I was talking with a conservative friend of mine after the election, and she said a big thing that frustrated her about Democrats was how they (paraphrase) "shove wokeness down our throats." That's how they feel. They don't see it as "promoting inclusiveness," like I do, but as "pushing us to say something is ok when it's clearly beyond the pale."
But like... aren't we supposed to stick up for the oppressed? MLK Jr. himself said, "The law can't make a man love me. Religion and education will have to do that, but it can control his desire to lynch me." Since when does protection under the law hinge on popular support!
Exactly all of that! There's a lot of material about fascism that has helped me understand this dynamic better. Specifically, for a group in power, advances made by marginalized group *feel* like losses. They're not, of course. But certainly I've had that gut instinct in the past, and it's easy to imagine getting super angry about it.
And of course, when you listen to the major voices on the right, you'll hear them exaggerating the demands of marginalized people to a point of absurdity, where it's like "yes, that would be bad if that's what they were asking for." But it rarely turns out to be true. Last year a center-right podcast I listen to spread a story that misgendering was going to be fined $10K in Michigan. Turns out, it was only for government employees, and then only if the misgendering was something like "reasonably would be understood as harassment" by observers. Basically someone had to be going out of their way to do it, and like... yes? This is good policy, same as if a DMV employee started using racial slurs all the time towards the people they were supposed to be serving.
But it got reported as this absurd thing that made conservatives think that if they accidentally got it wrong, they'd be fined $10K. (See also: Jordan Peterson's entrance into the public with his whole thing about "compelled speech" in Canada, which of course has resulted in zero cases thus far that turned out the way he said they would.)
The effect of all of this is that many people see those exaggerated policies as *being* what the "woke" want, which makes it much easier to turn people against it. It's one hell of a strawman.
To add onto this, I check in on some conservative websites, and it is striking to see how they view the general state of things. They claimed to feel much safer now that Trump is going into office, they claim relief at the election results because they think that if Kamala was going to win, then we’d never have another election, not Trump, Kamala. They don’t say that a woman is Trans in their news headlines, they just refer to them as men, “Bill passed protecting ‘men’ from women’s sports/places, etc…” They’re not happy with the ceasefire and hostage deal because they want complete and total ‘victory’ for Israel. Some even decry compassion and empathy as ‘enticing sins’. Their worldview is nearly completely opposite of ours. It’s wild.
omg I cannot express to you (though you probably already know) how angry I feel at people like Peterson, who act as if they're being extremely rational (and maybe even think they are) but basically won't allow anything to push against their privilege. "This is offensive." "But I know people who aren't offended, therefore it can't really be offensive, and you shouldn't be shouting about it." Really burns my toast.
And how do you counter the exaggeration when it's very superficially the same as what you want? Because the straw man is already so ridiculous that the Overton window has been jerked way right.
The "You're only allowed to call people mentally ill if lots of people are doing it" logic is mind-boggling.
I was talking with a conservative friend of mine after the election, and she said a big thing that frustrated her about Democrats was how they (paraphrase) "shove wokeness down our throats." That's how they feel. They don't see it as "promoting inclusiveness," like I do, but as "pushing us to say something is ok when it's clearly beyond the pale."
But like... aren't we supposed to stick up for the oppressed? MLK Jr. himself said, "The law can't make a man love me. Religion and education will have to do that, but it can control his desire to lynch me." Since when does protection under the law hinge on popular support!
Exactly all of that! There's a lot of material about fascism that has helped me understand this dynamic better. Specifically, for a group in power, advances made by marginalized group *feel* like losses. They're not, of course. But certainly I've had that gut instinct in the past, and it's easy to imagine getting super angry about it.
And of course, when you listen to the major voices on the right, you'll hear them exaggerating the demands of marginalized people to a point of absurdity, where it's like "yes, that would be bad if that's what they were asking for." But it rarely turns out to be true. Last year a center-right podcast I listen to spread a story that misgendering was going to be fined $10K in Michigan. Turns out, it was only for government employees, and then only if the misgendering was something like "reasonably would be understood as harassment" by observers. Basically someone had to be going out of their way to do it, and like... yes? This is good policy, same as if a DMV employee started using racial slurs all the time towards the people they were supposed to be serving.
But it got reported as this absurd thing that made conservatives think that if they accidentally got it wrong, they'd be fined $10K. (See also: Jordan Peterson's entrance into the public with his whole thing about "compelled speech" in Canada, which of course has resulted in zero cases thus far that turned out the way he said they would.)
The effect of all of this is that many people see those exaggerated policies as *being* what the "woke" want, which makes it much easier to turn people against it. It's one hell of a strawman.
To add onto this, I check in on some conservative websites, and it is striking to see how they view the general state of things. They claimed to feel much safer now that Trump is going into office, they claim relief at the election results because they think that if Kamala was going to win, then we’d never have another election, not Trump, Kamala. They don’t say that a woman is Trans in their news headlines, they just refer to them as men, “Bill passed protecting ‘men’ from women’s sports/places, etc…” They’re not happy with the ceasefire and hostage deal because they want complete and total ‘victory’ for Israel. Some even decry compassion and empathy as ‘enticing sins’. Their worldview is nearly completely opposite of ours. It’s wild.
omg I cannot express to you (though you probably already know) how angry I feel at people like Peterson, who act as if they're being extremely rational (and maybe even think they are) but basically won't allow anything to push against their privilege. "This is offensive." "But I know people who aren't offended, therefore it can't really be offensive, and you shouldn't be shouting about it." Really burns my toast.
And how do you counter the exaggeration when it's very superficially the same as what you want? Because the straw man is already so ridiculous that the Overton window has been jerked way right.