"Today, the entire Republican Party, which just won control of the presidency, the Senate, and likely the House, routinely mocks wokism" - A quibble: You can mock wokism, but not the idea that (I claim) inexorably leads to wokism, namely, the equality thesis. Until we can do *that*, the leviathan will live on.
That's a fair point. And I do fear, of course, that wokism will live on until the equality thesis dies. Perhaps we can put it this way. Wokism is a particularly pernicious manifestation of the equality thesis. It might have been killed, at least for now. But the equality thesis survives. And so long as it survives, it may again manifest as wokism.
I'm all for the hereditarian revolution. I do not believe its coming, but I hope that history proves me wrong.
Egalitarianism seems to be a permanent aspect of Liberalism, a sort of latent condition that can wax or wane depending upon time and circumstance.
Western liberalism has experienced Egalitarian upsurges as long as Western Liberalism has existed, sometimes based on class or assets or sex or race or stigma etc. I think the cause is the basic tension between Liberalism's claims of "all men being created equal" and the obvious reality that this is both untrue and impossible as well as Liberalism being a constant march towards "freedom", which will always be redefined in new ways and will always be unreachable yet just around the next corner.
The current Egalitarian fever called Social Justice will remain a major feature of American social and political life for the foreseeable future, as it is the sacred ideology of most of our liberal class. But instead of eradicating Egalitarianism, which I think impossible, maybe it's better to think of it like a volume knob we can turn down, with hopefully the next few years it being lowered to a softer level instead of being cranked up to 11 as it has been the past decade.
I think it is possible for people to finally realize that Equality is not achievable, but also there are alternate goals that are achievable and also help the working class, poor, and racial minorities.
I believe that the goal of Equality will only be diminished if it can be replaced by a more viable goal.
Yes, I agree that we need to take the goal of Equality head-on because the assumption that Equality is both moral and achievable is at the root of all ideologies on the Left. Any one who starts with the goal of Equality will end up as someone of the Left-of-Center.
But I also believe that we cannot eliminate the goal of Equality, so much as replace it with something that is both achievable and moral. I believe those goals are material progress and upward mobility.
Woke peaked in 2020 and has been in unremitting decline ever since. Even leftist spaces view that period as a bad dream that they would collectively prefer to forget. Academia remains "Woke" in its antipathy to hereditarianism, but that has been the case since the 1970s.
I am much more concerned about the rightoid revanche going too far - not just on account of the damage it will cause by itself, but in its potential to revive otherwise moribund Wokeness.
>>>I am much more concerned about the rightoid revanche going too far - not just on account of the damage it will cause by itself, but in its potential to revive otherwise moribund Wokeness.
Let me put you as ease.... not gonna happen any time soon.
You confuse surface phenomena with what is going on below the surface.
The Woke was never about public opinion, academia, demonstrations, and newspaper headlines. That was always the surface phenomenon. The true power of the Woke was implemented DEI in the hiring, firing, and promotions throughout American institutions. Until that is completely rolled back, the Woke will still be influential. They will just go into hiding until we get the next social media algorithm-induced social panic.
You can't "kill" Woke with an election. Woke is the outcome of 50+ years of a madness of a Pied Piper Western intelligentsia.....first growing in the petri dishes of it's humanities and sociological academe and spreading virus-like from there to infect tens of millions of graduate professionals with its groupthink and demonisation of 'wrongthink' (albeit in varying dilutions). So now, to "kill" Woke it would be necessary to shut down 70% of academe and then wait at least a generation for the medicine to course through the social fabric. I'm not holding my breath for an end to Wokeness. (And it's also important to not forget that 47% of Americans voted for it on Tuesday.) https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-madness-of-intelligentsias
No, Trump did not kill the Woke. Trump did, however, get a mandate from the American people to purge the Woke from the federal government. It is far from clear that he will succeed in doing so.
The Woke was never about public opinion, demonstrations, and newspaper headlines. That was always the surface phenomenon. The true power of the Woke was implemented DEI in the hiring, firing, and promotions throughout American institutions. Until that is completely rolled back, the Woke will still be influential. They will just go into hiding until we get the next social media algorithm-induced social panic.
