There are people who still debate the term “woke.” From the beginning, defenders of woke judgments, discourse, and activism claimed it was “just good manners”; others said it didn’t exist, a mere figment of “right-wing paranoia.”
Truth is, it was a new, trendy term used to replace “social justice” and the peculiar bent and activism methods of “social justice warriors,” after “SJW” became fodder for ridicule by collegiate leftism’s opponents.
Now, more than a few Democrats are trying to distance themselves not only from the rising tide of know-nothing communism but also the woke style itself, which increasing numbers of Americans have come to loathe. The bellwether in this is U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.-N.Y.).
What she and her comrades said in the time of the COVID lockdowns was “not rhetoric that we would use today,” she told an ABC This Week interviewer. But she insists that the extremist/radical positions of her fellow Democratic Socialists (she’s still a member of the New York chapter) were “useful.”
Nevertheless, her apologetics for defunding the police and other crazytown nonsense was not what went viral. It was her repeating of a local politician’s statement to the effect that “Woke 1.0 was crazy” that dominated commentary.
Ha ha ha, it was a confusing time; we can move on, seems to be her takeaway.
But she herself was a big part of the madness, says Robby Soave — and so says your memory. “No one,” declares Soave, “should accept these conversions at face value.”
Of course they aren’t even conversions. They are evasions and spin. AOC is a politician, and no more honest about her past positions than she is her ignorance of economics, political philosophy, and especially . . .
Common Sense.
Of which This Is. (I’m Paul Jacob.)
Illustration created with Nano Banana
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