Don't say "Woke"

Since right-wing politicos appropriated “woke” as a cudgel to bash all things left (Ron DeSantis thought he could ride to the presidency on this strategy), more thoughtful critics, many of them liberal or leftist themselves, have felt a need to apologize whenever they use the term and to acknowledge its limitations. Some have tried to come up with a better word or phrase.

After hearing Lawrence Summers, in an interview, refer to the “social-justice-proclaiming left,” I decided to start collecting these. Here is surely an incomplete list, in no particular order, along with who I think coined the term.

1. The Great Awokening. Matt Yglesias. This might be my favorite, with its historical allusion to religion.

2. Successor Ideology. Wesley Yang. It points to a world-historic intellectual paradigm replacing the Western enlightenment. Yikes!

3. Critical Social Justice. James Lindsey et al. Interested in how he and the coauthors of his book, Cynical Theories, arrived at this term? Read this. Lindsey waged a contentious social media campaign against “cynical theories”—which exposed him to the worst defenders of woke and seems to have unhinged him. He started out as a liberal but his interactions with rabid wokesters turned him into a Trump voter and got him thrown off Twitter.

4. Identity Synthesis. Yasha Mounk coined this term for his recent book, The Identity Trap, explaining the intellectual and historical roots of Woke.

5. Cultural Marxism. Chris Rufo. More below. 

6. Performative Social Justice. I’m not sure who came up with this apt term, but Bates College professor Tyler Austin Harper uses it his critique of woke from the left (it is loud but toothless and not redistributive) in an Atlantic article on campus radicalism.

7. Identitarian Moral Panic. Sam Harris. Harris also likes to add the suffix “-istan” to movements he hates: hence, Trumpistan and Wokistan.

8. Luxury Beliefs. Rob Henderson. This term covers the whole woke spectrum (and then some) that you might encounter on any college campus.

9. Third Wave Antiracism. John McWhorter. In his book Woke Racism,” the title of which could also be considered a term for woke. The book frames the phenomenon as a religion.

10. The Shadow Party. Ruy Tuxiera and John Judis, in their book Where Have all the Democrats Gone. Woke attachment undermines the Democratic Party's support. 

11. Racial Reckoning. For a while, everyone was having one of these. The Washington Post had a link to a standing Racial Reckoning page on its website for quite a while. And on June 11, 2022, the American Nurses Association Assembly, “took historic action to begin a journey of racial reckoning by unanimously voting ‘yes’ to adopt the ANA Racial Reckoning Statement.”  Why is everything a journey these days?

It would be interesting to look at the subtle and not-so-subtle differences among these terms and discuss how they reflect different critiques of the Woke Left.

I’m not doing that here, but for a revealing look at the difference between the anti-woke right and the anti-woke left, listen to this Free Press debate between Mounk and Rufo, the right’s anti-woke tribune who was whispering in Gov. DeSantis’ ear in the lead-up to his presidential run.

Rufo tried to get the world to use the term “Critical Race Theory” or CRT as a substitute for “woke” but then gender identity became more salient than race in Wokistan. More telling was “Cultural Marxism” which he used in his book, America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything, which tries to paint everyone left of The Donald as a woke radical aiming to destroy civilization. Mounk sees identitarians as a heretical element of the left that betrays its fundamental values and undermines its purpose.

Lies, damned lies, and politics

There’s been a lot of commentary in the press this past week about the role of lies in politics.

In his Tuesday column https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/opinion/helene-trump-vance-fema.html on Donald Trump’s lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene, Jamelle Bouie wrote: “Politics is not the place for perfect honesty, but some measure of truth telling is necessary to the project of collective self-government.”

We all know that politicians bend the truth in making their case. Joe Biden and Tim Waltz, to name two prominent examples on the other side of the isle, have gotten caught in some whoppers.

If lying is an unavoidable part of politics, where is the line between what Bouie refers to as “some measure of truth” and lying that could destroy “collective self-government.”

It's a question that has become particularly urgent this hurricane season as Trump-flavored politicians circulate lies as brazen as Margorie Taylor Greene’s suggestion that the government is somehow causing catastrophic weather events.

Bouie vaguely suggests the line between acceptable and unacceptable lying is whether politicos “strive for some correspondence to reality when they make their case to the public.”

You-tuber Vlad Vexler is more precise. He defines the unacceptable liars as “post-truth populists” who “have consciously given up on trying to make their lies internally consistent,” so that it becomes impossible to tell the difference between truth and lies.” Their goal, he argues, is to destroy faith in institutions and politics itself and to foster the feeling that leaders “prioritize others over you.”

