I think I'm having one of the biggest aha moments I've had all year, which is that in many ways folks who belong to the "woke" left & those who belong to the "reactionary" right want the same things; & in this context, I mean it not as a critique, but an opportunity for hope.

Ladies and gents I sense a thread coming along. ;)

If you ignore the toxic impulse some folks on the left have to label certain things as "whiteness," what they claim to want is to actually create the conditions that fight against alienation and isolation.

If you look at some of the documents floating around in DEI circles, they define "equitable cultures" as those that value "interdependence & collaboration," "seeing discomfort as growth," & "seventh generation thinking" which is a philosophy that comes from the Iroquois tribe.

If you boil down much of it (& again, view the weird "whiteness" piece as a bug & not a feature), what is actually being requested is a deviation from the factory-oriented/central planning styles of work and a more communal oriented way of work life.

What's also ironic is that while they label "whiteness" as "individualism" *some* of their proposals would result in more individualism, not less -- which is ultimately a good thing.

They're essentially just mischaracterizing things because they're caught up in racecraft.

Now here's the bridge:

It turns out that the defining feature of those white, rural, poor communities that voted for Donald Trump suffered tremendously from one basic societal ill:

ALIENATION.

These were communities where the civic life & civic institutions in the community evaporated. Churches were shuttered; communal life dithered. Precisely some of the things being demanded in some DEI spaces that were scarce & that had a *causal* relationship w/ voting patterns.

(For citations, see the book 'Alienated America' by Timothy P. Carney.)

It was precisely the absence of a shared sense of belonging and communal life that led to an increase in deaths of despair, opioid addictions, aimlessness, and the like in these communities.

Guys, this is crazy. This means that these two political groups, as it were, are, to a certain extent, living the exact same reality but experiencing it through two different dimensions.

What some DEI trainings are demanding are precisely what civic institutions provide and which, because they have disappeared in many counties, have have led to societal insecurities that were directly a cause for the election of Donald Trump.

This also means that these two groups are actually *not* speaking at cross-purposes. The woke left is so lacking in self-awareness that it's demanding an end to alienation while trafficking in racecraft language that alienates white people.

And the reactionary right is so myopic that it's suffering from short term thinking and voting for a strongman who will only satisfy their insecurities in the short term but will increase alienation in the long term.

Alienation is a massive culprit re our societal woes at the moment. Groups who are fighting against it can only see how it affects *their in group* but not their adversary. (Because their adversaries are caricatured monsters, cough cough, first principle of @enchanttheory )

The people can't see the forest for the trees. It's time for a lens change.

"A fatal attraction is common and what we have common is pain." - Kendrick Lamar. Preach.