I skimmed through this article first with a bit of a sneer. Then I thought for a second, went back to top and started to actually read it. I have some comments along the way but the central claim that he makes is totally correct, IMO.
- Key sections coy/pasted here with emphasis added and comments inserted.
- Links in the article can be found in the source linked below
>>>> starts here >>>>>
A Question for the Formerly Woke: What Exactly Do You Regret?By Carlos Lozada
[...]
So, before that time goes farther down the memory hole, discarded as just one of so many vibe shifts, I have one question for the formerly woke:
If you can dismiss it so casually now — all the defunding and abolishing, the BIPOCing and Latinxing, the canceling and decentering and my truthing — how much of it did you truly believe at the time? How much was conviction, how much was a pose, how much was groupthink, how much was fear?
If you did believe it, jettisoning it now should take something more than a sheepish grin. If you didn’t believe it and yet declared it with such passion, with such pretensions to moral clarity, with such disdain for contrary perspectives, then the least you can do now is acknowledge that dissonance. You should explain the shift, not just explain it away. [Note: This is very important. An ideological shift is not like religious conversion. You can't just say that you somehow saw the light and now hold the correct faith. You need to walk us through (a) why you believed what you believed back then, (b) what made you change you mind, what was the incongruence that needed to be resolved, (c) why you believe what you believe now is better than what you believed back then. In the old days, we used to call it self-criticism. It's a matter of credibility. There are versions of this kind of acknowledgment in the Christian concept of redemption, I believe, and "making amends" as it's called, in addiction circles.]
Some writers and thinkers have admitted that they supported certain progressive verities — or didn’t push back against them — because they felt cowed by their audiences, or because they feared for their careers. My hope is for a modicum of such intellectual accountability from the political class, too, just enough grace to blush. [Note: except claims of pressure are often a lazy way out of the acknowledgment issue by positioning oneself as a victim of bullying and that, honestly, they never believed what they were saying. Either name names and point at specific threat or don't try to hide behind a vague zeitgeist excuse.]
[...]
To expect intellectual accountability from politicians may be foolish, I know, and parties and movements are allowed and expected to evolve. The right, for instance, went from Goldwater and the Reagan Revolution to Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America, to George W. Bush and compassionate conservatism, to the Tea Party and then to MAGA, with consistencies as well as discontinuities along the way. Not every politician must explicitly disavow what came before. [Note: Don't both-sides this, Carlos. The process you're talking about is demanded by the concept of intellectual honesty and credibility. The right and their amygdala based politics don't even exist on the same zip code. That's why any right winger who says they're out (including Liz Cheney, including MTG) will never have any credibility in my eyes. The only people on the right that I know of who at least try to address this as an intellectual exercise are the people at The Bullwark, and even there, I have to say, some more than others. That said, yes, the same credibility question also exists on the right, but they're not equipped to clear that hurdle, ever.]
But when political leaders reject not just an old ideology, but their own old ideology, one they embodied and upheld, the price of elision should be higher. [Note: Yes. Yes. Yes. This needs to be a cast in stone rule of politics. "Then I saw the light, and I know God spoke to me. "Hallelujah!" may work in church; it does not in politics.]
[...]
I’ve long had concerns about the motivations and incentives inherent in culture war arguments. Culture wars are not primarily about debating issues, but about picking a side, joining a team. And the trouble with joining a team is that, inevitably, some teammates go further than you might want to go yourself. [Note: this is a universal truth here. And this may be the exact reason that I find it hard to sign up as a member of any group at an emotional level even though I've been a leftist all my life. I can't bring myself to sign up with the DSA even though I agree with a lot of their positions.] They stake out positions with which you may disagree or formulate tenets on topics about which you may know little. But you don’t want the other side to prevail, of course, so you go along, stridently upholding your team’s various positions and hunting down apostates [Note: or worse yet, invent an apostasy where it doesn't exists. There is a natural tilt towards paranoia in groups like that.] At a certain point, you’re no longer considering the issues; instead, you’re defending turf. [Note: When power (or money) comes into the picture, ideas stop being about ideas, and they become a proxy for position and budget apportionment. This happens in the academia all the time. It happens in scientific circles, political parties, anywhere ideas are supposed to be front and center. Once they become tools for something else, it's the beginning of degradation in the discourse as well as the intrinsic quality of the ideas that are being argued about.]
