Arguing About Woke Is a Gift to MAGA

Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights -Bob Marley

I don’t watch MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the daily mutterings of well-groomed talking heads, whose shifts to the right or left are thought by mainstream media types as significant. 

Today’s social media bedwetting is about the chatty duo going to Mar A Lago over the weekend to make nice with the incoming president.

President-elect Donald J. Trump, you might have noticed, has no gray in his world. Things are either Black or White. You’re either for the man or against him.

Joe and Mika say they’re just asking questions; trying to cover the story as reporters are wont to do. Their claim to have started the conversation by stating assorted policy disagreements, may or may not have happened. What Trump saw was acquiescence; media scum crawling back to him, begging for access.

Things are moving fast for the incoming administration, with personnel and policy announcements, each more provocative than the last: a rapist for Attorney General, a plan to court-martial unrepentant military officers, etc., etc.

It’s enough to make humans of the sort-of normal persuasion want to tune out current events while waiting for the price of eggs to drop. That giving up is the intention, say people who have studied or lived in authoritarian regimes.

Here’s Will Bunch, columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer:

• Ever since the end of Trump’s chaotic first term, the oxymoron of “right-wing thought leaders” have urged a would-be Trump 47 to rule as an unchecked “red Caesar” crushing any liberal opponents, and the president-elect has taken their ideas to heart. His campaign agenda focused on two things — imposing large new tariffs and an unprecedented mass deportation of undocumented immigrants — that can’t be stopped by Congress or anyone else.

• Now that he’s won, Team Trump seems fixated on barely street-legal ways to remove anyone who might stand in his way — especially in the military that blocked his 2021 coup ambitions and is needed now to aid in deportations. They’ve floated the idea of a so-called blue-ribbon panel to purge any recalcitrant three- or four-star generals, and maybe even court-martialing the brass involved with the Afghanistan pullout (even though it was originally Trump’s idea). These dictator moves matter more than the confirmation hearings for the outrageous Gaetz that are probably never even going to happen, especially after any protest of the new attorney general is met by tanks in the street.

• Does none of this feel real to you? The unreality is the point! The Trump empire is creating its own reality. And when the old fact-based order that’s busy writing investigative articles about Hegseth that too few people will read — or while Senate Democrats try to woo their Republican colleagues for a vote that will probably never be held — finally, belatedly, figures this out, they, and, more importantly, the American people, will feel disoriented and become more disengaged, just as many felt waking up on Nov. 6 to news of Trump’s reelection

Meanwhile, concerned liberals and so-called moderates, are doing their best to sow seeds for a defanged opposition party. There’s a huge part of the Democratic Party that’s already there; the ‘guardrails of democracy’ seers, who assure us that while what’s happening today is certainly bad, but that the country will right itself come the midterms. 

They’ll continue tut-tutting as even more draconian actions occur post-inauguration, as if their words are so special as to cause a man bent on vengeance to pause and reflect.

Fantasy projects like signing petitions for improbable things that are really fundraising bait, and sending letters to Sen. Mitch McConnell, who won’t be Majority Leader come January, are pitched as courses of action for concerned Democrats. 

The righteousness of these wannabe leaders of “the resistance” is largely based on their beliefs about how Kamala Harris lost the election. It’s all about the “woke,” we’re told, and the campaign’s embrace of trans humans or, if they’re being nice, “identity issues.”

Regarding Kamala Harris, via Anna Gifty at Public Notice: 

• She was held to the highest standards of leadership while Trump was held to no standard at all. Where Harris was pressed to present concrete, detailed policy stances, Trump skated by with crude bigotry and mere “concepts of plans”. 

This “woke” stuff is a bullshit reality, ripped from the framing that the right’s infosystems have proffered.

Therein lies the trap for progressives. Spending time and energy on things that never happened, and/or ditching minority constituencies, will shift energies away from the real contradictions. 

MAGA rants about post-birth abortions weren’t a compelling reason for unattached voters to vote for Trump. They thought he offered them a better deal. The systems that were screwing them had to go, and prosperity would follow.

The thesis here is that Democrats’ woke rhetoric from 2019/2020 didn’t keep them from winning in 2020 but was somehow decisive four years later in 2024. And the vagueness of the prescription to these “problems", e.g., “they should distance themselves from the left’s rhetoric” and run “campaigns to the center,” does not even acknowledge the authoritarian threat facing the nation.

Maybe, just maybe, it is time for a visionary populist movement challenging the concentration of money and technology. The more times you say “billionaires” in a negative context, the more people will be inclined to vote for you.

The premise of an existential crisis facing the country isn’t wrong. Between techno-stupidity, an oligarchical economy and climate change, bad stuff is going to happen. For Trumpists, it’s a matter of getting the deadwood out of the way so a real man can fix things. 

