We Are Woke About the Wrong Things
Despite a booming economy with falling inflation, Americans are depressed. Why not? We’ve had Trump screaming at us for ten years that we’re a dying country that has to be made great again by him. Never mind the paucity of details about how he will go about doing this. Or whether it is really necessary.
We lost our moxie during Covid, when we found out how unprepared we were and how poorly our government institutions, no matter which president was at the helm, performed. Until then, Americans thought we were the greatest country in the world. American exceptionalism. It seems so long ago now. But it has only been a decade since we felt powerful.
Unfortunately, Trump's negative tone about America was amplified by wokism, a philosophy that began with good intentions and got corrupted quickly by arguments about who was the best--or worst --ally for marginalized communities. Wokism seemed to make black people angry and white people guilty. Caught in the middle were white men, who suddenly found themselves unseated from some of their inherited positions. They began to feel discriminated against. Suddenly, nearly everyone seemed to feel that our country was lacking something, guilty of something, doing something wrong.
We are doing something wrong. We are confusing racism with classism.
This lack of confidence in who we are as a country makes nobody happy. I would like to take on the job of figuring out how to make Americans feel more proud of their country again. Yeah, we do a lot of things wrong, but we also do a lot of things right.
But first we have to admit the truth. It wasn’t all Donald Trump. Part of it was the horrible performance of the US government during Covid. Covid taught us the limitations of science and that made people who used to believe wholeheartedly in science uncomfortable as they searched for answers and came to realize that science is only a bunch of experiments that lead to conclusions that may constantly change.
And there’s also the problem of inequality, and the way wokeism tried to address it. Instead of making us feel, better wokism has made us feel worse about ourselves. Those of us who tried to be allies to Black people or Hispanics found ourselves constantly falling short of their expectations of us. We are serious, but we are never seen as serious. We are never doing enough. to help. On the other hand white men feel incredibly discriminated against in the new woke environment. They feel like for no apparent reason their opportunities have been closed off. They’ve taken their bats and balls and gone home from the schoolyard.
This is classism more than it is racism. The oppressed are the poor, forced to work two or three jobs, no matter what color they be.They are the people who came from poorly run or funded schools, and were discouraged even as youngsters from having ambition.
We saw how that ended in October, when stunningly many “woke” people came out on the side of Palestine rather than support Israel, which at first was seen as the victim. Quickly enough, Israel morphed into the oppressor. Like most situations, that of Israel and Palestine is complex, and both sides are simultaneously right about some things and wrong about others. I choose to support both, because I support human beings’ rights to exist. All human beings. One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. No matter what color.
It almost seems as though there is a plan to divide the nation, and make it impossible for us to act in our best interests and the best interests of our allies. I am no conspiracy theorist, but I believe other nations have taken advantage of our weaknesses to amplify them and make us look worse.
To reunify the nation I believe we need a series of positive, albeit true, messages about the country that can make us feel proud of it again. We want to be people who think the American experiment should continue, and not end on election day. We cannot make reparations to former slaves and indigenous people if we cease to exist as a democracy.
Let’s not forget, we have real work to do in keeping this country going, much of which is important national stuff that could bind us together, like access to better healthcare and education, which would help eradicate racism and classism. To address those successfully, we all have to work together. Let's do it, it will be more fun than sitting around and bitching.
Spend some time contemplating the Statue of Liberty. Then pick your issue with America and go work on it.