To truly kill the Woke (figuratively speaking of course) Trump will have to:
Eliminate every federal department and job position that has any of the words “Diversity,” “Equity,” or “Inclusion” in their title at any time during 2020-2024 and fire all the employees permanently.
Ban DEI training or any training that differentiates by race or gender anywhere in the federal government
Ban hiring, firing, and promotions using any racial or gender criteria as a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which it clearly is).
Ban manager incentives to hire for diversity within the federal government.
Require federal contractors to do all the above to keep their contracts going.
Ban federal funding going to any institution (public, private or non-profit) that has the above DEI practices.
Rescind every executive order that was the foundation for affirmative action and DEI.
Use the power of the Department of Justice to sue large corporations that have implemented DEI policies because they are illegal under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but give them one year to roll back the policies.
Promise a wave of legal cases if corporations do not all DEI policies by the end of 2025. Otherwise, the lawsuits start in January 2026.
i truly hope he takes the scorched earth approach to dei and wokism in every corner of the federal government that you nicely outlined. i think its possible, and i think these people and policies will be the first things elon and vivek gut. i think they understand that this is an important part of the mandate from voters.
I think the size of the DEI industry, and the number of gender studies graduates, combined with the appeal of wokeness to corporations (the social funds that only invest in companies that hit certain metrics) means that this election was a battle in a long, slow war to dismantle wokeness.
I think a lot of the smartest and most competent people in many fields, even scientific and technical ones, have absorbed a lot of woke values and you're going to have a tradeoff between ideology and competence.
I think that if properly done, the DEI industry can actually be dismantled quite quickly (one year). So much of their influence is due to the federal government and its subsidies and mandates. Those subsidies and mandates can be turned around and give the federal government the leverage to force change across all American institutions.
Remember that DEI practices are profoundly dysfunctional. Once a critical mass of institutions eliminates the practice, the others will have a strong incentive to copy to remain competitive.
DEI only works if virtually all institutions do it.
I would have voted for Trump (I didn't because I'm not American) because I'm sick and tired of identity politics, illegal immigration hurts legal immigrants, and because I like his non-interventionist approach to foreign politics. I was called basically a Nazi despite me being Classically Liberal, neurodivergent, chronically ill, bisexual, Atheist, brown and Latina...surely the Nazis would have adored me.
"I would have voted for Trump (I didn't because I'm not American) because I'm sick and tired of identity politics, illegal immigration hurts legal immigrants, and because I like his non-interventionist approach to foreign politics."
You're kidding, right? Have you seen his cabinet picks? WTF
I support most of Trump's positions, except for his unrequited love for Israel. The problem is the Deep State. They control all the bureaucracies, including Congress. The Deep State, after working all these decades to get control, will not allow anything or anyone to destroy their empire. As I write this, that scumbag asshole McConnell is working to disallow Trump his mandate. A majority in the House and Senate are under the control of the Deep State. Trump must get approval from the Senate for Cabinet members. McConnell and a significant number of Senate Republicans hate Trump. Trump's success is by no means assured.
Now that I've proved my right-wing and geek credentials:
I'm more or less with Cofnas on the course of woke overall, though I don't think pushing hereditarianism is a sufficient condition for overthrowing it. (It may help.) However, I'm going to say something I don't think anyone on this corner of the internet wants to hear:
The poor state capacity created by hiring cronies with no relevant background in the incoming administration is going to give the wokies their greatest opportunity.
The government still has to send out Social Security checks, predict hurricanes, do medical research that isn't profitable, and do a shitload of other things. The FBI may be used to harass the president's enemies on both sides of the aisle now, but it also does things like investigate drug trafficking and so on. Let's not forget Trump was riding high to reelection until the clumsy response to COVID was part of what put Biden in the White House in the first place.
