I managed to get a look at What Trump’s Supporters Want for the Future of America from The New York Times Magazine. What I understand is as nebulous as it ever has been.
Sheryl DutterCar-dealership cashierWilkes-Barre, Pa.We are so divided. It’s scary. Scary for the kids that are growing up, like my grandkids. I don’t like the way this country’s turned — all this woke stuff. Stuff that the kids shouldn’t be exposed to. I think I was 18 before I knew that there was gay people, you know? I listened to Queen. I didn’t know he was gay.
Division is bad, several interviewees mention it, but who has an enemies list and promises retribution? Donald J. Trump.
She doesn't want her kids to know there are gays living in America? What other stuff shouldn't kids be exposed to? How about a man who thinks he has the right to sexually batter women?
I also don't get what woke is - other than a word that scares people. Dr. Athanasios N. Papathanasiou's essay The Colonized Left: Reading Susan Neiman's "Left is not Woke" is the best explanation of woke as I have seen.
Neiman argues that woke citizens have been intellectually colonized by ideological notions rooted in the Right. And she boldly complains that large sections of the Left have mutated wildly, drifting away from the qualifications that make the Left Left, deteriorating instead into “tribalism.” This is happening across the board, and yet many cannot even see it, because this deterioration is not happening with the old vocabulary of authoritarian regimes that reject rights. The deterioration in question is taking place with the flag of rights and freedoms flying high.
But this is precisely where the blurriness occurs. Being a voice for the marginalized is absolutely correct. But the whole issue becomes distorted as soon as any identity is understood as a monolithic whole, without the liberating concern for distinguishing between dominant and dominated within it. Once the truth is identified with the group as a monolithic identity, then the empowerment of the group bypasses the question of the socio-economic system. In the wokeist claims, of course, there is talk of society, but how? It is spoken of as a demand, that the society recognize and establish the self-sufficiency of the identity. But such demands mean—in a completely contradictory way—that society is implicitly asked to cancel itself, that is, to prioritize the tribal over the social, but, ironically, via social processes and institutions!
The Left is about universalism (not unlike the Orthodox Church); the Right opposes universalism. I have never been a Rightist, even if I was cynical about the Left.
Not every universality, but especially the universality of (let me coin a neologism) pan-human humanity, is of enormous importance. Pan-human humanity does not suppress diversity, but, on the contrary, highlights it and makes it a common inheritance of all. And that is why the universal nature of human rights opposes the woke deification of the partial. Without pan-human universality and without agreement on pan-human truths, everything is legitimized as self-existent and self-sufficient—even intolerance. This sounds absurd, and indeed, it is absurd. How is intolerance, if it claims to be an identity, to be rejected in the context of the sanctification of every identity? Do you think that Carl Schmitt’s (Nazism’s leading theoretician) hatred of universalism was a coincidence? Neiman demonstrates that anti-universal self-sufficiency goes further, and moves into unbridled egotism (the ultimate end of self-sufficiency) and mockery of altruism. After all this critical tightrope walking, I believe it is vitally important to dialogue with the well-intentioned people who operate in the woke space, yet without however losing their yearning for the universal and their righteous suspicion of ideological narcissism.
Which is very similar to what is to be found in Madeline ffitch's A Way of Living: On Direct Action and Survival Work in the Face of American Fascism (LitHub):
The term’s misappropriation notwithstanding, “woke” at this point is most often used to mean condescending, sanctimonious, purist, rhetorical, or politically trendy. “Reject Cynicism,” writes Felder. “Take back tradition, the wisdom of our ancestors, their hopes and fears and struggles.” In other words, don’t be fooled.
There’s nothing condescending about defending migrants. There’s nothing sanctimonious about insisting on civil rights for transgender people nor about fighting for racial justice. There’s nothing rhetorical about protecting abortion, opposing genocide, or about battling the death cult of the fossil fuel industry. These fights are not politically trendy. They are continuations of our histories and traditions, as human and fundamental as housing, healthcare, and food on the table. They require real work in real time. They require alliance, risk, and full participation.
I think there is why I do not understand wokeism, but also why I think the Trumpists spouting the word have even less of an idea of its meaning.
Back to the original article.
