I'm going to subtweet rather than RT this first note in a thread so as not to wake the neighbors. As an old man, trust me, I have my issues with the everyday conversations of wokeness. But this moment and the conversation that I see happening internally is quite different.

The substantive, thoughtful positions that people are articulating by the hundreds are not being made only by young, woke people. I'm one of them. I'm 46, so white that I'm nearly translucent and exceedingly moderate (if that's not an oxymoron) by temperament.

I won't insult anyone by saying the issues underlying all of this haven't existed for decades and centuries. They have. What's different, speaking only for myself, is that the last 3 1/2 years have been *abnormal*, and it's hard for temperamentally moderate people to accept that.

The goalposts have not been moved, they have been uprooted from the turf, driven out of the stadium and dumped in a distant ocean. And so what might have seemed like an exercise in authoritarian gasbaggery now feels quite, quite real.

Meaning: Yes, we have always had a foundational racism in this country, often vicious and just as often casually accepted and perpetuated. (I grew up on Long Island, I know.) And yes, we've witnessed a lot of these tense battles before. But...

....more than 50 years after G. Wallace carried just 5 states (still 5 too many) in a national election, his politics are *fully in charge*. Even in the most twisted calculus of open-mindedness, no one needs to "argue for" them.

And if people like me, who would happily joke about the more performative brands of wokeness all you want, don't start digging our heels in, there will be nothing left for us to be moderate about.