Politicians on the pro-Trump right have gone through their own version of this dance, whether excusing every corrupt and authoritarian impulse of their leader or leavening their public devotion with dutiful — and meaningless — off-the-record misgivings. Are they true believers or just fearful ones, legitimate loyalists or craven opportunists? The Trumpian right may evolve into an even more pernicious version of itself, or someday, too, its current enablers and supporters may smile and say MAGA just went a little crazy for a while. If they do, I can’t imagine the formerly woke letting them off so easily.
In her interview, Ocasio-Cortez said she has not “ruled out” a run for the presidency in 2028 — and it is easy to link her revised ideological positions to that ambition. This is a “time of renewal” for the Democratic Party, Ocasio-Cortez said, explaining that “we are focused on everything from your health care to your grocery bill.” She called the party a “big tent” and affirmed that “our priority is the working class.” [Note: ironically, these are the more tried-and-true, traditional concepts that liberal should never have abandoned in favor of embracing happy capitalism and mutated the Democratic Party into a lighter, friendlier version of the Republican Party of the '80s and the '90s -- "Same Republican policies you love ... but with a smile".]
When the congresswoman, who is a member of the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, was asked about D.S.A. calls to defund the Pentagon, abolish the police and the Senate and establish public ownership of essential industries, she replied that “people are less interested in these academic debates, and they’re more interested in how we’re going to bring their bills down and make sure that they can afford to see a doctor.” (That snub of academia is especially deft for a left that purports to respect science and expertise, and for a movement that propelled “intersectionality” and “white fragility” into the vernacular.) [Note: Ok. Let's hit the brakes here. There was a lot that was glossed over the over-excited youth of the progressive movement that did not have the wisdom or the experience to understand how to best phrase their policies in a slogan form. In that they were not so different from the youth of the '60s who also made all kinds of exaggerated claims all the time. It's almost a prerogative of the youth that they will f*ck up good, solid ideas with bad phrasing. We can get into what is meant by defunding the police or the Pentagon, or abolishing the police. I followed those discusions as I was pulling my non-existent hair every time they opted for the overly simplistic, dumb-ass slogans that were not representing what the basic arguments were. That aside: yes, abolish ICE! Nuke it for good and make sure no other forms of gestapo ever come back.] [Note: On a separate note: "intersectionality" is such a simple, basic concept that it is something we actually use all the time, so don't diss it, Carlos. Every time someone says "I'm an Irish-Indian American" because one of their parents is Irish and the other is Indian and they are American, that's intersectionality. Every time a conservative says "I'm an American patriot, but I'm also a Christian" or "I'm a conservative, but I'm also a mom", that's intersectionality. Its rise in the leftist rhetoric is a response to the '60s era activism where black women were sometimes forced to choose between being black or women. Gay black men were being forced to choose between gay liberation and black liberation, etc etc. Intersectionality simply means this is not an either/or choice. You are both,. You are the sum total of the parts that make you. "White fragility", by the way, is a real thing. It's as real as it gets. Why do you think the response to "black lives matter" was "no, *all* lives matter"? That was white people reading "black lives matter" as "only black lives matter" and freaking out about it, instead of its intended meaning, "black lives matter too". Don't act like this is not a thing, please.]
So, is this a Woke 2, focused on economic challenges for the working class, on affordability and health care, and leaving identitarian politics behind? It may well prove a more electorally palatable iteration, one that makes sense if the D.S.A.-inflected Democratic Party aspires to national power. Whereas Woke 1 was accelerated by Trump’s initial rise to the presidency, his return to the White House made clear its political shortcomings. [Note: If this is what Woke 2 is supposed to mean, then it is nothing more than the left retreating to its original position. What it can never ever mean is sacrificing vulnerable minorities by throwing trans people under the bus. Any kind of wokeness or liberalism that focuses on the economic realities at the expense of the identity question or the right of people to be who they are abd live as they please can consider me an ardent opponent. We shall see if that's where we're heading.]
Ocasio-Cortez and the others have every right to seek out a new framework and message, to change their minds, if that is indeed what is happening. But before a Woke 2 takes over, let the proponents of its predecessor explain how and why they’re moving on. [Note: Yes, but also don't forget what they're moving to. Definitions matter. They make or break alliances.]
They should do the work. [Note: 100%]
<<<< ends here <<<<<