Here’s a quote from one of those right-wing thought projects holding Trump’s victory to be a mandate:

• “It is necessary to break the power of the old regime completely, not out of vengeance but a matter of realism. What is required is a clean-up operation comparable to Denazification, or Reconstruction. The nomenklatura [Russian for bureaucrats] cannot be allowed to remain in position. The ballot harvesting machine that subverted the 2020 election must be liquidated, and voting protocols cleaned up around the country. The mass migration machine must be destroyed and the illegal migrants it delivered to America deported. 

• Antifa criminal networks, their financial backers, and their journalists and academic apologists should face RICO investigations. Universities should be purged of party activists, and activist disciplines abolished. Not only in the United States, but across the U.S. Empire, the regime’s political machine must be completely dismantled.”

You’ll not find that kind of language in Project 2025, but at its heart it embodies the backroom thinking going on in those circles.

If you buy-in to an authoritarian takeover in progress, then all these liberals who are secretly afraid of “others” are simply buying time so they can have some small crumbs of the regime that is to come.

Defeating the rightwing menace won’t be easy. They had their dress rehearsal with Trump 1.0, and are ready to rumble this time.

 When faced with what is seemingly an overwhelming challenge, the non-fairy tale course of action is to break it into smaller pieces. I have my doubts that the legal barriers facing the new administration will halt their progress, but they may slow things down to buy time.

The question then becomes, buy time for what?

Fortunately, this isn’t fascism’s first rodeo, and its victims have ideas to share.

All of the above, all the time, represents a winning strategy. You have more power than you think. We’re supposed to feel powerless. That’s the strategy. Here are some tactical ideas.

• Yes, do write letters, but don’t stop there. Support progressive media. (In the mainstream world, The Guardian is about the only one worth throwing money at) 

• Remember, one step at a time. Do the work. Encourage others. Be a helper.

• Support progressive elected officials when they’re doing good things. 

• Support progressive locals: YIMBY, workers rights, and independent media.  

• Have a plan for how you will personally cope. I suggest Carol Cadwalladr’s “How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for a post-truth world"

I promise to continue to bring new tactics to the fore as the year progresses.

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A word about social media. By now, I’m presuming readers have heard about users fleeing Elon Musk’s X and migrating to Bluesky. There’s pushback underway, critiquing the newer joint for being an echo chamber. 

Here’s the deal, what you see on Bluesky is what you ask for. I have nine different interest areas and can call up nine different news feeds. That doesn’t mean you’ll agree with everything; it does mean what you see will be truthful and relevant. 

Oh, and Bluesky does have an ethos of “assholes” be gone. I’ve never been personally disparaged. Posts meant to inflame get blocked. Known trolls get mass blocked.

If you’re looking for some (mostly) text based engagement, it might be time to give this outlet a try. It’s no substitute for human contact, but it doesn’t hurt to see people being nice to each other and having fun. Drop by and say hi! I’m @ dougbob506.bsky.social

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Monday News You Should Read

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The majority of news influencers are conservative men, study finds by Taylor Lorenz at User Mag

• Overall, Pew's findings paint a concerning picture of the new online news landscape. The widespread dominance of conservative male voices in the news content creator world tilts public discourse toward reactionary right wing narratives, which are then boosted by algorithms that reward sensationalism and outrage.

• As millions of young people turn to content creators for news, these gender and ideological disparities must be addressed. If we don't fight for change and build systems to amplify more women and progressive voices online, we will be stuck with a media landscape that continues to exacerbate inequality and warps our political landscape for the worse.

PS- This publication is a news influencer. A minor one, but telling some truth

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On the power within by Edgard at Edgard Portela

• we are not leaves in the wind, nor are we immovable mountains. we are rivers, carving our paths through the landscape of existence. sometimes we flow around obstacles, sometimes we wear them down, but always, always, we are moving forward of our own volition.

• so the next time you feel powerless, remember this: you have more agency than you know. every word you speak, every action you take, is a choice. and those choices, however small they may seem, have the power to change your world.

• embrace your agency. wield it wisely. and watch as the world bends to the force of your will, one choice at a time.

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Enough by Roxane Gay at the New York Times:

• Mr. Trump’s voters are granted a level of care and coddling that defies credulity and that is afforded to no other voting bloc. Many of them believe the most ludicrous things: babies being aborted after birth and children going to school as one gender and returning home surgically altered as another gender even though these things simply do not happen. Time and again, we hear the wild lies these voters believe and we act as if they are sharing the same reality as ours, as if they are making informed decisions about legitimate issues. We act as if they get to dictate the terms of political engagement on a foundation of fevered mendacity.

• We must refuse to participate in a mass delusion. We must refuse to accept that the ignorance on display is a congenital condition rather than a choice. All of us should refuse to pretend that any of this is normal and that these voters are just woefully misunderstood and that if only the Democrats addressed their economic anxiety, they might vote differently. While they are numerous, that does not make them right.

• These are adults, so let us treat them like adults. Let us acknowledge that they want to believe nonsense and conjecture. They want to believe anything that affirms their worldview. They want to celebrate a leader who allows them to nurture their basest beliefs about others. The biggest challenge of our lifetime will be figuring out how to combat the American willingness to embrace flagrant misinformation and bigotry.