“So the suggestion that we’re actually past ‘peak woke’ is inherently dubious and often made disingenuously in the context of boosting Democratic candidates facing tough elections: ‘Nothing to see here, folks, show’s over, problem solved!’ But given that wokeness by any other name is still subsidized to the tune of hundreds of billions, it’s more likely that we’re in a temporary ebb tide before it roars back more totalizing than ever.”
The general public may be past “peak woke,” but the cultural forces that propagate wokeness are undeterred. The country’s graduate schools of education have not pulled back at all on the out-and-out obsession with “anti-racist,” post-modern, critical theory-based curricula, and they are producing a constant stream of new teachers and administrator, all of whom are true believers and installing these ideas in our children apace. Journalism schools don’t even pretend anymore to teach new journalists to be impartial and follow the facts wherever they lead; the next generation is being explicitly taught to push an agenda in their reporting and to protect the powerful rather than question.
At all levels of education, in all subjects, as the few centrist or right-leaning professors, teachers, etc. age out and retire, they’re being replaced by hard leftists, and the next generation will go through 12 or 16 or more years of education hearing nothing but the far left worldview, the far left language and jargon, etc. and many will grow up having no idea there are other perspectives.
The fact that anons can now more easily get away with memeing the woke’s excesses on Twitter without getting canceled isn’t that big a victory when the people and institutions that have children’s attention most of the day every weekday for a dozen years or more are explicitly programming them to be woke.
Absolutely, the organic pushback from ordinary people rolling their eyes will peter out long before all of the billions in grants and tens of thousands of precarious elites' self-interest and livelihoods. Absurd awokening-wise, we are unfortunately probably just getting started.
Great review, and I like al-Gharbi's work (although I don't agree w/ all of it!).
This stands out and squares with my personal experience, "Wokeness, he contends, has become a key social indicator of education and upward mobility even as it alienates and often undermines the lower-status people the ideology claims to champion."
It is about signaling that one has the right ideas and others do not. This is done through confession vis-a-vis "shout your abortion", acknowledging your racism or privilege, ex-communication/cancellation, community rituals in the form of protests and DEI workshops, and amulets such as yard signs and bumper stickers.
My keyboard doesn't have Hebrew but, "Ein klum chadash b'shemsesh"...there is nothing new under the sun.
It's been interesting walking around St. Louis suburbia over the past few years seeing the Black Lives Matter and "In This House..." signs that used to be almost every other house gradually, quietly go away. It's probably something like 10% of houses now, so down something like 80%. I hope we've got a good number of years before the next embarrassing "great awokening"...
Eloquently written. LOL, yeah I remember, " Even as Scranton Joe revived soothing old hokum from the 1940s", the old timey phrases he used, like, "that outfit over there". (!!). lol. (but they were and still are good phrases, if a non-fake person wants to bring 'em back, I'm in.
Have a good day and keep up the good writing. --Mike
Thank you! Yeah I grew up with aged enough parents to find a lot of the Jimmy Stewart-isms pretty charming, I'd just like them used in a more Mr. Smith Goes to Washington kinda sense.
“So the suggestion that we’re actually past ‘peak woke’ is inherently dubious and often made disingenuously in the context of boosting Democratic candidates facing tough elections: ‘Nothing to see here, folks, show’s over, problem solved!’ But given that wokeness by any other name is still subsidized to the tune of hundreds of billions, it’s more likely that we’re in a temporary ebb tide before it roars back more totalizing than ever.”
The general public may be past “peak woke,” but the cultural forces that propagate wokeness are undeterred. The country’s graduate schools of education have not pulled back at all on the out-and-out obsession with “anti-racist,” post-modern, critical theory-based curricula, and they are producing a constant stream of new teachers and administrator, all of whom are true believers and installing these ideas in our children apace. Journalism schools don’t even pretend anymore to teach new journalists to be impartial and follow the facts wherever they lead; the next generation is being explicitly taught to push an agenda in their reporting and to protect the powerful rather than question.
At all levels of education, in all subjects, as the few centrist or right-leaning professors, teachers, etc. age out and retire, they’re being replaced by hard leftists, and the next generation will go through 12 or 16 or more years of education hearing nothing but the far left worldview, the far left language and jargon, etc. and many will grow up having no idea there are other perspectives.
The fact that anons can now more easily get away with memeing the woke’s excesses on Twitter without getting canceled isn’t that big a victory when the people and institutions that have children’s attention most of the day every weekday for a dozen years or more are explicitly programming them to be woke.
Absolutely, the organic pushback from ordinary people rolling their eyes will peter out long before all of the billions in grants and tens of thousands of precarious elites' self-interest and livelihoods. Absurd awokening-wise, we are unfortunately probably just getting started.
Great review, and I like al-Gharbi's work (although I don't agree w/ all of it!).
This stands out and squares with my personal experience, "Wokeness, he contends, has become a key social indicator of education and upward mobility even as it alienates and often undermines the lower-status people the ideology claims to champion."
It is about signaling that one has the right ideas and others do not. This is done through confession vis-a-vis "shout your abortion", acknowledging your racism or privilege, ex-communication/cancellation, community rituals in the form of protests and DEI workshops, and amulets such as yard signs and bumper stickers.
My keyboard doesn't have Hebrew but, "Ein klum chadash b'shemsesh"...there is nothing new under the sun.
It's been interesting walking around St. Louis suburbia over the past few years seeing the Black Lives Matter and "In This House..." signs that used to be almost every other house gradually, quietly go away. It's probably something like 10% of houses now, so down something like 80%. I hope we've got a good number of years before the next embarrassing "great awokening"...
Nice review, Ivy!
Eloquently written. LOL, yeah I remember, " Even as Scranton Joe revived soothing old hokum from the 1940s", the old timey phrases he used, like, "that outfit over there". (!!). lol. (but they were and still are good phrases, if a non-fake person wants to bring 'em back, I'm in.
Have a good day and keep up the good writing. --Mike
Thank you! Yeah I grew up with aged enough parents to find a lot of the Jimmy Stewart-isms pretty charming, I'd just like them used in a more Mr. Smith Goes to Washington kinda sense.