RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: No, the Revolution Isn’t Over  Thu Feb 10, 2022 5:02 pm | |
| None of the fundamental drivers of “Wokeness” have relented
At least in the Boswash (the corridor of East Coast establishment power running from Boston to Washington), using January to make public predictions about the year ahead is an ironclad tradition. Usually these predictions end up being completely wrong, because no one here has any idea what they’re talking about. I hope that holds true in my case, because I want to use my mandatory annual forecast to dump a few gallons of cold, contrarian water on what seems to have recently become a fashionable prediction: that the “woke” ideological revolution roiling the West has peaked and will soon be in full blown retreat.
Consider a handful of examples of this new genre:
Is Wokeness Almost Over? (Scott McConnell, The American Conservative)
The fightback against wokeness has begun (Frank Furedi, Spiked)
Why Wokeness Will Fail (Bret Stephens, New York Times)
The end of woke is nigh (Peter Franklin, UnHerd)
Emerging Cracks In The Woke Elite (Andrew Sullivan, Substack)
Dave Chappelle May Help Tame Wokeness [as part of a “Thermidorian reaction”] (Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal)
Inflation Might Spell Doom for Wokeness (Lewis M. Andrews, The American Conservative)
Is this the end of progressive America? (Joel Kotkin, UnHerd)
While a few of those examples are from earlier in 2021, this theme seems to have really emerged and begun to solidify into a consensus among more centrist types soon after the beginning of November 2021. That was when some conservative American politicians won or almost won a few special elections, in part by riding a popular backlash to Critical Race Theory in schools, and a number of local ballot measures to defund police departments failed around the country. Republicans, feeling especially good about their chances against a flailing Biden, started drooling over a “Red Wave” expected to sweep them back to power in the 2022 midterm elections. And now that private equity executive turned Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin has personally won the culture war’s Battle of Midway, the tide has turned and, aside from the occasional messy beachhead here or there, inevitable victory is now in sight, or something.
One would think that by now all these anti-woke conservatives and moderate liberals would have learned at least some of the bitter lessons from the last decade about how political power and cultural change actually work, but I guess not. They could have taken note of all the fundamental factors driving this ideological belief system, all of which had to be painstakingly uncovered, layer by layer, even as it swept through every institution. But they have not. (Like, do they even read the pages and pages of erudite Substack anthropology on the topic? No?) They could have recognized by now that this is not a simple political issue with a political solution, but they have not.
Look, honestly I really didn’t want to have to do this. Come the New Year I had resolved to focus on the positives and all that crap. But I haven’t seen anyone else do it, so guess I have no choice and the duty falls to me to deliver the pessimistic news: no, the Revolution is far from over.
So, in what might also serve as a handy tour guide to the vast depths of the ideological abyss, catalogued at length here – in convenient listicle format! – are twenty reasons to get woke and despair.
.https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/no-the-revolution-isnt-over
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