Vexler said this before Trump started claiming that FEMA disaster relief money was being channeled to illegal immigrants.

Where Bouie argues that brazen lies are anti-democratic, Vexler suggests instead that they are anti-political. They lead citizens to believe that “there is nothing you can do to inflect the political process.”

I think that’s a better explanation.

Bouie writes that without access to the truth, we can’t perform what he says is an essential part of democracy : reasoning and deliberating with fellow citizens.

In his book, In Defence of Politics, Bernard Crick separates democracy from politics, and the book includes a chapter with the title “A Defence of Politics Against Democracy.”

The democratic concept of “sovereignty of the people”—the right of “the people to choose the government they want”—suggests that in democracy, the people get their way.   In theory, “all power is supposed to stem from an undivided and indivisible ‘people,’” Crick writes.

But another essential concept of democracy—“majority rule”—means that minorities—the losers in elections—do not get their way.

“Sovereignty of the people” doesn’t address Crick’s incisive question: “which people?” (Crick, 59-60).

A key feature of populism is to define “The people” against an enemy. Trump has referred to journalists as “enemies of the people”; Bernie Sanders’ to “billionaires.” Enemies like that must be suppressed, populists say, but Crick defines politics as “the activity by which differing interests within a given territory are conciliated,” not suppressed.

But if democracy is elevated over politics, democracy is at risk. Tocqueville spoke of "democratic despotism" and worried that if ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority."

Hannah Arendt, a survivor of totalitarianism, was quoted in my local newspaper last week on how the destruction of politics in a democratic system leads to authoritarian government: “Keeping listeners constantly trying to defend what is real from what is not destroys their ability to make sense of the world. Many people turn to a strong man who promises to create order. Others will get so exhausted they simply give up.” Established authoritarian dictatorships, Anne Applebaum wrote in the June Atlantic, suppress citizens yearning for democracy not by discrediting the notions of popular sovereignty or majority rule, but by promoting apathy and cynicism about the potential of political action to create a better world. “Their goal is to persuade people to stay out of politics.”

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Leftovers

Hannah Arendt was quoted by Lynn Wurzburg of St. J. Oct. 9, 2024, Caledonian Record Crick talks about the problem of sovereignty on pp. 59-60 of Defence of Politics. Danielle Allen also confronts this problem in her book on citizenship, which I wrote about elsewhere on this blog:

One of the most important lessons students need to learn to become democratic citizens is that in spite of the individual freedom and sovereignty that democracies promise their citizens, we don’t always get our way even in a well-functioning democracy and are often asked to sacrifice our personal preferences and interests for the good of the whole, the survival of democracy, and the maintenance of peace. When our candidate loses the election, when we are drafted and sent into battle, and when policies favored by the majority disadvantage us or go against what we think is good, we are sacrificing something. https://www.billjordan.net/2022/08/teaching-citizenship-in-polarized.html

Thoughts on artificial intelligence

AI: The end of thinking?

I’ve been in denial about Artificial Intelligence since I dipped into a book on the subject about 10 years ago. In The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (2015) an AI company executive predicted that in 15 years 90 percent of news articles would be “written algorithmically” (85). The book also included an algorithmically written article that made the claim seem plausible.

I put the book down and tried not to think about it. Then, last year (or so), Open AI launched Chat GPT and suddenly everybody was either using or talking about artificial intelligence and quite a lot of students were using it to write papers. 

For five decades I’ve made my living in large part by writing or teaching writing, and now technology was coming for my job.

In the short term, while I still had employment, I would have to pay attention to the AI monster, since even my students might be tempted to turn in AI-written work. All this makes me wish I could sign up for a modern-day Luddite movement—the 19th-century British textile workers who broke up the mechanical looms that were eliminating their jobs. The closest I could come to vandalizing the AI machinery was to issue this statement to my students:

YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE CHAT-GPT, BARD OR ANY OTHER ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DEVICE IN THE PRODUCTION OF WORK FOR THIS CLASS.

And I wrote it all caps!

I also started assigning more in-class writing assessments; but truly, I’ve mostly remained in denial. Unlike some of my younger colleagues, I never actually tried using AI myself.

Until this summer, when AI imposed itself on me via my Google Pixel phone.

On a Sunday in August I received this text in my message app:

Hi, I’m Gemini in Google Messages. Chat with me to draft messages, brainstorm ideas, plan events or simply have a fun conversation.”

Right. “Fun conversation” … with a machine. Eventually, though, I couldn’t resist.

