(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . What the hell is "wokeism" and why is the right wing obsessed with it [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-01-30 The political right in the US has been calling democrats "woke" now for over 2 years and to tell you the truth I had no idea of what being"woke" was. I decided to do some research and watch videos posted on the internet to get more insight and understanding of "woke". One informative video posting I reviewed about “wokeism” was by Vlad Vexler (Political Philosophy Academic). Below is what I noted from Vlad's posting about “wokeism”: --------------------------- Wokeism- Political Definition: People who are politically disengaged, i.e. depoliticized, and not interested in the political engagement required to have the power to elicit both societal and political change. The effect of “wokeism” is to substitute a preoccupation with power, change, and agency to facilitate change via a sequence of planned steps to involvement with identity which depoliticizes the population, e.g. nationalism. “Wokeism” isn't an agent for enabling social and political change. It represents democratic decline. It is used to depoliticize the public and results in segments of the population being politically disengaged. Woke is the capture of major western institutions which results in these institutions being fragmented over minor / narrow issues related to identity politics which have little, if any, impact on the institution’s goals, objectives and requisite policies. --------------------------- After acclimating myself with "wokeism", I came to the conclusion that it is being used as a tool by the political right in the US to provide political cover, i.e. to keep the political right's agenda opaque, to avoid having to explain their political intentions. The political left in the US needs to be aware, i.e. politically awake, that “wokeism” is being used by republicans to distract the public from paying attention to their societal, economic, and political agenda. Democrats must avoid becoming politically disengaged and/or distracted because of minor/narrow issues related to identity politics. The concern I have with"wokeism" is that elevating issues dealing with identity politics to the point where we, the effected population, will no longer have the attention span to focus on implementing policies required to accomplish political goals and objectives to move our society forward. It is interesting that the right wing of the political spectrum in the US is calling those who are on the political left "woke" when everything they are doing politically is "woke". I remember when republicans in the US started responding to people who challenged president GW Bush's policies and actions in the middle east with something like "I know you are but what am I?" which is a nonsensical response. The US republican party has no political platform which provides their political goals and objectives with the required policies to attain them because they know that US voters will reject them. An example of this is did republican's propose eliminating US federal income tax and the IRS by paying for our government using a 30% across the board sales tax as part of the Republican Party’s platform in the 2022 election cycle? The answer is "No". The Republican's use of the term "woke" to label democrats is their way of distracting the public. It is just a refinement of their "I know you are but what am I?" response 20 years ago. All they can do is distract using culture war issues and misdirection to avoid talking about their political agenda/intentions. The US Democratic Party should stay focused on their goals and objectives with requisite policies in the Biden political platform and not be distracted by republican misinformation/misdirection tactics. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/30/2150153/-What-the-hell-is-wokeism-and-why-is-the-right-wing-obsessed-with-it Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/