Well, no, but I’ve been worse in the past.
I did not do cardio (did some on Tuesday, Wednesday (bike), Thursday) but I did do a ton of rehab and:
pull ups, (55 total reps; sets of 5, 10 and 5 slow singles at the end), 3 sets of 40 sissy push ups and curls. This all took close to 2 hours..so much rehab. And I used the cord for some new exercises and a special band for monster walks.
This country, of course, is in a culture war. Topics include vaccinations, covid mitigation measures (e. g. mask wearing), how to teach the history of race in school (often incorrectly labeled as Critical Race Theory wars; in fact, CRT is really an advanced academic niche area)
And, of course, few change their minds, and almost never does a mind being changed come from an activist from the other side wagging their finger.
Yes, mostly I’ll be “attacking the liberals” as, well, let’s just say that my vision of what the country should be is, well, what many (most?) liberals want. So, I am very much interested in how the message is delivered and conveyed.
Sure, I’ll probably get accused of “tone policing” but the fact is: you cannot FORCE people to listen to you; you have to find a way of selling your message and that might even mean that you are not the right messenger.
But to show that tone and “the correct message by the correct messenger” matters for conservative messages, I’ll talk just a bit about white conservatives and their finger wagging.
Yes, black and brown people are well aware of the community shortcomings in many areas including crime and education. And you can see that where I live: every so often a predominately Black Church or group will mount a “stop the violence” campaign, or put on some program that rewards teenagers for staying in school and not reproducing as a kid.
But too often, such efforts:
“Does giving voice to this message amount to “giving racists a stick to beat us with”? “
And, often unsolicted advice is delivered in a clueless, hostile, contemptuous manner:
I’ll now make an *I* statement: sometimes, I am just ignorant as to what some “other” group faces. I really didn’t know about this:
I don’t know *for sure* if this is a thing or not, but it sure appears that some post jobs and post a “well, this MIGHT happen on the job…be part of the job, but really isn’t” just to make an end run around providing accommodations.
Sure, there were times when I helped out by carrying a box of books; and there were times when I had to walk across campus and teach classes on the top floors of different buildings, but in the latter case, there were “work-arounds”..and my uni IS good about being accommodating. But not every place is.
Woke rules, turn offs, assumptions.
Ok, now to the main point. What are woke rules and assumptions?
Wokes take pains to classify people into groups of relative privilege. The “highest privilege”: the rich white male.
Females have lower privilege as do “people of color” (Black, Brown, Asian)
Disabled are sometimes grouped, including those with, say, anxiety disorders. And to be “intersectional” is to fall into several “not-privileged” groups at the same time:
Note how much the video focuses on the fact that she is, well, female, a Latina and has a disability. I would that the CIA would focus on recruiting those driven for excellence and service to country, but the vast majority of this was about identity and being a part of various groups (“intersectional”).
Wokes use these classifications to set up rules for behavior and discourse.
Example: consider the following situation: a sitting US Senator is giving a public address and an “activist” from the audience rushes on stage and disrupts. How does one judge the behavior?
To the woke: it depends on “privilege”: if the protester is a white male and the Senator is an African American female, then it is wrong.
If the protesters are African American females and the Senator is a white male, different story.
The fact that I see these as similar makes me an out of touch dinosaur.
And there rules for discourse too: slamming WHITE MEN is always ok, since they are privileged. Sweeping generalizations are welcome, even cheered. But making sweeping generalizations about other groups (women, African Americans, etc.) are considered taboo…in some cases, even “punching down” if there is a “power difference” and the critique is coming from someone of a “privileged group.”
In short: “privileged” critiquing “non-privileged”: sexism, racism, misogyny, abelism. “Non-privileged” critiquing “privileged”: honesty, “life experiences”, brave.
Another aspect: the non-privileged “get” to state what the privileged are thinking and how they see themselves and what they “need to do.” Here is an example:
Now what struck me as interesting is not that the Yale professor had dark thoughts; I think most of us get them from time to time. Sure, had it been a white professor saying the same about non-whites, well, they’d get fired..probably.
But going though the interview, note how Professor Hill and Dr. Khilanani seem to be comfortable talking about “how white people see themselves” and how wrong they are. On the other hand Professor Hill didn’t react to kindly to hard, cold statistics being cited and that perhaps the collective behavior of some of the African Americans in New York (at least) lead to more police interactions:
So, yes, there is a clear double standard. Wokes don’t hide this: they think that there *should* be a double standard; that is “fair.”
This might surprise you but I agree..to an extent. Example: there was a mean meme about President Bush that compared him to a chimp. Similarly, there were some that did similar to President Obama.
But the Bush one, while rude and crude, was not considered racist as there is no prolonged history of comparing white men to simians. But there IS such a history with respect to African Americans.
But, I think the wokes take things way too far.
But my opinion doesn’t really matter here. What I think matters more is that THE PUBLIC, on the whole, neither agrees with nor follows woke rules. And that just enrages the wokes.
The idea is that too many wokes set themselves as the “hall monitors” or discourse and customs and become enraged when they aren’t viewed as authorities by everyone else.
The wokes think they are doing something when they “call out” this or that..and are just perplexed when they are blown off. Hey, on a college campus, the mere mention of “racist” brings forth an army of deans, administrators, etc. Not so off campus.
Here is a longer version of a similar speech (different speech)
The bottom line, in my opinion: “call outs” only work when they come from “within”; from someone that the other person respects. And few outside of woke circles respect wokes.
Yes, much of what I said about “wokes” applies to MAGAS as well; I didn’t dwell on that because I think the MAGA vision of the United States is, to state it charitably, fundamentally simplistic. They do not seem to realize that the United States only contains them…they are not the sole, or even the most important example of what Americans are.
Life of an old goat 