I suspect what everyone here really wants is a return to the competent, right-leaning WASP elite culture of the 20s-50s, where you had guys who leaned right but were competent, organized, and hardworking. However, that culture no longer exists, due to elite capture and a few other things I'm sure people here could fill me in on; apart from a couple of Silicon Valley tech titans, tradcath and Orthosphere guys more concerned with raising their large brood (not in and of itself a bad thing I should add), and rationalist meetups of disgruntled programmers, most of the semi-elite human capital has gone woke. Trump has to staff his administration with greater concern for loyalty than competence (after all, he tried it the other way and we know what happened), and that usually doesn't end well as the government is a big machine and when it goes bad, things go bad pretty quick.
One thing Karlin should consider (and I really hope he reads this) is the role of *semi*-elite human capital. A couple superbrilliant, ultrahardworking 160 IQ Elon Musk or Scott Alexander CEO or pundit types aren't enough to move things by themselves; they need a few million 115 IQ Associate Undersecretary for Interior Affairs types to push paper and get stuff done, and all those people (or at least, too many) have been raised to check pronouns and see the history of the West as shameful. Every bureaucracy since Rome (or the Qin Dynasty) needs to be staffed. A couple big, embarrassing government failures could easily send Newsom or some other avatar on his way back up and then they're going to want their revenge.
A clarification: By definition, inflation is a general rise in the price of all goods and services, not of some relative to others. It is a monetary phenomenon. The rise in the price of some goods relative to others, as for example those caused by supply shocks, is not inflation even though it might feel like it to those most affected.
I think it seems easy to kill wokism insofar as the vast majority of people care about trans issues above all else, and the clownishness of that issue will make it necessary for the left to jettison. I'm in the minority that's less passionate about that aspect vs other things that I consider wokism. I guess we'll see.
"Today, the entire Republican Party, which just won control of the presidency, the Senate, and likely the House, routinely mocks wokism" - A quibble: You can mock wokism, but not the idea that (I claim) inexorably leads to wokism, namely, the equality thesis. Until we can do *that*, the leviathan will live on.
That's a fair point. And I do fear, of course, that wokism will live on until the equality thesis dies. Perhaps we can put it this way. Wokism is a particularly pernicious manifestation of the equality thesis. It might have been killed, at least for now. But the equality thesis survives. And so long as it survives, it may again manifest as wokism.
I'm all for the hereditarian revolution. I do not believe its coming, but I hope that history proves me wrong.
Bo W
Egalitarianism seems to be a permanent aspect of Liberalism, a sort of latent condition that can wax or wane depending upon time and circumstance.
Western liberalism has experienced Egalitarian upsurges as long as Western Liberalism has existed, sometimes based on class or assets or sex or race or stigma etc. I think the cause is the basic tension between Liberalism's claims of "all men being created equal" and the obvious reality that this is both untrue and impossible as well as Liberalism being a constant march towards "freedom", which will always be redefined in new ways and will always be unreachable yet just around the next corner.
The current Egalitarian fever called Social Justice will remain a major feature of American social and political life for the foreseeable future, as it is the sacred ideology of most of our liberal class. But instead of eradicating Egalitarianism, which I think impossible, maybe it's better to think of it like a volume knob we can turn down, with hopefully the next few years it being lowered to a softer level instead of being cranked up to 11 as it has been the past decade.
I think it is possible for people to finally realize that Equality is not achievable, but also there are alternate goals that are achievable and also help the working class, poor, and racial minorities.
I believe that the goal of Equality will only be diminished if it can be replaced by a more viable goal.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-progress-and-upward-mobility
Yes, I agree that we need to take the goal of Equality head-on because the assumption that Equality is both moral and achievable is at the root of all ideologies on the Left. Any one who starts with the goal of Equality will end up as someone of the Left-of-Center.
But I also believe that we cannot eliminate the goal of Equality, so much as replace it with something that is both achievable and moral. I believe those goals are material progress and upward mobility.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-progress-and-upward-mobility
And the idea that Equity Trumps Equality (pardon the pun).
Woke peaked in 2020 and has been in unremitting decline ever since. Even leftist spaces view that period as a bad dream that they would collectively prefer to forget. Academia remains "Woke" in its antipathy to hereditarianism, but that has been the case since the 1970s.
I am much more concerned about the rightoid revanche going too far - not just on account of the damage it will cause by itself, but in its potential to revive otherwise moribund Wokeness.
>>>I am much more concerned about the rightoid revanche going too far - not just on account of the damage it will cause by itself, but in its potential to revive otherwise moribund Wokeness.
Let me put you as ease.... not gonna happen any time soon.
No, Woke policies are more entrenched than ever.
You confuse surface phenomena with what is going on below the surface.
The Woke was never about public opinion, academia, demonstrations, and newspaper headlines. That was always the surface phenomenon. The true power of the Woke was implemented DEI in the hiring, firing, and promotions throughout American institutions. Until that is completely rolled back, the Woke will still be influential. They will just go into hiding until we get the next social media algorithm-induced social panic.
You can't "kill" Woke with an election. Woke is the outcome of 50+ years of a madness of a Pied Piper Western intelligentsia.....first growing in the petri dishes of it's humanities and sociological academe and spreading virus-like from there to infect tens of millions of graduate professionals with its groupthink and demonisation of 'wrongthink' (albeit in varying dilutions). So now, to "kill" Woke it would be necessary to shut down 70% of academe and then wait at least a generation for the medicine to course through the social fabric. I'm not holding my breath for an end to Wokeness. (And it's also important to not forget that 47% of Americans voted for it on Tuesday.) https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-madness-of-intelligentsias
I agree. Wokeness is one of many acts of societal disruption that are used to destroy the fabric of our civilization and actuate total control.
No, Trump did not kill the Woke. Trump did, however, get a mandate from the American people to purge the Woke from the federal government. It is far from clear that he will succeed in doing so.
The Woke was never about public opinion, demonstrations, and newspaper headlines. That was always the surface phenomenon. The true power of the Woke was implemented DEI in the hiring, firing, and promotions throughout American institutions. Until that is completely rolled back, the Woke will still be influential. They will just go into hiding until we get the next social media algorithm-induced social panic.
To truly kill the Woke (figuratively speaking of course) Trump will have to:
Eliminate every federal department and job position that has any of the words “Diversity,” “Equity,” or “Inclusion” in their title at any time during 2020-2024 and fire all the employees permanently.
Ban DEI training or any training that differentiates by race or gender anywhere in the federal government
Ban hiring, firing, and promotions using any racial or gender criteria as a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which it clearly is).
Ban manager incentives to hire for diversity within the federal government.
Require federal contractors to do all the above to keep their contracts going.
Ban federal funding going to any institution (public, private or non-profit) that has the above DEI practices.
Rescind every executive order that was the foundation for affirmative action and DEI.
Use the power of the Department of Justice to sue large corporations that have implemented DEI policies because they are illegal under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but give them one year to roll back the policies.
Promise a wave of legal cases if corporations do not all DEI policies by the end of 2025. Otherwise, the lawsuits start in January 2026.
i truly hope he takes the scorched earth approach to dei and wokism in every corner of the federal government that you nicely outlined. i think its possible, and i think these people and policies will be the first things elon and vivek gut. i think they understand that this is an important part of the mandate from voters.
I agree.
You might be interested in my recent article where I outlined other policy domains where the second Trump administration can implement real reform.
I think the size of the DEI industry, and the number of gender studies graduates, combined with the appeal of wokeness to corporations (the social funds that only invest in companies that hit certain metrics) means that this election was a battle in a long, slow war to dismantle wokeness.
Replace DEI with MEI...Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence.
The problem is, a lot of the best people are woke at this point.
"The problem is, a lot of the best people are woke at this point."
I question your use of the term 'best people'; if they are woke, they are not the best.
OK, fair.
I think a lot of the smartest and most competent people in many fields, even scientific and technical ones, have absorbed a lot of woke values and you're going to have a tradeoff between ideology and competence.
We disagree.
I think that if properly done, the DEI industry can actually be dismantled quite quickly (one year). So much of their influence is due to the federal government and its subsidies and mandates. Those subsidies and mandates can be turned around and give the federal government the leverage to force change across all American institutions.
Remember that DEI practices are profoundly dysfunctional. Once a critical mass of institutions eliminates the practice, the others will have a strong incentive to copy to remain competitive.
