However, that would be sufficient if it was just talk but there seems to be plenty of walk there as well.
Whereas look at the actual positions of political power. Biden/Harris -- they're both horrific in many wokeness metrics. Rich old privileged straight white, war monger, sexual assault allegations, top cop whose record on imprisoning black people is problematic, descendant of slave owner, and of course staunch supporters of Israel just to name a few (I'm not saying these are fair or valid criticisms but it's all prime woke ammunition).
Yet somehow it doesn't affect them. For all the dueling and competition among the elites (or at least their political representatives) you're imagining, very little wokeism was used against them as far as I could see. They also required very little verbal intelligence, compassion, or tolerance.
What they had is an elite and their corporations who consolidated around them and protect them, don't ask the wrong questions and don't bring out the woke attack dogs. The opposite of dueling and infighting.
And in your last paragraph you're acting like the systems are set up by (or at least is able to be changed by) and for the benefit of people who are not the rich elites. The evidence points to the opposite. It is clearly a tool to divide the underclass and insulate the ruling class.
I disagree with the idea that even the kind of elites you mean aren't affected though, and I'd point to the example of Andrew Cuomo for evidence. It's very plausible that Andrew Cuomo's calls in the early days of covid cost a number of people their lives, that's all the reason any party would need to remove a prominent member. But when he was removed it was through a set of sexual assault allegations that someone had clearly been sitting on for some time. When infighting did erupt, woke competition was the weapon of choice.
As for my last paragraph, that was in small part assertive optimism, in large part a rhetorical device, and just a touch of sarcasm. People like you after all don't need convincing there's a problem with woke competition, it was addressed to people who buy into it. That woke competition is only intended to divide the underclasses can be easily dismissed as the author hiding from his racial privilege, that it has that effect unintentionally because of unconscious privilege by the rich... the rules of the game practically require believing that.
We are. I have no doubt that "woke" is used by lots of people to attack one another. It's a great tool that divides people against one another and insulates the ruling class.
>The way I use it I'm thinking more of the most influential 10% than 1%. People who have it better than most citizens, but their position is precarious. So more the democratic party insiders Biden/Harris bullied into tilting the odds against Sanders/Yang/Gabbard than just Biden/Harris themselves. Of course, my theory does require that Biden/Harris spent a long time in the trenches honing their skills in this kind of dominance struggle. If you don't think they thrived in that environment for so long through being better at earlier versions of woke competition I'd be curious what you think the selection mechanism was. Another thing you might not have noticed about Woke Competition is that it's not about being a perfect person or having no skeletons in your closet. One of the presuppositions is that we all have something undeserving about us and need to keep that fact constantly in mind.
I'm not sure what you mean. Biden and Harris simply weren't attacked with any of the woke stuff which they both have ample material including support for Israel! It's not that other people didn't want to be president or other big donors did not want others to be president.
> I disagree with the idea that even the kind of elites you mean aren't affected though, and I'd point to the example of Andrew Cuomo for evidence. It's very plausible that Andrew Cuomo's calls in the early days of covid cost a number of people their lives, that's all the reason any party would need to remove a prominent member. But when he was removed it was through a set of sexual assault allegations that someone had clearly been sitting on for some time. When infighting did erupt, woke competition was the weapon of choice.
Well firing someone for sexual assault is not woke. Covering up the sexual crimes so it can be used as leverage and/or blackmail while at the same time contgratulating yourselves about how you're the hero of women and denouncing others is woke, but it's that hypocrisy. Using blackmail and little black books to sink politicians who outlive their usefulness is just standard operating procedure in politics and predates woke by centuries.
> As for my last paragraph, that was in small part assertive optimism, in large part a rhetorical device, and just a touch of sarcasm. People like you after all don't need convincing there's a problem with woke competition, it was addressed to people who buy into it. That woke competition is only intended to divide the underclasses can be easily dismissed as the author hiding from his racial privilege, that it has that effect unintentionally because of unconscious privilege by the rich... the rules of the game practically require believing that.
I didn't get that. It sounded like you thought woke was good (selects for qualities you want in your elites, only needs small tweak to improve), and that you thought your elites are interested in your interests ('which they will remedy with all haste once it is brought to their attention').
Wokeism is in part an ideology and a set of political goals, but it is also a means of competition. It is the foundation for a system of verbal duelling that determines who gets the limited number of spots at the top of our hierarchy. Like the Edwardian's preoccupation with gossip and scandal or the Aztec's ritual sacrifice of losing ullamaliztli players, it's a means for an overproduced elite to thin its ranks. An excellent example of Wokeness-as-duelling is the story of Annamie Paul, a Canadian politician. Annamie Paul was a woman and lawyer from a dark-skinned Jewish family - this will become important later - who won leadership of the Canadian Green Party. From a Woke standpoint that was the desired outcome, a black woman can become leader of a political party, aren't we wonderful. But winning a position of power and wielding it well are two different things, and Annamie Paul faced a leadership challenge over her position on Israel-Palestine. It was quite mainstream for a western country, but not for Canadian Green party voters. As the back-and-forth turned acrimonious, she alleged her critics were motivated by racism. Public support for the Green party, which had been making slow advances over the preceding years, collapsed spectacularly in the next election.
It's not hard to see, with the benefit of standing outside the fray, what Annamie Paul's mistake was. A Jewish woman, asked about the situation of the Palestinian people, can only acknowledge her privilege, and if she wishes to make no concessions she must pay the political price of not using her privilege to benefit the less fortunate. She could not, in that context, allege racism because in the context of that particular debate, she was of the privileged race - technically religion, but in that context the distinction wasn't important. The rules of Woke competition are by design self-contradictory, but they are still taken seriously, and everyone could see that she had violated them. So she lost the position she had attained, and given the hit to her reputation will need more effort and luck than she spent to get it if she is to attain another as lofty.
Now, what is wrong with any of that? In my opinion, nothing. For Annamie Paul I can only say 'live by the sword, die by the sword', if she'd been able to demonstrate genuine compassion for Palestine she could have walked out of that trap as easily as she walked in. As for the broader effect on society, Woke competition actually selects for the qualities I'd want in my elite. Verbal intelligence, compassion, and tolerating paradox are all good qualities for an elite class to possess. Further, while it's easy for a hypocrite to use it to attain higher rank, it's very hard to retain said rank unless one genuinely displays the virtues Wokeness demands. But, and of course there's a but, it is a system that produces winners and losers, and the losers get to have a say. In particular, straight white men are shut out of a lot of targeted benefits and mutual aide societies others have access to, while being discouraged from forming our own. It takes the arrogance of a rich white man to look at a system like Woke competition and say, "I can win that". So of course, poor white men don't think it's a game worth playing, and when they denounce the structure of the game, any rich white man - or rich white woman for that matter - who tries to argue against them finds themselves in the same position as Annamie Paul, punching down in public. That, of course, makes it worthwhile for people winning the game to use said PWM as a vector to demonstrate their own compassion and attack their competition.
This only changes when the rules of the game adjust to be more reflective of the actual difference between rich and poor. Woke competition does allow for a change of the rules, but it's currently not clear whether such an adjustment would require an overhaul or a tweak. People who think it would require an overhaul often allege that a key goal of woke competition is to fracture the poor along intersectional lines to prevent them making common cause against the rich. If true, that's of course an unforgivable transgression that may require replacing Woke Competition with something else entirely. Those of us who think it might require only a tweak think that this is an artefact of the unconscious privilege of the rich, which they will remedy with all haste once it is brought to their attention.