Comment by tasty_freeze | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tasty_freeze | Hacker News Reader

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"Maybe woke went too far ..."

From where I sit on the left, the right wing is extremely effective in making people believe the left is a parody of itself.

For instance, the left does have stronger support for LGBTQ issues than the right, but it isn't the primary issue. I'm sure "Build Back Better" investments in infrastructure involved 100x the attention and resources that LGBTQ issues did. But right media pushes stories multiple times a day about how the left is trying to turn your little Johnny into Janie. There are fewer than ten M->F trans athletes in college sports [1], but it is nearly a daily news item. The the casual news viewer (most everybody) their impression watching their news is that the only concern of Democrats is to advance a LGBTQ takeover.

Same thing with CRT. Same thing with Benghazi. Same thing with Hillary's emails. They pick an issue and hammer it, hammer it, hammer it. And it doesn't stay stuck in the right wing mediasphere. It becomes part of the "national conversation" and so mainstream media has to report on it too.

[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/5046662-ncaa-president-tr...

Part of the problem is that "the left" is not a monolith. I regularly interact with a part of the left who sincerely believe both that "trans rights are human rights" is the key, defining issue of the decade and that critical race theory absolutely should be taught in schools.

These people do in fact believe the things that the right says they do. And they were in fact working for many years prior to this past election to push their worldview into the wider cultural sphere. I'm not pulling this from the media, I've literally sat in rooms where people planned how to use school curricula to build acceptance for both these ideas.

There are other parts of the left that aren't that way, and you're correct that the right benefited immensely from making the left seem like it was a monolith. But that part of the left that pushed these ideas so hard so fast actually does exist and actually did fuel the fire.

I have a hard time believing that 5% of people knew what CRT was before the right made it an issue and redefined it.

CRT was a legal and social theory trying to explain why the civil rights laws passed in the 50s and 60s hasn't eliminated various forms of racial disparity. It wasn't something taught in grade schools and high schools. But CRT was redefined to encompass just about any bogeyman issue.

Just to refresh my memory so I wasn't talking out of my butt, I went and skimmed the wikipedia article about the history and meaning of CRT. It is an academic theory, not something grade schoolers would ever encounter (unless you use the redefined meaning, such as having a book in the library where there is a mixed race couple in the story).

The second part of my response is that you are conflating what the left leadership is saying/doing vs what some randos you know are saying/doing. In a similar way, it is like shooting fish in a barrel to interview people on the street about some topic, either left or right, and produce hours of content showing that people are idiots. Such videos are all over the internet and I avoid them. What is important is what the people with the levers of power are saying/doing.

The fact that you refer to CRT as a dirty word that shouldn't be taught in schools is puzzling to me. Covering how slavery has affected our country seems like a no brainer thing to include in a curriculum.

Case in point.

I'm not actually taking a stand for or against, just emphasizing that the right didn't make this stuff up. It sounds like you agree with me on that—this is a very real subject that people really do feel is important.

> Case in point

No, that people on the Left care about these issues is not the core of your comment. The person you replied to was saying there are issues that most voters would see as frivolous, but the right does a good job of hammering the left on so it seems like it's all they care about. These are issues like trans athletes in sports. Most people don't give a shit, including a lot of trans people, as keeping these issues in the news cycle just brings them unwanted hostility and attention.

But you countered with people wanting to teach about the effects of slavery. That doesn't seem frivolous at all, especially to non-white people. It doesn't fit with the other examples, as it's hard to imagine removing slavery from precedented curriculum being anything but a racist attempt to slowly erase the history of a voting bloc that has historically undermined the Right. The fact that they make CRT, again, a dirty word, is a testament to the power of Fox News.

Why you are not taking a stand for or against that is beyond me. It's patently evil work by the right

"the right didn't make this stuff up".

The best lies contain enough truth to seem credible.

I could run a newspaper that only reported crimes committed by people named Steve. Even if it was 100% true, it would give the impression that people named Steve are a threat. I know this is silly, but imagine a racial/ethnic/religious group instead. One can lie by what is not reported as much as by what is reported. Here is an example.

