How are lefties you know reacting to the election?

Have you noticed a shift in "woke" among people you know?

Yesterday, Ace posted two pieces which showed a contrast in tone among committed leftists (don't comment on old threads no matter how compelling):

From before the election:

The New York Times Publishes an Article Calling for a Color Revolution In the United States to Block Trump from the Presidency

Astonishing.

And from after the election:

We May Have Finally Turned the Corner on Woke

"Even leftists are now admitting that woke = broke."

Of the examples given by Ace in this post, I found it remarkable that the article by Maureen Dowd was discussed on MSNBC!

Then again, "Morning Joe" pretends to have once been something other than a leftist. Joy Reid, OTOH, thinks that Kamala Harris ran a flawless campaign and had all the celebrities. How could she have lost with all the celebrities? Our country is just racist and sexist.

Introspection can only penetrate so far at MSNBC.

Also included by Ace in the "introspection by leftists" examples: Matthew Yglesias has written Nine principles for a Common Sense Democrat comeback. Greg Lukainoff of FIRE notes from past experience:

I don't know if Matty teaches anywhere, but if he does, particularly in elite higher education, or in any number of departments, he would be needing @TheFIREorg ’s help pretty soon for several of these views. We've seen people get in trouble for far tamer.

Yglesias replied in the thread:

Definitely not a teacher but I was just at Dartmouth preaching these points at three classes and a student lunch and a public talk last week and everyone I met was open-minded and receptive. Appreciate FIRE’s work and hope things are changing for the better.

These are points he thinks the left needs to adopt in order to win. This is why he is preaching at college campuses.

A lefty who interacts with me online reacted positively to the "nine principles". But then, I don't think his heart is into the destruction of Western Civilization. He is working on obtaining dual citizenship in Italy. He accidentally undermined illegal immigration into the USA by revealing that Italian authorities are insisting that he document that he has never committed a crime anywhere that he has ever lived, and that he must become sufficiently fluent in Italian that he shows himself to be committed to the Italian culture.

And he is defiantly spending Thanksgiving outside the USA.

Re-emphasizing from Ace:

Is woke really over?

Well, it's not completely over, obviously. Though it might now be on the glidepath to death.

But Batya Ungar-Sargon said on Megyn Kelly that for four weeks after a Democrat election debacle, we're finally allowed to "say The Thing" that everyone knows is true but is forbidden to say due to woke cancel mobs' power.

Then that four weeks of permissible speech ends, the Democrat Party settles on a new orthodoxy, barely indistinguishable from the previous one, and everyone is once again forbidden to say The Thing that everyone knows is true. . .

So, Yglesias might still need FIRE in a few weeks? Hard to say.

From a serious critic who comes from the environmental movement:

Michael Shellenberger says he would like a reconcillation with the woke -- but only after they have confessed their sins and recanted their many lies.

Here's the thread from which Ace took his excellent highlights. It names a few names.

While Matthew Yglesias is out preaching to the left on the necessity for their future conquests, it might be a good idea to re-read the Wednesday Morning Rant by Joe Mannix and pass it on:

Portability

When Barack Obama delivered the White House to the most radical faction of the Democrat Party and then his people took over the major institutions, many assumed that he had remade the Party, cemented it firmly and installed it permanently. The first is true, the jury is out on the third and the second is increasingly in doubt. He remade the Party, certainly, and remade it in his own image (or his shot-callers' images - the difference is perhaps irrelevant). The pre-2008 Democrat Party no longer exists, and hasn't for some time.

But that remaking - despite how deeply its product has infested the entire administrative state, the corporate world and the media complex - may be its undoing. Obama's Party takeover on the back of identity politics of all kinds is a hard thing to keep together, and its fractures have been showing for a while now. Outside of the strongholds, the Party is finding itself to be a tough sell. Obama remade the Party, but that remaking was not portable. Without Obama at the top, it doesn't have the juice. None of his successors could do it.

Part of the reason for his lack of portability is the nature of his coalition. Obama built a coalition of hatred. . .

A step up from the "I'm going to kill myself" theme among lefties

I have a NPR-listening-type lefty niece who has not posted on FB for 5 years, but chose to post a greeting card type message after the election - from a black woman with almost half a million followers on Instagram. It starts out with MLK:

In "draft of chapter X, 'Shattered Dreams,' " Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. recounted a story of his first flight from New York to London. The flight to London took over 9 hours, but he discovered that the return flight would be over 12 hours. Longer.

The pilot told MLK that the engines would be strong enough to make the return flight against headwinds.

Most of the rest of the text focuses on feelings about the election.

We shouldn't have to face these winds. The grief is heavy and it is real. Yet the primary function of an engine is to take the fuel and convert it into some kind of energy that creates motion.

The values we hold, combined with our grief, our anger, our disappointment, our fear, all work together. None of it is wasted. Feel it now. And when the time comes to take the long journey through what's to come, know this: we have the fuel. We are fully capable.

I think this is pretty creepy - to imagine that your "engines" run on that kind of fuel.

What do you think?

My niece subscribes to some form of "gentle parenting" which allows children to manipulate the adults around them through tantrums. She is not particularly demonstrative herself. Might this be related?

Waiting for some people to work through the stages of grief.

A few recent observations from X

Biden appointed some destructive advisors. Don't worry so much about the ones Trump is proposing.

Washington Post editorial board:

"But the realities of human biology raise legitimate questions about any notion that trans women should always and everywhere be treated exactly like cisgender women."

The Overton window is opening.

No citizen should be denied a government benefit because of their political views. In fact, the First Amendment forbids it.

@TheFIREorg will file a public records request to learn if this is indeed agency policy.

Bill Maher lectures the left.

Trump can't "capture" the managerial state - establishing human control over the Human Control Evasion Machine is a contradiction in terms

The question is whether he can kill it while retaining control of its territory, weapons, uniforms, legal & habitual legitimacy, etc.

The managerial state is dying anyway, there is no saving it

Everyone, regardless of their political persuasion, should want Trump to be as swift & successful as possible in replacing it

What do you think?

Music

Sleepers, Awake

Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Last week's thread, November 9, The Perils of Revolution

Comments are closed so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.

posted by K.T. at 11:08 AM

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