Urban Progressive Privilege: “The Word Means What I Say It Means. Also, It Doesn’t Exist”

In my 20s, I had a section of my bookshelf that I called my “Know Thy Enemy” section.

It had an assortment of books that, broadly, are antithetical to Western Civliization: Marx, Mein Kampf (in German and translation), even a copy of “The Turner Diaries” at one point (although that last one got tossed along the way).

Point being, while I don’t still literally have that bookshelf, I find it useful to know our enemies.

So I listen to NPR. Not all the time. Mostly when I’m stuck on a long drive. I seek out the blinkered, the entitled and the depraved.

The New Yorker Radio Hour rarely disappoints on any of those counts. Like it’s fellow WNYC production, NYRH is a reliable stenographer for the inner id of eastern transatlantic progressive reflexes.

This past weekend? The etymology of word “woke”…

…which, we are reminded, doesn’t really exist:

Lately, conservatives have blamed “wokeness” for everything from deadly mass shootings to lower military recruitment. Still, few have a ready definition for what the word means.

The episode then goes on to provide its etymology (I’m a linguistics geek, I live for that stuff) and several working definitions and its history of use on the “progressive” left…

…on the way toward telling us the whole thing is a conservative messaging scam.

This is, of course, the leftist pattern:

Coin a term – “Politically Correct”, “CRT” “Woke”, “Mostly Peaceful” – to describe one of the left’s activities or goals
Use it.
Turn it into a social cliche.
When conservatives turn the cliche against them, declare it never existed and that that it’s all right-wing messaging (leaving behind a residue of people who didn’t get the memo, and continue to use the term in its original form with dogged, entitled obstinacy).
Move on to the next term, lather, rinse, repeat.

My project for the coming year: do my little bit to push “white supremacy” down into Step 4.

Posted

January 30, 2023

Battle For The Language, Culture War, Language, Urban Progressive Privilege

Mitch Berg

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37 responses to “Urban Progressive Privilege: “The Word Means What I Say It Means. Also, It Doesn’t Exist””

Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

January 30, 2023

#4 — this is because they refuse to admit that whatever the establishment believes is an ideology. It’s the elevation of the bien pensant to the normative.
Emery

January 30, 2023

Wokeness implies having been asleep. Being more conscious of a long-standing problem is the first step toward solving it. I would however like to point out the limitations of wokeness in problem solving. It’s being used as a cudgel on people who don’t follow your line of thinking. Time to question its worth.
Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

January 30, 2023

One topic that is discussed quite a bit on the Right, but rarely on the Left, is the failure of liberals to contain wokism.
One after another, the bastions of old-line liberalism have collapsed, usually without firing a metaphorical shot. The academy, the media, the military, virtually every social institution you can think of (including what were liberal Christian denominations) have gone woke.
One the reasons that illiberality has been growing on the Right is because left liberalism (& R libertarianism) have failed to contain wokism.
Emery

January 30, 2023

Cuts both ways ….
Language: A Key Mechanism of Control
https://uh.edu/~englin/rephandout.html
Blade Nzimande

January 30, 2023

It’s the latest manifestation of the mental illness suffered by low IQ, drug addicted, leftist degenerates.

💥Boom
Blade Nzimande

January 30, 2023

The 1619 Project is the mirror for the left that the twisted delusion the “Turner Diaries” serves for the right.

The difference is, a far greater number of reprobates believe the 1619 project is true to the past then believe the Diaries is true to the future.
Emery

January 30, 2023

South Carolina Constitution Includes Abortion Right, State Supreme Court Rules
https://charlestoncitypaper.com/2023/01/05/s-c-supreme-court-rules-6-week-abortion-ban-violates-state-constitution/

“Justice Kaye Hearn, who wrote the opinion issued Thursday, is the only woman, and the second woman to serve on the court…. noted that the plaintiff’s side of the courtroom was all female and the state’s side was all male.”

Sanity from South Carolina. Utterly shocking.
Women are deemed to have control over their own bodies in South Carolina. If you look at the map of the states that ban abortion, it is roughly the slave states. Still fighting 170 years later.
Pig Bodine

January 30, 2023

Emery

Because the slave states(and Wisconsin) are more cognizant of the wrong that can be inflicted on others they choose not to participate in the ongoing black genocide that abortionists are inflicting in many states of this country. Of course I’m not surprised you would side with the racists pushing this agenda, since you seem terrified of answering this simple question…

At what point in your mother’s pregnancy with you would it have become unacceptable for her to abort you?
Blade Nzimande

January 30, 2023

Lol…rAT, you ignorant fuck.

