Read on Twitter
I& #39;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& #39;m one of them. I& #39;m 46, so white that I& #39;m nearly translucent and exceedingly moderate (if that& #39;s not an oxymoron) by temperament.
I won& #39;t insult anyone by saying the issues underlying all of this haven& #39;t existed for decades and centuries. They have. What& #39;s different, speaking only for myself, is that the last 3 1/2 years have been *abnormal*, and it& #39;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& #39;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& #39;t start digging our heels in, there will be nothing left for us to be moderate about.
