years-11627644496

Inflation is going to be a stubborn problem for at least a good 7-10 years, and sooner or later governments are going to have to rein in spending. On top of that, Biden's big show of student loan forgiveness was also a tacit concession that university degrees are highly overpriced. We're already seeing Silicon Valley companies like Netflix conduct sweeping layoffs of their DEI teams, because money just isn't free anymore the way it was 3 years ago. So the subsidy pipeline for wokeness is already drying up and will continue to do so given entrenched inflationary pressures.

2) It's getting more and more difficult for woke hegemons to gatekeep the flow of information. Substack continues to grow and mainstream media continues to decline (as shown by yet another round of layoffs at CNN), and with Elon Musk buying Twitter the platform no longer has built-in woke censorship. Biden's planned Disinformation Governance Board was a total shitshow that the administration had to walk back, and the types of lefties who used to call Substack a cesspool of Nazism are now pivoting to lauch substacks of their own (looking at you, Parker Molloy and Taylor Lorenz)

3) Detransitioners speaking out, crime rates rising, and inflation itself are all examples of reality "honking back" at woke policies. Left-wing politicians are increasingly going to have to run away from wokeness in order to win elections (which is how Biden himself became the nominee). Right now the staffers who write the legislation are all woke, but thanks to 2) above, it will be more difficult for the nominally-moderate politicians comprising the "front" of leftist politics to keep their covertly woke policy staffers under wraps. Similarly, after the low point of "mostly peaceful protests", mainstream media outlets are now trying to restore some of their lost credibility by reporting on woke excesses in a way they just weren't doing even 2 years ago. NYT and Reuters are now writing about the risks of "gender affirming medicine", and the new head of CNN is openly begging Republicans to give the outlet another chance.

With woke institutions losing their pork-barrel subsidies and their censorship-smokescreens at the same time, and with policy chickens increasingly coming home to roost, wokeness is already past its heyday. It won't be a quick or easy process to deconvert the institutions, but at least the process has started.

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Amazing interview! Very disconcerting to see the sausage being made and then to realize you and your progeny are both the product and the main ingredient. Great job, Matt!

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Nov 27, 2022Liked by Aporia

Great conversation, would love to see it become a semi regular thing!

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Great email interview & ideas

>>the world is forcibly reconfigured by at least three simultaneous revolutions: a geopolitical revolution driven by the rise of China; an ideological revolution consuming the Western world; and a technological revolution exacerbating both of the former.<<

Along with rapid tech change is that older folk are very much NOT "wiser" with new tech - and therefore much much less respected by tech savvy youngsters.

NS Lyons also hints at the rich, spoiled brat impatience against reality; we're all oppressed by gravity.

>>we live in a cultural civilization that is fundamentally terrified of the messiness of reality, and which does whatever it takes to try to free ourselves from its limits – even, now, from fundamentals like biology. <<

I don't think it's terror so much as outrage against reality. The outrage that the next meal you eat is NOT the "best ever"; that each day is not the "best ever". Like spoiled brats.

(HT https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/links-to-consider-1024 with prior links to https://richardhanania.substack.com/)

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>> conclusion is seeding

"ceding"

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Thank you for an excellent interview and especially his recommends at the end. Kingsnorth and Harrington I already follow. I shall lookup Richard Hanania. I'm sorry I cannot subscribe to yours, I'm already way over budget on all the other substacks and on line magazines. But good luck all the same.

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