“The state unquestionably has the authority to limit the right of privacy that protects women from state interference with her decision, but any such limitation must be reasonable.”

That ruling was narrow. It addresses the 6 week ban. No problem. Now they’ll make it 10 weeks.

Your ER nurse daughter (snicker) better stay up there when it’s time to yeet another of your grandkids into the toilet.
Blade Nzimande

January 30, 2023

rAT gutters: “If you look at the map of the states that ban abortion, it is roughly the slave states. Still fighting 170 years later.”

Blacks contribute >52% of the kids that end up on the abortion trash heap nationally. Down here, it’s 66%.

Can the Klan come up and burn a cross on your FAbuLOUs LaKeFRonT eSTaTE?
Blade Nzimande

January 30, 2023

Or, how about this rAT?

Since we’re former slave holding states, how about we exempt blacks from abortion laws, and make it free for them, on demand at any time?

Reparations!!

Lmao… you fucking chud.
In The Mailbox: 01.30.23 : The Other McCain

January 30, 2023

[…] Tank: Buchanan, Wassermann-Schultz Introduce Bipartisan Human Trafficking Bill Shot In The Dark: Urban Progressive Privilege – “The Word Means What I Say It Means, Also, It Doesn’…, also, Evidence The Political Hat: Pesky Real Life and the Dearth of Recent Posts, also, […]
Blade Nzimande

January 31, 2023

Nutty Minnesotans handing out drivers licenses to all comers.

https://www.twincities.com/2023/01/30/mn-house-to-vote-on-drivers-licenses-for-people-in-u-s-illegally/

I’ll be contacting my state reps to demand Minnesota DL’s be declared invalid in our state. There’s no telling what kind reprobates have one of those bogus things.
Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

January 31, 2023

Reading some interesting stuff on how the woke virus took over sports.
It was woke journalists. They wanted to write about woke stuff, not sports, so they began to ask apolitical athletes their opinions on woke crap — and no matter how the athlete responded, they could write column about it, praising the woke athlete and condemning and beginning cancellation for the athlete who dared to give an unwoke response. Ditto people in sports management.
I wouldn’t be surprised if journalism was the primary attack vector for the woke virus. It is dominated by useless human beings, most of them women, who have a very high opinion of themselves.
Emery

January 31, 2023

Wind up Swift and watch him go …
Mitch Berg

January 31, 2023

Reading some interesting stuff on how the woke virus took over sports.

The role of advocacy journalism, starting in the ’70s and ’80s, in creating our current situation – likely in league with a similar process in academia and other institutions – in creating our current mess needs to have a history about it.

I throw up a little in my mouth using the phrase “sports journalism”.
Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

January 31, 2023

When I think of advocacy journalism, I think of a reporter covering a landlord-tenant dispute and openly advocating for one side or the other to prevail. It’s not corrupt, as long as it is identified.
This kind of journalism worse than that, it is corruption. It is turning sports journalism into ideological conformity research & enforcement.
bikebubba

January 31, 2023

Regarding states that ban abortion, South Dakota and Idaho were slave states? And if we broaden it to serious restrictions, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Nebraska?

No doubt that it’s an interesting phenomenon that the former slave states are now leading the nation in terms of liberty. Even more interesting is that there seems to be a third “Great Migration”, but this one of African-Americans back to the South. It’s going to put a certain degree of stress on the narrative the media wants to make, to be sure.
jdm

January 31, 2023

sports [has] woke journalists

This has been going on for years. The Strib’s Robert T Smith, Larry Batson, Dan Barrero (sp?), that little guy with the van dyke beard… all started in sports and except Barrero ended up doing opinion pieces about any dumb thing. Barrero just does it on radio. Even Reusse is a leftist, well, maybe a better description is non-Republican because he rarely writes political pieces.

ESPN and those outlets only do sports, so those “journalists” itching to “change the world” just do it during sports (for example, Costas with the his lights out.
schtick).

The woke are effing everywhere.
Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

January 31, 2023

This how the Nazi’s wormed their way into every organization in Germany. One day you notice that the journalists all have little swastika pins in their lapels.
Pig Bodine

January 31, 2023

JDM
don’t forget the alcoholic sports writer Jim Klobuchar – only once in a while were his sports columns in the RedStar not political.
jdm

January 31, 2023

^ good call, Pig. I stand corrected. His progeny continues his grift.
Emery

January 31, 2023

Once the right Wing anger industry decides that a term is useful, it determines what it means politically.

No, “wokeness” isn’t the problem here. January 6 ought to have taught us that.
bikebubba

January 31, 2023

Regarding alcoholic journalists, the former (maybe current) degree of alcoholism in newsrooms had to be seen to be believed. My great uncle was one of them.

