▪️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.
So many of these right wing accounts are just whiners now, this is a diatribe about automatic sinks and towels, the horror! As I explained in a prior post, most of the newer terminals have great bathrooms, some now have completely private stalls and plenty of them. The worst and most crowded airport bathrooms are invariably found in aging terminals that are decades old. It’s a reminder that airports were usually drab and uncomfortable.
I think the heyday of the air hand-dryers was like 15-20 years ago, where often you couldn’t find real towels. Now you can at least usually get real paper towels in airport bathrooms. Remember those old cloth roller towels that would go in a loop and somehow “clean” themselves? Yuck! Public bathrooms have always been gross, it seems some are deliberately having selective memories.
Airport food and drinks were always expensive, but now practically everyone brings those huge cooler flasks with them and fills them up. So not sure what he means that ...
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 ...
