▪️This is nonsense. Woke doesn’t refer to one being “awaken to the needs of others,” it was specifically in reference to being “woke” to racial injustices and activism of the black community. Its roots are in radical black activism, dating back to Marcus Garvey in the 1920s.
▪️Woke broke into mainstream culture during the 2014 Ferguson riots, when it became enmeshed with BLM and the #staywoke social media campaign. It was a call to stay focused on black activism, particularly to stay vigilant on police misconduct.
▪️It then morphed into being focused on the plight of all marginalized communities. Woke was no longer limited to BLM. It was now in the 2017 Women’s March. It included BIPOC, LGBTQ+ & eventually the broader goals of progressive activism. This is when phrases like “white privilege” took off.
▪️Woke ideology viewed history as a struggle between oppressed and oppressors, and attributed all current inequities to structural racism/sexism, etc. To combat this, it sought to group everyone into hierarchies based on their oppressor status (generally based on race and sex).
▪️With this movement came the many whiny, annoying young activists (mostly white) who knew little about anything, but after reading a Teen Vogue article or a Robin DiAngelo book were lecturing everyone about racial inequities and checking your privilege.
▪️Even corporations embraced it, executives would give their pronouns and identify which native tribe the land was stolen from at their conferences. Door Dash had a “black-owned businesses” section, United Airlines announced half their pilots would be women/POC.
▪️It was this quasi-religious wokeness that caused a huge backlash. The right fought back by using the term in a derogatory and mocking way, to great effect. Woke was painted as political correctness reaching absurd new heights, an obsession over identity politics.
▪️The left has recently tried to combat this stigmatization of woke. At first, they claimed woke was a made up bogeyman of the right, a term that no one can even define (nevermind they have no coherent definition of words like racist, late-stage capitalism or woman).
▪️Now they seem to be embracing woke and attempting to redefine it as some generic term meaning nice and sympathetic, wanting what’s best for everyone. This is nonsense and never what it meant.
I first critiqued this terrible take by looking at how food has actually improved substantially. Even though I said the same could be done in every category, people said “you’re only doing food.” So let’s do air travel and see why it’s not gotten better, not worse.
▪️Aircraft have greatly improved. Just 15-20 years ago, many domestic routes (~15%) were flown by turboprops like the Brasilia, Dash 8 or Saab. Now, almost everything is in jets, and most aircraft have WiFi. Some even have Starlink, where you probably have faster WiFi than your home. Most major airlines offer dozens or hundreds of movies and shows to watch.
▪️Newer designs like the 787 have lower cabin altitudes and improved humidity, which make a huge difference in passenger comfort on long haul flights. The first/business class international market has gotten very competitive globally, with many carriers offering excellent service and amenities. Pods, suites, showers, etc. Coach still sucks but is dramatically cheaper ...
This is the complete opposite of an empirical fact. The right has now joined the left in being pessimistic about the modern world and completely unappreciative of the amazing abundance we now have. I’ll just focus on food here, but you could do it for almost every category.
▪️Fresh produce used to be available only in season. In the winter it was canned or frozen. People used to send fruit for Christmas gifts, it was that much of a luxury good. Now, you can get giant, sweet berries year around in every grocery store. Corn on the cob in February. Not to mention once rare items like dragon fruit, heirloom tomatoes or baby bok choy.
▪️If you didn’t live on the coast, seafood was either not available, frozen, or extremely expensive. If you lived in the Midwest and traveled to coastal locales you would quite literally be able to eat food you had never seen. Salmon has become much more abundant and accessible. You can get fresh ahi at Walmart today. Sushi and oyster bars exist everywhere ...
▪️This is a proposal that pertains only to graduate level nursing degrees, not undergraduate ones (which were never considered professional degrees). The proposal will have a 30-60 day public comment period next year, where groups can object, before the DoE will decide on it.
▪️This is about how much federal student loans someone can take out for a particular degree. The cap on graduate degrees is $100k ($20,500/yr), while a “professional degree” limit is $200k ($50k/yr).
▪️Under the new rule proposal, professional degrees include:
🔹Pharmacy
🔹Dentistry
🔹Veterinary medicine
🔹Chiropractic
🔹Law
🔹Medicine (including osteopathic medicine & podiatry)
🔹Optometry
🔹Theology
▪️The nursing degrees excluded are ones like master of science in nursing (MSN), doctor of nursing practice (DNP) and PhD in nursing. These degrees would be limited to $100k in federal student loans, like all other graduate degrees.
▪️These changes came from the One Big Beautiful Bill’s...
