Areo Offers 14 Reasons: Why Concerns with Woke Ideology do not Justify a Vote for Donald Trump

From Areo, a collection of 14 short articles (authors include Steven Pinker, Thomas Chatterton-Williams, Helen Pluckrose, Irshad Manji Alan Sokal and others) aimed at those who are convinced (as I am) that Woke-ism is horribly misguided, in fact dangerous, and who fear that under a Biden administration this misguided movement might find room to expand further into America's sense-making institutions. The reason for this article is that many people who lean generally to the political left are so repulsed by Woke ideology that they are considering a vote for Trump. The bottom line for each of these authors: a vote for Trump is not a good option, even though Trump has taken a strong stand against CSJ ideology. Caveat for those of you who get your news only from news media that leans to the political left: These issues have been lighting up Twitter and non-legacy media for months. These are serious issues to many people who are about to vote.

There are few people who have done more than me to try to persuade people to regard Critical Social Justice ideas rooted in postmodern ideas about knowledge, power and language as a serious threat to secular liberal democracies. I truly believe that these ideas already have far too much unwarranted cultural prestige and are causing significant damage to the humanities and the political left as well as infiltrating mainstream media, art, culture, history, schools and the corporate world.

However, one of the greatest dangers of Critical Social Justice is that its authoritarian lunacy drives left-leaning centrists to the right—and not towards a sober and ethical conservatism. People who value evidence-based epistemology and consistently liberal ethics can be found on the left, right and centre: these are the people we need to represent us right now. Instead, too many people who claim to prize liberal values are planning to vote for a populist, anti-intellectual president whose rejection of science, reason, truth and liberalism has been amply demonstrated over the last four years.

We cannot push back against irrationalism and illiberalism on the left by embracing irrationalism and illiberalism on the right. We cannot beat the postmodern Social Justice and alternative ways of knowing of the left with the postmodern post-truth and of the right. Trump is not the solution for anyone who values science and reason and wants to protect a liberal society that defends freedom of belief and speech and viewpoint diversity as well as rigorous scholarship and consistently ethical activism for genuine racial, gender and LGBT equality. I urge American citizens to vote for the moderate Democrat, Joe Biden, and hold him to his promise to be the president for all Americans.

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Pew Graphs Illustrate Our Growing Partisan Divide

I found this graph posted by "Number 6" on Twitter today. I haven't been able to track it down independently. If it is accurate, it painfully illustrates our growing cultural/political/partisan divide. In three colors, this is why we can't talk with each other across the aisle any longer.

I think this illustration is worth considering even though it is generally counter-productive to discuss political attitudes on a one-dimensional scale of left-to-right. It is useful in this context because there are only two options for voting for president this year if you want to be able to cast your vote for a person who will actually become president.

Brett Weinstein comments how dangerous this is that our political orientations are increasingly distant from each other.  I agree with him:

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On Redemption

This is critically important. Dovetails well with something I keep reminding myself about: A meaningful relationship must proceed any meaningful discussion about any contentious issue. That's because all of our spoken opinions are all anchored deeply by ineffable aesthetics that can only be shared, imperfectly at that, after a meaningful relationship has been established. Filtering others for perfection and setting rhetorical tripwires are incompatible with the human condition.

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About Calls to Prayer

For several years I have taught week-long courses at law schools in Istanbul, Turkey. Those visits have been put on pause due to COVID. I was a couple weeks from traveling to Istanbul once again in early March, 2020, but I reluctantly cancelled that.

I often think of the many people I repeatedly visit when I'm in Turkey. Like most of my friends in the U.S., digital technologies have made it possible to keep in touch, but I look forward to the day when I can once again take it all in through all five senses.

Back here in St. Louis, Missouri, I tend to my ordinary life. Every week or so, however, I fondly think of something that I couldn't have predicted before I first visited the Middle East. I often think of the call to prayer.

In the Middle East, the muezzin calls out from the top of nearby minarets five times each day (sometimes more than one at the same time if you are between minarets). It's a call, for sure, and almost seems like a song, but I've been told that it is not singing. The calls seemed like intrusions on my ears until I heard many of them. Gradually, over my repeated visits, the call to prayer became an exceptionally beautiful moment for me. I write this as an atheist who doesn't understand any of the words of the call to prayer. For me, its beauty is about the sounds and the moment, coupled with images of the venerable mosques I visited (I took these photos in Turkey and Egypt). Also coupled with the second-to-none hospitality of the people I met in the Middle East. It's different than church bells, because it's only five times each day and because you are not hearing a mechanical bell--you are hearing a human being earnestly calling out to you.

As I repeatedly visited Turkey, I started looking forward to the calls as opportunities to stop and think about life and my place in the world. I also took it as a reminder to always be tending to things that really matter because the day is always slipping away. It is also a reminder that you are part of a much bigger community because that call is to everyone in hearing distance, not just you.

There are many reasons for craving an effective vaccine for COVID. For me, this is a reason that I didn't anticipate. This is a good example of a reason that you should travel to new places: If you travel with the right state of mind, you will be changed by what you encounter.

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Facebook Muzzles Brett Weinstein

This action by FB should send a shockwave through America. Brett Weinstein is a good-hearted and extremely thoughtful voice that we desperately need. The curtain has now been pulled back and we can see that Private-Owner Social Media Wizards can flip a switch to cancel anyone without any stated reason. This comes on the heels of Brett's recent muzzling by Twitter, apparently for his spot-on criticism of our precious political duopoly.

So where is one supposed to lodge a complaint once FB and Twitter have both decided to become supervising nannies regarding the *content* of one's posts?

We are moving down an extremely dangerous slippery slope.

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