Remember the Clinton email scandal? She deleted 30K emails that she said were person, not job-related. I can understand why people who despise her think there must be terrible secrets in there. That is the truth part. Some news organizations and politicians pushed this story daily for years and dragged into congress to repeat testimony about it demanded that this was a terrible crime and she should be locked up. But those same people didn't say a peep when it was found out that the Bush WH had routed 22M emails through the RNC email servers using non-.gov addresses as a means of avoiding the legal requirement to retain records. [1]

I would be willing to bet my life savings that Fox et al reported on the Clinton email story at least 100x as much as on the Bush story. I'd be willing to bet the same amount of money that the average Fox viewer has no recollection of the Bush story because they probably never heard it or it was too fleeting. I'd be willing to be a large amount of money that people who watched CNN/ABC/CBS/NBC or read the WaPo or NYT also have far less awareness of the Bush email scandal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controv...

> These people do in fact believe the things that the right says they do

The 'right' redefines these words to mean something else and demonizes them.

From where I sit, every time the left does something e.g. affirmative action, unhinged illegal immigration, or some other woke thing, they try to soften it, deny it outright, or change the subject, similar to what you're doing

I agree with GP, prior to today's ouster the implicit pillars were social justice, feminism, metoo, mental health, or LGBT. Pretty much every piece of media coming out of these institutions has been consistently cramming this worldview down people's throats since around 2017. Whatever this shit is, I'd rather just hear billionaire propaganda and see every one of these ideologes get canned

And I don't consume right wing news either, I've been reading the NYT for the past 5 years and that alone was enough to convince me things need to change

> I don't consume right wing news either

You use the language of the right as if it is truth. For example, "unhinged illegal immigration' is a characterization of the right, not what I've ever seen someone on the left advocate for.

Why would you want things like human rights of LGBT people, protection of women from sexual abuse and coersion, the freedom of women to be equals in our society, or justice for minorities - why would you want those 'canned'? What will we do about those issues?

Oh I should've said "ideologues" instead of "ideologes". Namely, the people who keep hammering this shit in newspapers

But to address your points

> human rights of LGBT people

Most of the contention here is around the T. I don't really have an opinion. I'm not changing my voting pattern because of such a small demographic

> protection of women from sexual abuse and coersion

And now we're living in the world of guilty until proven innocent. E.g. donglegate. Enough is enough

> justice for minorities

Which in practice means officially racist and sexist policies directed towards white and Asian men because they're considered "less favorable" demographics. I think the fundamentally dishonest way this issue in particular is framed is enough to completely delegitimize anything else they're saying. Consider me a single issue voter on this issue moving forward

> For example, "unhinged illegal immigration' is a characterization of the right

Well, it's technically illegal, right? And compared to other Western countries who actually have borders, it's technically unhinged. "Undocumented migrants" - what does this mean? It's just a dishonest euphemism that tries to legitimize the situation

What are your solutions to these issues? All I see is ranting at others, which doesn't solve the problems.

Regarding "unhinged" immigration, you haven't said anything that indicates people on the left support it (whatever it is - the hyperbole masks any real meaning).

> other Western countries who actually have borders

Other Western countries have similar immigration problems - it's a major issue in the EU, for example.

> What are your solutions to these issues?

I don't see issues, I see "issues". What people have done to solve them is a bigger issue for me than what they're trying to solve. E.g. affirmative action, another cute euphemism

> you haven't said anything that indicates people on the left support it

It's common knowledge? The summary left position in the US is to give a path to legal status, it creates a moral hazard that incentivizes more illegal immigration. And the typical rhetorical strategy is to try to play dumb or downplay that this will happen

> it's a major issue in the EU, for example.

Which, for the most part (e.g. Germany, the one in the news right now) is legal immigration

> I don't see issues, I see "issues".

That's convenient, but there's not much support for it. For example, abuse, exclusion, widespread discrimination against minorities and women is well-established. It's just a lazy argument - called reactionaryism - to deny it all without offering a better solution.

I think most reactionaries know they are wrong, and know that analysis and solutions on the left are probably accurate and optimal, and then choose to let people die or suffer rather than do any hard work or stand for anything. Look at Kennedy denying measles as significant.

You can't really use statistics to determine for me what's an issue to me. It's pretty subjective. That's not reactionaryism, that's me as a voter doing a cost benefit analysis. Which frankly is the only rational way to vote

Frankly I think this insistence that people vote against their own self interest more reactionary than the alternative. Like insisting that people reject sense for nonsense. Religion essentially

I didn't use statistics or suggest using them.

> that's me as a voter doing a cost benefit analysis. Which frankly is the only rational way to vote

Great. As I said, abuse, exclusion, widespread discrimination against minorities and women is well-established, for example. Those are very high costs.

You're wrong on all points, especially since a lot of the legacy media during Trump's first term had no problem sucking up to him.

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