My first conversation involved finding employment for my artsy daughter and it turned up some websites that list jobs in her field. My next question was more whimsical: “What’s the point of remembering dreams, anyway?” I got a paragraph on each of four points: Emotional processing; problem solving; personal growth; inspiration. Essentially it was a summary of what you’d get in an internet search but it saved a lot of time. It took one second instead of maybe a half hour.

Google has inserted Gemini into my internet search results as well. A few weeks later a Google search for a famous comment by Karl Marx about the nature of work in the communist utopia came up with the quote (“hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon,” etc.) along with a brief commentary by Gemini at the top of the results.

Later I called up the Gemini app on my laptop for the first time and asked: “How would this quote apply to the life of a retired person?” The first response wasn’t helpful, but after a few follow-up questions I got another good summary of the sorts of things you get when you watch You Tubers give advice to retirees (feel free to skip this if you aren’t worried about how you’ll spend your retirement):

1. Embrace Diversity of Interests: Just as Marx envisioned a society where individuals could engage in various activities, you can strive to explore different interests and hobbies. This can enrich your life and prevent boredom.

2. Challenge Societal Expectations: Don't feel pressured to conform to societal expectations about how retirees should spend their time. If you have a passion for something unconventional, pursue it.

3. Build Strong Relationships: While Marx focused on economic structures, strong relationships are crucial for a fulfilling life. Invest time in building and maintaining connections with family, friends, and community members.

4. Give Back: Consider ways to contribute to your community or society. Volunteering can provide a sense of purpose and connection.

5. Learn Continuously: Just as Marx believed in intellectual growth, you can continue learning throughout your retirement. Take classes, read books, or explore new subjects. 6. Prioritize Health: A healthy lifestyle is essential for enjoying retirement. Make time for exercise, proper nutrition, and adequate rest.

7. Find Meaningful Work: Even if you're retired from a traditional job, consider finding meaningful work or projects that align with your values. This can provide a sense of purpose and fulfillment.

Remember, while Marx's quote is a powerful ideal, it's important to be realistic about the constraints and opportunities you face in your own life. By embracing a diverse range of activities, building strong relationships, and finding meaning in your retirement, you can strive for a fulfilling and enriching experience.

Having watched probably hours of YouTube videos about retirement, I recognized most of this as the standard advice. And I also noticed that it took five minutes instead of hours to get Gemini to get me this information.

I had to wonder: why anyone would ever again bother to do the kind of writing that makes up 90 percent of our work-related writing tasks—mundane reports, cover letters, grant applications, teacher comment slips, summaries of things.

Productivity growth has slowed in the US in the last few years, from 3% annually to 1.5%. I can’t imagine that AI won’t be incorporated into just about every industry to boost productivity—just like mechanical looms did in the 19th century. As bad as it was for the Luddites, it was good for wearers of clothing, a larger group than the weavers.

As much as I sympathize with the Luddites, I’m afraid we can no longer just simply ban artificial intelligence from the classroom. Instead of a policy that bans it altogether we will have to come up with ways to help our students learn how to use this tool they’ll inevitably need to use in the workplace of their future.

So is it pointless for a teacher to ban AI and to spend so much time teaching students to write, rather than teaching them how to use AI to write everything?

I do think my total ban no longer makes sense. We don’t tell students they can’t use spellcheck or software like Noodle-tools or Zotero that automatically produce citations.

We’ll have to figure out how to integrate AI into our teaching—probably in every discipline. I agree with writer Stephen Marche, who said, “The transition will be a humongous pain for people who teach students how to make sense with words.”

But I hope Marche is wrong when he predicts the end of the undergraduate essay.

I’ve had no problem with my students using auto-citation software, but if they’ve never had to write footnotes and bibliographies manually, they don’t know how to notice when auto-cite messes up, as it often does.

Similarly, I imagine that you won’t be able to get the best results from AI-written essays without having some experience writing yourself.

The process of writing also facilitates the thinking process. I often don’t know just what I think on a particular topic until I’ve gone through the difficult process of writing about it (it's why I keep a blog). In-class writing assignments aren’t a good substitute for take-home writing where students have the time to reflect and think and revise and rethink. 

Last spring I attended a few different congressional hearing on AI. Democrats on the committees were generally more concerned about mitigating the harms by imposing regulations while the Republicans were more worried about the US falling behind other countries, and opposed government regulation that might slow down research and development. 

I think my first impulse was to adopt a Democratic Party approach, with my ban on the use of AI in my classes, but the Republicans have a point, and I don't want my students to fall behind in their ability to use a ubiquitous tool.  I’m at a loss as to how to balance these two concerns in my teaching, but more tech-savvy (and probably younger) teachers seem confident it can be done. 

