Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Yes, there are a lot of people who will say that. They provide a living, walking straw man, and there are enough of them that I can't say you're cherry picking. As for the tweet, I can't see any reason I'd start reading twitter now, I've been long disgusted with the quality of discourse on twitter.

But if you decide to dismiss the concerns about the excesses of the far left by pointing to racist responses to a tweet somewhere, you aren't being honest about a real problem.

I avoid the term "woke", but when James Carville (famous democratic strategist) said "wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it" (in regards to the far left harming mainstream democrats in elections), I'm not sitting around scratching my head bewildered as to what he's talking about.




What are "the excesses of the far left"? What is the "far left" even?

> I'm not sitting around scratching my head bewildered as to what he's talking about.

Strange, because despite the extra paragraph that you spent dancing up to the subject, I have no idea what you're referring to. Or rather, I do, but I know why you wouldn't (try to) spell it out here.


I am still interested in knowing what you think Carville was talking about, without prompting from me. You might want to read the interview where he said this.

But I'll give an example. Again, I want to point out that I don't use the term "woke", which I consider to be unhelpful. But here's an example of what I would view as the self-defeating behavior of the far left.

Let's take Judge Duncan's talk at Stanford. Now, I probably don't need to convince you to be concerned about the 5th circuit court or Duncan's judicial record. That much, at least, we already agree about. And anyway, there are far better people than me to explain it.

Unfortunately, those better people didn't get a chance to do so. I would say that the behavior from the Stanford Law school students who chose to disrupt the speech was an example of harmful behavior from the radical left that represents a pretty serious setback for moderate liberals. Duncan won this round, and there really was no need to hand him such a victory. Stanford looked bad, DEI admins looked bad, the student protestors looked bad. They provided a right wing judge with an an opportunity to obfuscate, avoid getting questioned and pressed on important points where he's genuinely vulnerable, and they took from the left the opportunity to raise awareness of really serious implications of what I consider to be a radical court. Worst, they gave him the opportunity to paint his opponents the worst possible light. I think they gave the right wing a real gift that day.

So yeah, I think that everyone on the moderate left knows this is becoming a problem.


I’d consider that issue distinct from wokeism. I agree that there are anti-productive leftist behaviors. My original point was not that this didn’t exist. BUt rather the same people who often complain about wokeism or CRT are those whose behavior perpetuates the issues.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: