Define woke in a way that does not apply to you or your favored political group.

This is your set of principles...?

'We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.'​

That's it?

The preamble is aspirational, not a standard.

Let me guess--you're particularly enamored with the Second Amendment--well, your view of what it says, anyway? Am I wrong?

 

I haven’t the faintest idea of what woke or wokeness is. I don’t care. Whatever it is it won’t change who I support or vote for or against. Wokeness seems to be one of these things that each individual has a different opinion of what it is and what it is being used for to gain a political advantage for one party or the other. Since I’m anti-both major parties, I detest both as they only try to do what is good for their base ignoring all the rest of us who aren’t part of their political base. Let the two major parties fight this out. Who cares outside of partisan, die hard party loyalist.

 

Then I stand corrected in the my assumption that you were endorsing it, and understand what you are saying, and why.

 

Regardless of party, the term describes someone who has been manipulated to being easily outraged. Their "eyes were opened" by politicians for the purpose of strengthening their loyalty and level of effort. Another appropriate term would be "useful". If you want your army to fight hard, they have to think they are fighting evil. No one fights thinking they are the bad guy.

 

To me, what is being called “woke” is a response to the post-racial narrative. As in wake up we don’t live in a post-racial America. It’s a movement in response to a post-racial movement that successfully dismantled the Voting Rights Act.

That said, I don’t know how to respond in the spirit of the OP. Beyond restoring the Voting Rights Act and bringing attention to the reality we don’t live in post -racial America: I really don’t know what’s being associated with a social justice movement or being woke.

I support restoring the Voting Rights Act or pre-clearance.

 

This is the opinion of one person who claims in the piece:

"All white people are racist, because all white people exist in a racist power structure that we aren't actively fighting to dismantle."​

There's no way most of the liberals I know from teaching agree with this take.

There are plenty of things to do in this life that need doing and don't put anti-racism as the first priority.

The people who promote this stuff don't dominate liberal thinking.

 

It doesn't have to be this way. Canadians and Americans operated about the same level of outrage until, say, the 1990s. Since then, Americans have become increasingly outraged on both ends of the political spectrum, so much so that Canadians whose favorite pastime seems to be watching Americans (they see every important US tv channel) say things like "we don't want that happening here..." and wondering why Americans are so angry.

If I could wave a magic wand over this place, I would stop the gun-grabbing, telling women they have to be pregnant, and fighting the insane "war on drugs." We're not going to round up firearms, strop women from having abortions or stop people from taking addictive drugs.

I think a lot of it is the media making money off conflict. Meet the Press this past week started off with a how-do-we-stop-the-gun-violence story. Nothing like stirring the pot.

 

I agree. Americans are eager to consume media products and also junk food products that affect mood. "Junk food brain". I have to watch out for angry drivers on my way to the office.

It is true that everyone that wants a drug, abortion, or gun will get one.

 

Uh they said they are Marxists dude...

 

Woke is adhering to a social standard put everything in society must be questioned and did anybody who succeeds must have privilege. It is characterized by what's known as a purity spiral or a point in which people are held to account for various social faux pas that may result in them no longer being seen as enlightened. For instance consuming beef addressing your child is a male or female and so forth.

 

To everyone in all countries that know anything about the US is 100% woke?

 

I doubt anyone could make a good case prohibiting drugs, guns or abortion is going to end drug use, stop abortions or get rid of most guns. What in the hell are we fighting about?

 

Some and some couldn't explain Marxism if they tried.

 

Its hard to define it without politics.
I think that "WOKE" is a series of concepts that are so ridiculous that people will focus on them (as they are more fun to talk about) than pay attention to the financial and economic destruction of the left's policies
Definitely more "fun" to talk about woke stuff

 

Clearly, you read neither the snip, nor my post-- since your comment is non sequitur. IOW, the snip was about the original usage of the word, which differs from contemporary usage.

In still other words, for the extremely dim: the snip was NOT MEANT to support my opinion, on current usage. Further, there is no basis, within the Snip, for anyone to glean that the author is a "Dem supporter." Your reply, then, only indicates complete cluelessness, on your part, upon that which you are (purportedly) commenting.


Edit: I see that you are newly registered; I hope you will put in more effort, and thereby improve your replies, so that this will not be an example, of all we can expect of you, in the future.

 

Woke is the belief that various forms of oppression exist (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia) and that these forms are all interconnected (intersectionalism) and are deeply embedded in all social structures (structural racism).

Wokeism demands that these structures be dismantled and so attacks every social norm, including meritocracy, family, childhood innocence.

 

Is woke synonymous with a particular political ideology, or it is present in multiple competing political ideologies?

 

A well thought out response. Thanks, I enjoyed reading it.

 

Seems redundant to say woke is largely defined by an equally of outcome ideology. Why not dump the word woke and just say equality of outcome ideology? You are the 2nd person in the thread to directly tie woke to Marxism. Seems redundant and unnecessary when we can just say Marxism. Are you sure there is not more loaded into the word woke? Seems to me that it is used as an insult by the right more than a way to objectively address Marxism.