Olusola Owoeye
Detention-service officer, Dallas County Sheriff’s Department
DallasI believe with Jesus at Trump’s side, America will be safe again, America will be greater again. He’s going to join us together. We’re going to support him with prayers, actions.
I came here legally. Illegal immigrants shouldn’t be allowed in the country. He can deport them and tell them to go through the immigration process.
This one has the most coherent statements. However, why was the border not fixed last summer? Donald J. Trump. There may be a lumping of those here awaiting asylum hearings and those who just snuck in the country for other reasons. The former are here legally, but thanks to Trump ditching last year's border bill, the system remains broken.
Chris Roman
Trump-merchandise vendor
Sarasota, Fla.I hope that we can truly and honestly understand what it means to, first, have our economy stabilized. I think that we should be protecting babies. I think that you guys understand what I’m talking about there. And, you know, just freedom of speech, protecting things like that. The left has been so gung ho about just taking away rights and trying to demolish what it means to be an American.
The economy needs to be stabilized? Here is the lack of education by our schools and the Democrats. I suppose everyone expected the world to snap back into place after the worst pandemic in a century. If so, I have to think Americans are like spoiled brats.
Do people not understand that trade wars do not stabilize a country's economy?
Chuck LuSmall-business ownerChicagoI put the story of Jan. 6 side by side with what the Communist Party did in the Tiananmen Square. I was back in China when Tiananmen Square happened. I was a student in 1989. For me, the two historic events are essentially the same thing. You had a bureaucratic government that crushed the people’s voice. I was at the Capitol that day. It was a setup. If they’re insurrectionists, they’re the most incompetent insurrectionists in human history.
Huh? Set up by whom? It was Trump who sent his people down to the Capitol.
Where were the American tanks? The Chinese sent tanks:
There was not a mob ransacking the Capitol, invading offices, and forcing the Members of Congress and Senators to hide.
Mr. Lu thinks January 6 was a bureaucratic state crushing the people. Is that bureaucracy represented by the dead and injured Capitol Police officers? Or was it a violent mob trying to overturn an election? That was the people's voice, the insurrectionists were the ones trying to crush the people's choice.
Days before the 30th anniversary of the 3-4 June 1989 massacre of hundreds, possibly thousands, of unarmed demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China’s defence minister, general Wei Fenghe maintained that the crackdown was absolutely justified!
“That incident”, he said, “was a political turbulence and the central government took measures to stop the turbulence which is a correct policy.”The events of May-June 1989 in China constitute a dramatic and horrific illustration of the lengths to which a ruling clique will go to maintain its rule and privileges.
Mr. Lu's memory of 1989 differs from mine; his memories differ from recorded history. Wishful thinking? Delusional thinking? An inability to think critically? I do not know, but it seems Mr. Lu is operating his business in Chicago without being detained in a work camp.
Anthony DeCesaris, with his wife, Judy DeCesaris
Retired investor
Chester County, Pa.We have four children, they’re all living with us. We have a 30-year-old living in the basement with his fiancée, trying to get to a wedding, trying to buy a house and trying to get by. So we’re hoping that there’s some relief for the average young person.
There was one place where Biden and Harris were weak - the housing problem. Muncie has people living in tents along the White River.
However, who blocked student loan relief? The Republicans.
What can we expect from the Republicans on cheap housing and student loans?
What relief this person want or hope for?
Stephen Chacko
Real estate developer
DallasMy mom and dad came from South India. If my parents came here legally and followed the rules and did it right and became U.S. citizens, then they deserve that credibility. The people that come here illegally, that’s not right. It actually devalues those immigrants like my parents, all the work that they did.
This is the one that, I think, needs given particular attention. It is the most coherent statement out of all of them. If Democrats do not read this and understand how their border policy inspired immigrants to vote for Trump, then we are truly screwed by having a political party of morons opposing Trump.
Mostly, I am disappointed with the New York Times. People speak generalities, which leaves them sounding vacuous. How is it that Haitians in Alabama do not leave readers thinking the speaker is a racist? (And, by the way, also sounding like every xenophobe that ever lived - the Irish are not like us, the Jews are not like us, the Italians are not like us.). How are we to know people if all we are given are the banal regurgitations of campaign slogans? I am left thinking these people are either not seeing, or not knowing, the things I see, or I know.
sch 1/25
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