This is a free forum, and I don’t expect you to comment on anything you don’t want to.
Guilty. I was making casual commentary on the bizarre (to me) transformation of left-leaning values, voters and young people’s attitudes, which pop culture centers around in significant ways.
In simple terms, I guess I’m peeved that debauched comedies on par with Animal House are unlikely to be made due to the cultural and social impediments posed by modern liberal ideas held by enough people to have that kind of influence over artistic expression. Wokeness is cultural and social poison.
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I agree generally - I am anti-woke. But whatever Trump is or represents isn’t the antidote or the altnernative.
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I don’t even think the people behind Animal House would call it art.
The Hangover series? The availability of porn has probably done more to end the genre of films like Porky’s and American Pie than snowflakes.
Probably another Liberal Construct that Conservatives don’t watch.
That’s part of why so many of the woke attitudes about sex and male sexuality are bizarre to me. That’s not to say I haven’t read feminist critiques of porn, I have, but the mainstream thought seems to hold it as empowering, should women choose to participate.
I generally agree.
How that is reconciled with notions like “Believe All Women” is beyond my pay grade.
I don’t know what you read, but women in porn are anything but empowered.
What does one thing have to do with another? A woman chooses to do porn; she doesn’t choose to get raped. Although in my opinion, a woman who chooses porn is fulfilling a destiny that she had no control over.
There have been feminists who expressed those ideas for quite some time now. Maybe that’s out-dated, I suppose I was stepping out of my wheelhouse when I commented on what are modern mainstream feminist ideas.
The notion that men expressing themselves sexually makes them de-facto fair game for rape accusations, along with the social and possible legal consequences of that, while simultaneously insisting that women receive immunity from the consequences of their sexual expression. Or at least be immune to criticism of it, which I generally agree with. Sex is personal business.
Does the terribleness of “Believe All Women” on sexual, moral and social grounds really require an explanation?
Agree. He’s more like a leech, in my opinion, but maybe not for the reasons you think.
Let’s put this unpleasant parasitic invertebrate on an already nasty problem in the hopes that the blood-letting will provide a net benefit.
In that regard, I think he has. I can’t imagine anything else that could have shone such a bright light on the bad elements of the Democratic party, not to mention bringing out the bad elements of the Republican party, all in just a few short years.
I don’t think I’m the only regular Joe who has taken notice.
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I think a lot of people think “wokeness” means over the top SJW. When really, it just means you are consciously aware of social and cultural injustices around you. E.G. you notice your black friend having trouble getting served at the bar, or a girl getting cut in front of for next game of pool, or not making lunch reservations at a steakhouse for your hindu buddy etc.
How a person choose to react to those injustices, both big and small, can make a person disagreeable to be around. Or it can make them great to be around. Don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill and youll probably be cool in my book. But, telling the bartender that other dude was here first, saying that the chick was ahead in the pool line, etc just make you a nice person, that is also woke. berating that bartender, or pool guys makes you an asshole who is woke. Turns out, people are just people. Some religious folks are fucking heinous to be around, while others are laid back nice people. Same deal.
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That’s the basic definition I would apply.
I’d give it no more concern than I do the activities of the KKK, if it were not manifesting in both policy and leadership actions.
Since we already talked about mind-reading, let’s talk some more and tie it in with the notion of wokeness. In my opinion people have a problem with mind-reading or, in plain terms, assuming the intentions and motivations of other people.
That black guy could have slighted the bartender somehow. It happens all the time. I’ve been accused of racism for bouncing a black guy. Our dive bar had plenty of black regulars (oddly, the upscale bar I worked at, frequented by the upper crust and local academia, did not). He was a drunk asshole who happened to be a black Somalian. End of story, unless…
Someone wants to view my actions through the lens of wokeness. Doing so requires an assumption about my motivations, which people are ready and seemingly eager to do. What have we here, a privileged white man using force on a black guy in a bar full of white people? This injustice cannot stand!
Especially, ESPECIALLY when you can virtue signal about it on social media.
This assumption of intentions and motivations played a huge part in why Ferguson, MO was destroyed to the extent that it was, including unnecessary loss of life. I can list many other examples like that, where a narrative shaped by woke ideas took off running like wildfire, to nobody’s benefit except the people who make money by selling those stories.
