That’s a lot more optimistic than I fear.
It’s the illiberal right shaking hands with the illiberal left. The problem is this time the purges aren’t just ideological, but also financial: there are winners and losers in our healthcare industry likely to be defined by their polarity to Trump.
Lay this at the feet of who caused it.
Banning terms from general and academic use originated, in modern America, from the illiberal left’s cancel culture.
I’m not saying they caused this—it’s not novel that illiberalism leads to censorship. But the tactics both groups use when they get their hands on power are remarkably similar.
> the nonstop equivocation
You probably mean false equation. I don’t believe I am, because the illiberal left never came into power. At least not federally. Liberals on the left successfully checked our radicals in a way the right did not.
(If you want policy fusion between the illiberal left and right, it’s in RFK Jr. Marin County sees eye to eye with MAGA on e.g. vaccines.)
Sure. Illiberal elements exist in every society.
cancel culture from the right is coming from POTUS.
can you tell me if you think there's any difference at all between the two?
The Biden administration directed ICE to use the term “undocumented noncitizen” instead of “illegal alien.” They also pressured social media sites to censor certain content.
There was also the whole Al Franken thing.
in fact refusing to define a term doesn't sound like banning at all. to ban is to forbid somebody else from doing something. to refuse to do something personally isn't banning.
The obvious solution is the third option of letting a few more genders in, but that would still require being able to articulate what a woman is.
In fairness we don't have the words the judge used in front of us so maybe there was some hedging involved. But they do have to be able to come up with a working definition.
Not really. Trump is channeling something that probably came from the book-banning religious conservative crowd.
you and I have very different definitions of banning.
If you assume that the goal is to implement a policy, no, it's not possible. But that's never the goal with such chaos. The goal is to make it unclear what's allowed or not, so that the real answer becomes: whatever the current ruler favors is allowed, and whatever he dislikes is disallowed. "Woke ideology", like "globalism" or "cultural Marxism" before it, means nothing, which means it can mean anything.
And while this kind of little struggle had its fun moments... overall, I don't think it was fun. Also, indeed the rules of what's allowed or disallowed would change based on current political events, and just like in 1984, everyone was supposed to acknowledge that the rules had always been the way they currently are. Which, in terms of long-term planning, would sometimes result in problems. Like, when someone was trying to placate the censorship by overemphasizing some political aspect at the time of submission, but the events developed so fast, that the official party line at the assessment time was the exact opposite of what it was at the submission time.
----
Oh, and just to give some examples of when the "proto-woke" (in Soviet times it was called the "decadent capitalist influence") had some tragic consequences.
The only acceptable painting style was Soviet Realism. Anything that had signs of deliberate distortion of color / perspective / size / anatomy etc. would be labeled "decadent capitalist" and perpetrators would be prosecuted.
So, another student in my dad's class came in drunk to a model drawing session. And instead of using a graphite pencil, used what was called a "chemical pencil", which is a kind of Indian-ink based pencil (it's practically impossible to erase). And, in a study of a head of a model, that student made several strokes that extended beyond where the area of the nose would've been, and so it looked like the model had whiskers...
That student was later taken away to the dean, and in short time was expelled.
Another student was expelled for wiping his paintbrush on the canvas (which he later planned to cover with some neutral background color, but was too late...) because he forgot to bring a piece of rug that one usually uses to wipe a brush before using a different paint.
That sounds like a fun anecdote, but those two had their lives ruined.
It was the "socialistic realism". Being interested in math this particular insanity did not affect me too much, but for someone interested in the arts living under this gun was a 24x7 reality. Not fun times...
And then years later I'd go to see Kyiv Art Academy final year exhibition, and it was still socialistic realism, but now instead of workers and farmers they have saints. For some reason it became very religious... Or maybe I just fell on bad years.
The USSR was obviously similar in practice for most of its history, especially under Stalin, but it still pretended to maintain the trappings of a communist structure. And at least the USSR made it clear what the rules were: it was an unabashed command economy, with property owned by the state, and economic decisions flowing through the party leadership. The Putin/Trump version where there's a de jure market economy but de facto control by the ruling party is a different kind of corruption incentive - it's much harder to challenge what theoretically isn't happening.
