Everything that's Wrong with Andrew Sullivan in one Post?

On Friday the 13th, 2023, Andrew Sullivan posted Why the Right is Losing The Young which encapsulates so much of how far he’s fallen – unless it’s emblematic of the kind of writer he’s always been. I guess well-meaning people can differ on that. But it would be hard to disagree on what a terrible piece of writing it is. The article either shows him to be a shameless propagandist for the racist hate wing of the Republican Party, which at this point is just about the entire Republican Party, or a ridiculous person trapped in his own twisted logic trying to justify and defend untenable positions.

Sullivan navigates a familiar path in the piece, not just for him but for so many of the fake or deluded “responsible” conservatives in which he humbly, or not so humbly, offers sincere advice to the Party on how to win back the youth, or the center, or whatever group of the moment that wants nothing to do with the jackals that run the fascist shit shows propagated by the Republicans. Whether these tiresome missives that will sway precisely none of their putative target audience are genuine matters very little. The real effect, if not the real purpose, is to sway readers who actually are at least somewhat intelligent and open minded. That is the ultimate problem with the Sullivans of the earth. They make it seemingly okay to hold your nose and support right wing racist hate groups, largely because, you know, the other side does it too, totally ignoring the relative scale of the crimes.

What gives Sullivan away most obviously is his use of the term “Woke” as a pejorative. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “Woke” is an adjective that describes someone who is: “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice.)” According to Wikipedia it means “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination.” The Urban Dictionary defines it as “Spiritual and intellectual enlightenment, like waking up from a deep sleep and seeing things clearly for the first time.” Basically, it means “not a hater.” So all the people railing against “Woke” culture are actually railing against those who oppose race or gender-based hatred, violence and discrimination. Those who describe themselves as “anti-Woke” are actually defining themselves as hateful bigots.

Of course Sullivan and his cohort, including Fox News and the openly racist right, have tried to distort the definition into something like “those who would rather silence their critics than listen to them.” Of course this is an example of the propaganda technique of accusing your opponent of doing what you yourself are doing, but it’s unclear if Sullivan and most of the anti-Woke crowd are doing that consciously to sway voters or if they truly believe the distorted language they are peddling.

With Sullivan, my guess is that he is blind to what he is doing and actually believes his gibberish about “our Woke overlords” and the like. I see him as a tragic character, much like Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the Rover Kwai. Guinness’s Colonel Nicholson believes he’s opposing his Japanese captors, but is actually helping them and fails to see what’s actually happening due to his massive British ego being unable to accept the fact that he’s just a pretentious dupe.

Sullivan’s weakness, I believe, is also his greatest strength – his truly impressive skills as a rhetorician which was honed to world class levels at Oxford and Harvard. He is such great debater that he cannot allow himself to lose a word fight and spends all of his mental energy defending his positions and only analyzing those of his perceived opponents to the extent that he will be able to refute them. Thus he gets stuck defending ridiculous positions such as black people are less intelligent than whites (read it all, I have. Ta-Nehisi Coates gets the last word and it is powerful) and the whole mess with his obsession with his Woke overlords.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Sullivan’s Friday the 13th piece documents how young people these days abhor the right’s race and gender hatred, their hard-on to destroy the planet, their anti-democratic policies up to and including actual treason, their calls to violence against their perceived enemies (which includes most of the young Sullivan is trying to convert), their anti-freedom and pro-crime agendas, et. al, and how the right could co-opt these young folk by offering them candy, err, I mean not being so racist and homophobic and supporting health care and education, and a few other things that the right is not ever going to do.

Sullivan wants the right to:

“encourage much more house-building with YIMBY-style deregulation; expand access to childcare for young, struggling families; tout entrepreneurial and scientific innovation to tackle climate change; expand maternity and paternity leave; redistribute wealth from the super-rich to working Americans to stabilize society and prevent capitalism from undoing itself; and, above all, celebrate a diverse society — and the unique individuals and interactions that make it so dynamic and life-giving…

"unwind the racial and gender obsessions, stop discriminating, encourage live-and-let-live toleration…”

Yea, like that’s going to happen. Basically, he wants the right to become Democrats. Here is his rhetorical advice to the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world. This is what he thinks the Republicans should shout at the youts who don’t want to come anywhere near their yard:

The left wants you to succeed because you’re black or Hispanic or gay or transgender — but that reduces you to a single part of your identity, and does so forever. We want you to succeed as an individual whatever color or creed or sex or gender you are. We want to treasure all Americans — black, brown, white, gay, straight, immigrant, native-born — for the unique individuals they are, the character they show, the hard work they do, and remove any obstacles to their success.

Yuh huh. So what makes those Democratic Party talking points not really Democratic Party talking points? Your Woke overlords, perhaps?

And then constantly mock the humorlessness, newspeak, and censoriousness of our new woke overlords. The tide is already turning in the broader culture: I see more eye-rolls at woke excess from my liberal friends than I used to; more canniness on the left about the cynicism of woke corporations; and exhaustion from the toxic dysfunction that has crippled progressive organizations. Comedians have led the way: think of Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, Tim Dillon, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Bill Burr or Matt and Trey. They understand that a truly diverse society needs wicked humor to vent its tensions, not pious censorship and threats of cancellation to suppress them all.

Umm, yea, comedians make fun of stuff? That’s all you’ve got? Again, never mind the scale or proportion of whom the comedians are making fun of, and how many of them are doing it, including most of the ones he lists.

But hey, it’s not just the comedians:

Other leading cultural figures help scramble the idea that embracing diversity means simply adopting the mantras of the woke sect: JK Rowling, Lil Nas X, Mike White, Bari Weiss, Glenn Greenwald and Arnold Schwarzenegger spring to mind. The natural demeanor of the young is to resist censorship, silencing and the stamping out of heterodoxy. Appeal to that. Let a thousand diverse flowers bloom. And make the woke seem like the miserable, micro-managing puritans they are.

Yep, that’s an appealing crowd to the young ones, never mind pretty much everyone they care about reacting in horror to all the right wing hate shit and when normal people think of politicians micro-managing they think of old men micro-managing women’s reproductive organs. No, look over there, it’s the Terminator! He’s cool!

Here, he sums it up with what would be great advice if you substitute the words “fascists” for “woke” and “working class” for “elites”. The Democrats really ought to use this:

That’s the formula for beating the woke [fascists]: appealing beyond them and their obsession with “white supremacy” to the dynamic, cultural experiment that America in 2023 truly is. Counter the grim view of America as a locus of oppression that is now so prevalent in the elites [working class], and offer freedom and a diverse individuality instead. You may be surprised by the electoral and cultural dividends.

Again, you have to wonder how someone as smart as Sullivan could possibly believe any of that would change anyone on the right. The real question is if you can believe he’s been co-opted into blindness like the Colonel on the Kwai, or if you believe that he is consciously serving the right with this fantastical patter in order to influence those otherwise intelligent people who might be tricked into voting for fascists and other scum with whom they have nothing in common.

My guess is he’s a victim of his own ego and rhetorical skills, but granted, I could be wrong.

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