I think civil discourse is possible if reasonable debate is allowed. Unfortunately, for one side, it appears that reason itself is problematic for them and they refuse it.

This is called being part of the problem. My side is fine.

That can describe both the left and the right. I'd be very surprised if you weren't alluding to SJWs; but at the same time you're describing Qanon folks as well.

...and that's why we can't have discourse. No one can agree on what constitutes "reasonable debate".

Well, you’re conflating a fringe movement of radical conspiracy theorists with the average person who doesn’t go along with the woke agenda. That in itself is an example of what I’m talking about.

..and in reply to my post I got unironic nonsense about "the woke agenda".

That validated my intuition and proved my point.

Thanks!

The “woke agenda” is a mainstream political shorthand. But I find it telling that you were able to infer that I was speaking about the left when I mentioned opposition to reason.

"woke agenda" is not a mainstream political term, and the fact you state it is demonstrates both your own position (to the far right) and inability to step outside of that viewpoint and discuss issues from a genuinely detached viewpoint.

I hope that, like me, you enjoy the rest of your day.

Well, it’s a rather convenient shorthand to describe the set of views and positions (largely emotive and inconsistent) that characterize leftist thinking.

> that characterize leftist thinking

But that's a large part of the problem, reducing everything to a simplistic "left-vs-right" dichotomy – everything is either "left" or "right", and everyone who is good/sane/rational/decent/etc belong to one of them and everyone on the other is irrational/insane/wicked/etc

Yeah, IMO "left" and "right" are just two different flavors of neo-liberalism factioned off like sports teams; and the mentality and self-awareness of those who back either one tend to be similar in nature to the point of being indistinguishable.

If someone is pro-war (to any degree), anti-worker/union or pro-capitalism I have a hard time taking them serious as a leftist; that's more of a liberal bag.

Complaints about "woke"/"wokeness" aren't confined to one part of the political spectrum. Many present the term as a "right-wing talking point" – but if you go looking for it, you can find Marxists invoking the term critically too (for example, the noted African-American Marxist Adolph L. Reed Jr.)

I think it is an attempt to name a real phenomenon – a particular strand of left-of-centre thought, with a great deal of contemporary influence, which (among other distinctive traits) foregrounds issues of race and gender/sexuality, in opposition to the classic Marxist emphasis on economic class as the "underlying cause" of all those other issues. If you don't want to call it "wokeness" – fine then, what should we call it?

>what should we call it?

My personal suggestion would be to go back to what it was called when I was a kid; "knee-jerk". "knee jerk" doesn't have a specific axis connotation (unlike "woke" which refers explicitly to progressive issues). It was primarily aimed at (knee jerk) liberals but could easily be aimed at reactionaries without any change of meaning.

But this is a type of knee jerk reaction confined exclusively to folks on the left.

I asked what we should call "a particular strand of left-of-centre thought, with a great deal of contemporary influence". Your answer ("knee-jerk" which "doesn't have a specific axis connotation") isn't actually answering the question I was asking, because a term intended to apply to people with widely differing ideologies (obviously) isn't appropriate as a label for one particular contemporary ideological stream.

I misunderstood your intent -I thought the idea was to suggest a term which could be applied to the True Believer regardless of ideology. I didn't realize you simply wanted another phrase you could sling at the left.

My apologies.

You absolutely have misunderstood my intent – I was asking for a descriptive term for a particular current of contemporary left-leaning thought, to replace a term which has admittedly become rather pejorative in connotation – yet you seem to misunderstand me as looking for a pejorative instead. And "woke" is still not exclusively pejorative–it is not hard to find people calling themselves "proudly woke"–maybe that's ironic, or "reclaiming"; but couldn't also some of it be in homage to, or even in continuity with, its origin as a positive self-descriptor? And not all critical invocations of "woke" are fairly labelled as "pejorative"–such as when Reed criticises "woke" from a Marxist perspective. [0]

Surely it is valuable to find descriptive terminology for different ideological currents – across the totality of the political spectrum? The traditional Marxist answer is "yes" – followed up with an analysis of the ways in which those various currents support class interests, which is what Reed presents for "woke".

[0] https://newrepublic.com/article/160305/beyond-great-awokenin...