Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) March 20, 2023: The self-styled conservative columnist Ross Douthat recently published "What It Means to Be Woke" (dated March 18, 2023) in the New York Times:
In it, Douthat says that the hard-to-define term "woke" is used by conservative commentators today to refer to "[t]he revolution inside American liberalism [that] is a crucial ideological transformation of our time." Evidently, conservatives today prefer to use "woke" as their favored pejorative term - evidently replacing their use of "political correctness" as their favored pejorative term. I should mention here that Wikipedia has entries on each of these two terms.
Even though the term "woke" is admittedly hard to define, Douthat undertakes the task of operationally defining and explaining the pejorative term as used in conservativism today to critique progressivism today. So conservatism vs. progressivism = conservatives vs. progressives.
I assume here that OEN readers identify themselves as progressives, not as conservatives.
Now, Douthat says that he will proceed to operationally define and explain "the 'woke' worldview" "as if I myself believed in it" - which, of course, he does not.
Douthat begins his analysis by asking, "What is America all about, at its best?" At its best, America is about "[e]quality and liberty."
But we should note that conservative American libertarians emphasize liberty.
In any event, Douthat claims that "the left [is] all about" "[t]ransforming those ideals [of equality and liberty] into lived realities."
But this claim seems to suggest that the right is not about transforming the ideals of equality and liberty into lived realities - conservative American libertarians to the contrary notwithstanding.
Which raises the question: What is the right about?
Which also raises the question: Can Douthat, or anyone else, operationally define and explain what the American left today is about without also operationally defining and explaining what the American right today is about?
But why? Because the American left today and the American right today tend to gravitate toward polar opposition to one another. Their polar opposition to one another tend to be manifested today in the tendency of the two major political parties in the United States today, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party to advocate opposing positions on key political and cultural issues.
Next, Douthat explicitly states that he is referring to "the cultural and psychological structures that perpetuate oppression before law and policy begins to play a part" in "attempts to win legal rights or redistribute wealth." He says, "This [attempt to look deeper] is what the terminology of the academy has long been trying to describe - the way that generations of racist, homophobic, sexist, and heteronormative power have inscribed themselves not just in our laws but [in] our very psyches. And once you see these forces in operation, you can't unsee them - you are, well, 'awake' - and you cannot accept any analysis that doesn't acknowledge how they permeate our lives."
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