Paul Graham recently wrote an excellent piece about the origins of wokeness. I agree with pretty much all of it. But I believe it was incomplete. What Graham left out is that – the Right does a very similar thing. To prove my point, let’s start with Graham’s definition of wokeness:
What does it mean now? I’ve often been asked to define both wokeness and political correctness by people who think they’re meaningless labels, so I will. They both have the same definition:
An aggressively performative focus on social justice.
He is correct. What defines wokeness is that it is aggressively performative. It’s “all hat no cattle” as my grandpa use to say. It has no real teeth in making change or taking action except to make people feel bad and use it as a judgement.
But yesterday, as I watched Trump rename the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America,” and as I watched him refer to Jan 6th criminals as “hostages.” I kept thinking “this is an aggressively performative focus on symbolic patriotism.”
What Graham missed is that the GOP has become the party of “patriotic theater.” Few things they do actually matter, or are good for America, and the GOP understanding of what power and strength really mean, what it means to be the leaders of the free world, are corrupted by the need to put on a show first and foremost.
The mindset that drives wokeness also drives a Republican version of the same principles – call it rokeness. It’s just as bad.