But that noted, it’s interesting that in my great uncle’s time, journalists reported mostly fairly despite their politics (my great uncle was a 1960s liberal who covered Ole Miss) while being hammered a great deal of the time, while today, journalists may be sober, but their biases show through clear as day. Don’t know what to make of that.
Pig Bodine

January 31, 2023

BB
politics was just politics for the old timers, today politics IS religion or as the cowardly Emery would state it The Unassailable Truth™
Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

January 31, 2023

I separate the woke from liberals this way:
Liberals believed that individual liberties were necessary for democratic society to successfully reform & progress.
The woke believe the opposite — that individual liberties need to be curtailed for successfully reform & progress.
Bill C

January 31, 2023

while today, journalists may be sober, but their biases show through clear as day. Don’t know what to make of that.

I blame 3+ generations of infiltration of J schools.

Liberals believed that individual liberties were necessary for democratic society to successfully reform & progress.
The woke believe the opposite — that individual liberties need to be curtailed for successfully reform & progress.

In the 60s, most boomers hated “the man” and didn’t want to do what “the man” wanted them to do

Today, those boomers (and their kids) now are “the man” and don’t want anyone else doing what they (“the man”) doesn’t want them to do.
Emery

January 31, 2023

There are right-wing/conservatives who can’t believe how left-wing universities are and also can’t believe that anyone would ever choose the no-so lucrative life of an academic. At some point, you’d hope, the irony will dawn on them.
Personally, I reject left-wing ideology and at the same time I reject right-wing culture warriors and populists. I’d like to think there is still space in the center for true liberals who respect freedom and liberty, who believe in tolerance for minorities, who want to see a strong and effective state delivering important public services, who understand the importance of markets and entrepreneurs, who value traditional culture and who also have a cosmopolitan outlook.
Pig Bodine

January 31, 2023

Emery

Again all that moral preening BUT not enough fortitude to show us you truly are the morally superior being you pretend to be and answer this question…

At what point in your mother’s pregnancy with you would it have become unacceptable for her to abort you?
Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

January 31, 2023

Emery is not a centrist.
MN has just enacted an abortion law among the most extreme in the US, and far, far more extreme than any other nation apart from Canada. Emery has no problem with that law.
bikebubba

January 31, 2023

Bill, one point of reference is that my great uncle actually had a teaching certificate–he got into the biz through writing ability,, not a credential. Maybe we need to take a look at the damage “credentialism” does.
Bill C

January 31, 2023

There are right-wing/conservatives who can’t believe how left-wing universities are and also can’t believe that anyone would ever choose the no-so lucrative life of an academic.

I’m not one of them. I totally understand this part of radical progressive thinking: The mission is more important than money.

“Academics” would rather “mold” young (squishy) brains than make a lot of money. It’s the same reason why you see companies and corporations make marketing/product decisions that hurt their bottom line (lookin’ right at ya, Disney). “The message is more important than money. Besides, we still make plenty of money. So what if we lose some if we can desensitize the young children to the joys of DEI (grooming) without question?

They are wired differently than those of us who view productivity and prosperity as good life goals. It’s also one of our downfalls. We work to prosper and get ahead. They work to change…..everything.
Bill C

January 31, 2023

BB: Agreed. It’s a crying shame when someone who has a couple decades of industry experience is not allowed to teach classes about their industry, but someone with an education degree and no professional experience is. Blame academic unions for that.
Ultra Maga Mammuthus Primigenesis

February 1, 2023

How DEI took over the arts:
https://www.thefp.com/p/how-ideologues-infiltrated-the-arts
Just as I mentioned a few days ago, the DEI compliance hammer is access to grants by private foundations & public institutions.
You will be making a DEI statement at some point in the future.
Emery

February 1, 2023

^^ Clarke’s Third Law Of Dunking says sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from earnestness.

The conservatives in the academic/cultural world are concerned with the preservation of tradition and the education of the masses into the literary, musical, and artistic heritage of their civilization. The conservative belief is that the admittance into a tradition provides the perspective from which we view the World.

The Conservative position in the culture war serves merely to distract the electorate from more important issues. Don’t be fooled into thinking there is anything conservative about Conservatives.
Pig Bodine

February 1, 2023

More moral preening from Emery, the coward who is afraid to answer this moral question…

At what point in your mother’s pregnancy with you would it have become unacceptable for her to abort you?
Ian in Iowa

February 1, 2023

The conservatives in the academic/cultural world are concerned…blah blah blah

The Conservative position in the culture war serves merely to distract the electorate from more important issues. Blah blah blah

Emery telling us what we think and believe again.

*YAWN*