I'd argue that it isn't possible to write thousands of pages in a single bill or budget proposal and have it actually be coherent.
Authoritarians do not stop until they are stopped by an external force.
The cost of stopping them only increases with every move they make to consolidate power (which of course is the intention).
> This is leading to what Germans call “vorauseilender Gehorsam,” or “preemptive obedience,” as one non-CDC scientist commented.
And why is this term German? Do, perhaps, the Germans have unique experience and insight in this regard?
> After the German elections of 1932, which permitted Adolf Hitler to form a government, or the Czechoslovak elections of 1946, where communists were victorious, the next crucial step was anticipatory obedience. Because enough people in both cases voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders, Nazis and communists alike realized that they could move quickly toward a full regime change. The first heedless acts of conformity could not then be reversed. [1]
It’s become fashionable to accuse people who raise the spectre of fascism and authoritarianism of crying wolf. We are being told not to believe the evidence of our own eyes, like when Elon Musk performs the Nazi salute in front of the far right dignitaries assembled for the inauguration and we’re supposed to believe this is because he’s on the spectrum or some other nonsense. If you don’t want to go down the road that anticipatory obedience leads to, then you have to resist. It is that simple.
1: https://lithub.com/resist-authoritarianism-by-refusing-to-ob...
The authors of this memo banning terms haven't realized this has already happened in part. Obstetrics avoids the use of gender with the term "parturient" instead of "mother." "Pregnant person" probably isn't showing up in many papers.
A recent example of a word they have redefined to mean its opposite would be the word "Woman." By redefining this word to mean its opposite, they use that new meaning to launch a whole societal transformation campaign by demanding everyone endorse their new meaning or be cancelled. They educate the next generation in the new meaning and create confusion and discord because they make the entire intellectual history of the western world mean something different or not make sense by this redefinition of commonly used words.
For those who'd like to go down this intellectual rabbit hole, because I'm not the one who came up with it, James Lindsay has pointed out that this is essentially the ancient mystical technique of "hermetic transmutation," where people believe that their mere thoughts can change reality.
From far away (Europe) I don't see a big difference between the multiple "fanatical" groups that I hear about in US that define one thing or another "their way" and everybody else's opinion it's wrong. And that covers a wide range of topics (like: religion, guns, transportation, gender, etc.)
And just because some people are fanatical on a topic, does not mean there are not huge issues around those topics. Just as an example on gender, the horrible violence that was (and probably) inflicted to women (extreme examples: Pelicot and Fritzl cases)
But sure, it is easier to argue on useless definitions (either for or against) that try to address root causes...
In the case of woman, the recognition is that "woman" as commonly used conflates two separate ideas: The gender that someone was assigned at birth (which in the vast majority of cases means someone's biology) and the social constructs that define "woman" (e.g. dress, role in society, acceptable behavior, etc.).
Separating conflated ideas allows people to think in more detail since they can consider them separately.
Don't confuse the meaning of the existing word and pretend it's necessary. That's another tactic is conflating categories. Usually there's some sympathetic category that is a tiny amount of people, like genuine at-birth hermaphrodites, and they argue about that while at the same time pretending all that stuff applies to men who want to be housed in women's prisons.
One thing that drives me nuts with this language stuff lately is how the word "Partner" came to mean romantic partner because people can't just be bothered to say "girlfriend" or "boyfriend" anymore. Now, when people introduce their "partner" in a context where it's ambiguous whether it's personal or business "partner" I have to wonder in which sense do they mean it.
You could use the power of the spoken word to ask them directly. You can ask probing questions if you’re not comfortable being that direct.
I've always joked that Trump was basically the Manchurian candidate.
"Winnie-the-Pooh"?
My guess is there'll be a bit of flailing then everyone will default back to status quo. It isn't possible to implement incoherent policies and it isn't going to do anyone any favours in terms of image to pursue this. Might take 4 months, might take 4 years to blow over.