DEI only works if virtually all institutions do it.
I would have voted for Trump (I didn't because I'm not American) because I'm sick and tired of identity politics, illegal immigration hurts legal immigrants, and because I like his non-interventionist approach to foreign politics. I was called basically a Nazi despite me being Classically Liberal, neurodivergent, chronically ill, bisexual, Atheist, brown and Latina...surely the Nazis would have adored me.
"I would have voted for Trump (I didn't because I'm not American) because I'm sick and tired of identity politics, illegal immigration hurts legal immigrants, and because I like his non-interventionist approach to foreign politics."
You're kidding, right? Have you seen his cabinet picks? WTF
I'm not kidding, I just disagree with you. I don't understand how that's surprising.
You didn't answer my second question.
"Wokism is probably the third most important cause, but the one upon which I wish to focus for the remainder of this essay."
I like Bo
I support most of Trump's positions, except for his unrequited love for Israel. The problem is the Deep State. They control all the bureaucracies, including Congress. The Deep State, after working all these decades to get control, will not allow anything or anyone to destroy their empire. As I write this, that scumbag asshole McConnell is working to disallow Trump his mandate. A majority in the House and Senate are under the control of the Deep State. Trump must get approval from the Senate for Cabinet members. McConnell and a significant number of Senate Republicans hate Trump. Trump's success is by no means assured.
Much has happened in national politics since I wrote the comment above; Trump has screwed the pooch. He is genuinely a Deep State asset.
That is not dead which can for four years lie,
And with bad government even woke may rise.
Now that I've proved my right-wing and geek credentials:
I'm more or less with Cofnas on the course of woke overall, though I don't think pushing hereditarianism is a sufficient condition for overthrowing it. (It may help.) However, I'm going to say something I don't think anyone on this corner of the internet wants to hear:
The poor state capacity created by hiring cronies with no relevant background in the incoming administration is going to give the wokies their greatest opportunity.
The government still has to send out Social Security checks, predict hurricanes, do medical research that isn't profitable, and do a shitload of other things. The FBI may be used to harass the president's enemies on both sides of the aisle now, but it also does things like investigate drug trafficking and so on. Let's not forget Trump was riding high to reelection until the clumsy response to COVID was part of what put Biden in the White House in the first place.
I suspect what everyone here really wants is a return to the competent, right-leaning WASP elite culture of the 20s-50s, where you had guys who leaned right but were competent, organized, and hardworking. However, that culture no longer exists, due to elite capture and a few other things I'm sure people here could fill me in on; apart from a couple of Silicon Valley tech titans, tradcath and Orthosphere guys more concerned with raising their large brood (not in and of itself a bad thing I should add), and rationalist meetups of disgruntled programmers, most of the semi-elite human capital has gone woke. Trump has to staff his administration with greater concern for loyalty than competence (after all, he tried it the other way and we know what happened), and that usually doesn't end well as the government is a big machine and when it goes bad, things go bad pretty quick.
One thing Karlin should consider (and I really hope he reads this) is the role of *semi*-elite human capital. A couple superbrilliant, ultrahardworking 160 IQ Elon Musk or Scott Alexander CEO or pundit types aren't enough to move things by themselves; they need a few million 115 IQ Associate Undersecretary for Interior Affairs types to push paper and get stuff done, and all those people (or at least, too many) have been raised to check pronouns and see the history of the West as shameful. Every bureaucracy since Rome (or the Qin Dynasty) needs to be staffed. A couple big, embarrassing government failures could easily send Newsom or some other avatar on his way back up and then they're going to want their revenge.
A clarification: By definition, inflation is a general rise in the price of all goods and services, not of some relative to others. It is a monetary phenomenon. The rise in the price of some goods relative to others, as for example those caused by supply shocks, is not inflation even though it might feel like it to those most affected.
You can always rely on Lowry and National Review to draw precisely the wrong lessons from any situation.
I think it seems easy to kill wokism insofar as the vast majority of people care about trans issues above all else, and the clownishness of that issue will make it necessary for the left to jettison. I'm in the minority that's less passionate about that aspect vs other things that I consider wokism. I guess we'll see.