Hit or miss IME. A few of the “hindu” guys I have worked with in the past used it as their opportunity to have the forbidden fruit which would not be allowed at home or around their wives.
Well, you can make that leap and re-purpose the term as you will, but that’s not what it means anymore than me saying i’m a liberal should indicate i support Antifa.
And sure, since we cant mind read that bartender, a simple “the other guy was here first” when he looks at you for your order seems like right thing to do, no? If the black guy had been causing problems the bartender will say “no hes been cutoff” or something to that effect. Real simple, real quick. Molehill. That is how a nice woke person would handle it.
I’m sorry you’ve been accused of being racist for doing your job. I’m sure you’ve been called far worse for far less when doing your job. As you know, people say stupid shit when they are pissed, drunk, or both.
You’re in your 20’s, right?
Not a dig, but all of the stuff you’re talking about was being talked about in the 90’s, but in a much more constructive way that lacked the inherent divisiveness of woke culture. I’ve written about this before, how it seems to me like race relations have moved so far backwards in my lifetime and how it seems to have accelerated tremendously under the Obama administration. Which, by the way, is when overt-the-top SJW ideas began to really take hold in both mainstream culture and politics.
How many 40 year-old’s do you know with truly retrograde views on things like sexuality, religion and race? I’m not saying we don’t exist, but holding those kind of opinions was a sure-fire recipe for social isolation in 1990’s rural Indiana. 1980’s, eh, you’d hear the word “nigger” more often, or at least I did, but it was still cringey for most of us in a time when Michael Jackson, Magic Johnson, Eddie Murphy and Michael Jordan were like gods to us. Not because they were black, but because they were fucking awesome, just like Larry Bird.
I’m sure pockets of truly retrograde ideas still manage to take hold and flourish in pockets, but society was firmly on the path to social acceptance of behaviors and lifestyles that don’t impact your neighbors during my adolescence.
Now we’re here, where a myriad of raced-based policies, decision-making and assumptions in all aspects of life are not only tolerated, but encouraged.
How is this being “woke” this is just being a good server/bartender. As a bartender do they have to take his race into account and do everything they can to make him feel at ease? Assume they may be labeled racist? …Fuck that
Was born in the 80s.
If racism wasnt an issue until Obama, then why did it become one? Did Obama make people racist? Or did the racists feel empowered to speak out because they felt legitimized by also disagreeing with his politics?
As for racism, then vs now, IDK. What i do know is i still hear and see my fair share of blatantly racist bullshit. I think you are looking at the 90s through rose colored glasses.
I dont understand what you’re disagreeing with here and getting mad at. I agree, “woke” is more along the lines of “aware, nice guy” than it is “over the top SJW”.
And yes, it is the bartenders job to fairly serve customers and try to make them have a good time. Its the service industry and is customer service 101… unless its one of those bars where their schtick is the bartenders are assholes to everone.
But that is most of your posts. You start off with a veil of objectivity only to go in on Trump or the “other side”. Something along the lines of “Now I know both sides do 1,2,3 BUT it seems the Right…”
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Again, I’m not speaking in absolutes or utopian terms here. I’m saying that we were on the path and it seemed to me like a good path.
Like you said, don’t be a dick to people and don’t judge anyone on immutable characteristics. This seemed like a popular idea to me at the time. Was it rare or edgy where you lived?
I don’t know that Obama “did” anything, but a few significant narratives became part of the national discussion during his administration. They were not or were perhaps much more muted before this time. To keep it brief, consider how our national discussion has shifted to the kind of framework advanced by Critical Race Theory.
You can argue about whether CRT and all of the off-shoots you can point back to it are a good or bad thing. I find it the ideas interesting to ponder, even if I don’t always agree because I always value other perspectives. So that’s a good thing. Black Lives Matter is a group I am ready to argue has done much more harm than good, but I am a simple man who tries to think in simple terms.
How has it helped? How are outcomes improved over previous outcomes?
That has never been the case.
A political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice
By the late 2010s, “woke” had taken to indicate “healthy paranoia, especially about issues of racial and political justice”
What you describe is having good manners.