ASPartOfMe wrote:
“Intellectual rigor”? It’s a colloquial term, it was that way in its original positive iteration. We are not talking Ivy League political science peer reviewed thesis here. Similar with MAGA. Started out as a positive, there are people that still use it that way to say I am a Trump supporter, wear the hat, but it is mostly used as a pejorative that arguably has even more diverse meanings than woke, the original Trump supporter meaning but as an insult, white nationalist, insurrectionist, dumb, unhip person who lives in flyover country, snowflake(white fragility), some or all of the above. It is hypocritical to moan and b***h about the use of a colloquial pejorative while often using another colloquial term as a pejorative.
Big difference between "MAGA" and "woke":
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen any Trump critics define "MAGA" as a single specific ideology and argue over the definition of "MAGA," insisting that their own definition of "MAGA" is the "correct" one, the way I've seen you say that your use of "woke" is the correct one and that other "anti-woke" folks, who use the word "woke" in a much looser sense than you do, have got it wrong.
I've seen some debate over what motivates most Trump supporters, e.g. over whether they are motivated primarily by economic issues or primarily by racism. But I have not seen these debates framed in terms of the definition of "MAGA."
By the way, there actually
is a canonically-defined ideology that Trump's views fit for the most part --
paleoconservatism, a term
coined by Thomas Fleming and Paul Gottfried. Trump's views are not
entirely paleoconservative, but they do fit that label to a large degree.
When discussing political ideologies of any kind, it is, in my opinion, better to use canonically-defined terms like "paleo-conservativism," rather than loose colloquial terms like "MAGA" and "woke."
Most "canonically defined terms" start out colloquial, or a loose confederation of ideas. And often canonically defined terms such as "communist" do become colloquial pejoratives. There are intellectual people trying to define "woke" ideology" under "woke" or another name but being are consistently undercut by people on the right who use it for whatever they don't like and people on the left who are upset about how the word has been weaponized for a number of reasons. IMHO a lot of "wokes" know their views are unpopular and do not like a term that is easy off the lips defining them gaining traction. In fairness, most people do not like the meaning of well-defined descriptive terms being rebranded for weaponization purposes against their views(looking at yours truly). But I don't feel sorry for most of them. They had a run of 5 or 10 years redefining words such as "racist" and "privilege" to demonize people they disagree with a significant degree of success. Now their opponents have figured out a way to do the same to them with arguably to a greater degree of success.
Maybe I am wrong but I doubt too many progressives who critique the use of "woke" while using "MAGA" without even thinking about it are thinking if these terms fit the cannon definition.
29 Dec 2023, 10:51 pm