 

Well said. You are not alone in detesting both sides.

 

I could not agree more!

 

I very seldom use these, but, spot on. Its inane. Finally finished Netflix Narcos Mexico. Watching the adrenaline junkie fueled impetus behind the DEA agents on Narcos, knowing that it's probably not all that fictionalized, well, I found myself rooting for the dudes supplying the coke and grass. Of course I'm biased having been a stoner from 79 to 83.

It's not media bias that's driving it, imo. It's not Faux news or Msnbc or Cnn. Yeah, sure, to some extent it is, of course. Particularly when we have sock muppets on this very board that buy into narratives from the supreme Sock Muppet himself Tucker Carson spouting non-sense about the Chinese Navy having achieved supremacy over the US Navy. Nope, not even close.... Or from the other side I've seen Joy Reid propound the left's version of non-sense about how we need to to deal with the inevitable collapse of crude oil reserves, not because of the prima facie root issue, but because of the mediocre, at best, Al Gore hypothesis: AGW.

I'll posit that folks in the US are so angry because we have been led to believe and have faith that our core values regard three infinite concepts of considerable import to the human condition: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that on both the left and the right folks in the US are seeing these fundamental promises from the founders of this government slip into dust. On the right, folks have opted to go for Trump; and on the left they have Biden: apparently the best they could do. This is the guy that helped shift the Ds to the right of the Rs in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. Tough on crime Joe. Big Business Joe. Joe and the Ds, lost enforcing protection for women to have a choice about carrying a baby to term. And now, they want to confront guns, when more folks in the US die from lack of affordable insulin.

Nick Hannauer describes it best, The Pitchforks are Coming. From both sides.

Meanwhile, our US reps in the House, the quiet ones that don't get MTG's press, are in it for nothing much more than a slice of the Federal Pie for their districts. I attended Lizzie Fletcher's townhall earlier this year. Severely limited questions, most of the time spent with a power point of all the pork she'd succeeded in scoring for her district. Water main repairs for the City of Bellaire ffs. Bellaire needs federal subsidies for maintaining its water system like Prince's other lover needs a hole in her head.....

Woke

 

It used to mean that if someone was 'woke' that they were up to date on enlightenment issues, such as accepting gay marriage, population diversity, acceptance of people who are different, different religions, tolerance of diversity, etc., and others have drifted into postmodernism, and don't ask me to explain that one, you'll have to google it.

But, some on the left have taken it too far into the crazy zone, such as all this business with 50 or so 'pronouns', and the separation of the term 'gender' to be something different than 'sex' and now there are umpty squat genders, such that AOC (though I love her, she gets crazy at times) when she refused to call a woman a woman, but 'menstruating person' which, to the non woke ( like myself ) is horse manure. A woman has a uterus, a vagina, etc., and that. If you are born a male, you'll be a male for life. if you want to be a girl, go for it, but, in my book, you are, in point of fact, an effeminate male. It's okay to be an effeminate male, be proud, be gay, whatever, but in my view, acknowledging what you are biologically, is reality, and that equals being honest with oneself, and that is spiritually and emotionally better than pretense. Woke psychologists, psychiatrists, socialists have bought into the idea that gender is whatever one identifies with, and I don't buy it, personally. I think it's bullshit. This is a new thing, by the way. For example, on some application forms occasionally I'll see two boxes, one for sex, the other for gender. 30 years ago, you'd never see that, they were the same, so this is a new thing, and I don't buy it.

And let's get something straight, a PhD in Sociology or Psychology is not the same thing as a Phd in physics or chemistry. The liberal arts are full of new ideas such as in psychology and sociology. But, in physics, something works or it doesn't, but in psychology, it's not as clear cut, opinions are all over the place.

If a transfemale asks me (politely) to refer to him as a her, I'll oblige, I don't want to fight. I'll respect your wish, But, don't ask me what I think your gender is because I can't lie about that, you might not like what I think so don't ask or debate it with me. But 50 genders or non binary crap, no way, josé, that's a bridge too far. Those guys are the reason many in the center won't vote for Democrats, they think all of us are 'woke', well, we aren't.

 

Ahh, Nick Hanauer, I've recommended him many times, on this forum. Everyone, especially the neoliberals, hard right wingers, should listen to this particular 1/10th of 1%er. But he was referring to the pitchforks coming for the super rich, or his fear of it, it was a message to his super rich brethren to become more enlightened about the people on the lower rung of the economic scale and abandon their 'dog eat dog I got mine and screw you rugged individualism to the point of not giving a hoot if people starve' philosophy.

 

A wonder full post, thank you. I would like to say a few words in defense of psychology and sociology thought. They are science based. Sure they are not like the pure physics of neuroscience, yet there are many social experiments that do a good job at revealing our subconscious nature. For example a common one referenced is the one in which a group witness a staged crime, then are asked to describe the criminal. What follows is a mixture of accurate and inaccurate information which demonstrates the subjectivity and unreliability of perception. There are also some interesting experiments on tribalism that return disturbing results.