A side note in the Spotify / Rogan story is the use of the word “unity,” which came up in a few of the twitter comments.
What does the woke left mean when they say “unity”?
I think it’s something like this: All Americans should be united behind fundamental principles of fairness and decency, and we should exert public pressure on people who don’t conform to those standards.
That sounds about right because it’s both a genuinely good sentiment and completely useless without more information.
Where is this list of fundamental principles? Shouldn’t we all know what those principles are? Who adjudicates it? How much pressure is appropriate when?
Is free speech a fundamental principle of fairness? Is allowing a speaker to speak without interruption part of fundamental fairness and/or decency? Is it fair or decent to try to get a person fired because you disagree with him about who should swim in the women’s swimming events?
To me, this illustrates one of the main weaknesses of wokeness. They take a grade-school level platitude, that everyone should agree with, but then they import a hundred other assumptions they won’t be honest about.
It’s like Twitter or Facebook with their “community guidelines.”
Tech: “You’ve violated our community guidelines.”
Innocent person: “Really? Which ones? How did we violate them?”
Tech: “We determine that, you peasant. Shut up.”
“Unity” is one of those values that only makes sense in a certain context, within prescribed limits. There’s a lot of unity under a tyrannical dictatorship, but we don’t want that kind of unity.
Wokeness requires a shallowness of thinking that’s unworthy of a sixth grader — which is why it’s catching on. Nobody’s learning how to think any more. Or if they are, they’re allowing undisciplined sentiment to have the upper hand.