Marche talks about assigning less formulaic prompts on “established problems,” because that’s all that AI is able to handle (for now!), and said that AI will end up being to writing what the microwave oven was to cooking—just another tool. I didn’t find his optimism all that convincing but like anything, it will take a lot of trial and error and probably a matter of years not weeks to work out satisfactory solutions.

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Note: I got the stats on productivity from this Bookings Institute article.

We should all LOVE politics

Last spring, I gave students in our Washington Internship Program an excerpt from Bernard Crick’s insightful book, In Defense of Politics. Crick defines politics as “that solution to the problem of order which chooses conciliation rather than violence and coercion, and chooses it as an effective way by which varying interests can discover that level of compromise best suited to their common interest in survival” (30). In diverse societies with conflicting interests, it is the alternative to authoritarian or totalitarian systems, which aim to eliminate or suppress interests that conflict with the interests of those in power. 

More simply put, it is government that relies on conciliation rather than coercion.

What I love about Crick's book is how he identifies “anti-politics,” behaviors and ideas that undermine conciliation, compromise and peaceful coexistence among diverse people.  We've got a lot of anti-politics in the US today.  

As I read the book I came to see anti-politics in "We are the 99%" populism of Occupy Wall Street; MAGA populism of Jan. 6; parent teaching their children to fear strangers; librarians who purge their collections of political views they oppose; schools and universities that don't train their students to talk to each other across difference and foster political mono cultures; media outlets that cater to their audiences' biases ("audience capture" if you prefer); members of Congress who denigrate compromise; moralism, virtue signaling, cancel culture and other features of the culture war.

To elaborate on one example, cancel culture moralism is a form of anti-politics that is performed by well-intentioned progressives but makes progressive reform less likely to be achieved. Lisa Featherstone explained the problem well in the socialist periodical, Jacobin. The feminist argument that “the personal is political,” she writes, has been changed to “the political is personal.”

As an idea, “the personal is political” helped women to understand that an abusive boyfriend or a sex-pest boss was neither their own fault nor their problem to bear alone, but rather a political problem with political solutions. But the notion that the political is personal does the reverse. It takes our political impulse, or desire to analyze the world in political terms and change it, and turns it inward.

In a world where the political is personal, it becomes important to perform your essential political goodness. Put an “In This House, We Believe” sign on your lawn. Kick off that corporate board meeting with a land acknowledgement. These may sound harmless, but the corollary to all this individual goodness is the hunt for badness. When the political is personal, we must work to identify those individuals who embody everything that is politically bad—perhaps someone who has made a bad tweet—and punish them as such (Winter 2022, p. 94).

I asked my students to reflect on how Crick’s conceptions of politics and anti-politics informed their work in congressional offices and/or their understanding of current events.

Leo, who follows European politics more closely than most Americans connected Crick’s ideas to Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s right-wing prime minister.

When looking at her example, it's easier to see the value of an adept politician and the folly of following an “outsider” like Trump or Obama. Neither were able to build consensus, indeed both of them created deep divisions within the country. Obama with the “Obama Coalition” and the rise of identity politics, and Trump with his harsh rhetoric. Neither was able to achieve any major bipartisan accomplishment. In fact, Joe Biden is arguably the first President since Clinton to pass a major bipartisan piece of legislation. Senator [Thom] Tillis [R, NC], for instance, was an important backer of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Acts.

Brenda connected her experience on the Hill to Crick’s writings and another piece we’d read, about 1990s House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “The Man Who Broke Politics.” Among other changes, Gingrich shortened the House work week to just three days:

It’s necessary not just for politicians but for voters to engage in discussions across the aisle, no matter how much our instinct tells us we hate the other party.

Now, politicians are flying back to their district on a Thursday afternoon, with no incentive to talk to lawmakers on the other side. Thus, we've seen intense polarization that limits bipartisanship and the work of Congress. We begin to believe all Democrats are lazy and dishonest, and that all Republicans are close-minded.

Clara saw first hand how compromise is essential in governing. Her comment reflects the experience of many of my interns who tend to arrive in DC with more of a campaigning mindset but leave with an appreciation for the importance of deliberation, conciliation and compromise in governing.

Rep. [Salud] Carbajal [D-CA] is more of a moderate Democrat than I had hoped to work for way back in November. Yet I’ve found that interning for him has opened my mind to more viewpoints and the value of compromise than ever before. The office keeps track of whether the bills he cosponsors are bipartisan, a number now hovering at 64%. I found myself feeling proud when that number rises. In the least productive Congress of all time, it is of the utmost importance to make concessions within each bill. Is it worse to pass an imperfect bill, or nothing at all?

Clara may have had in mind the very weak Civil Rights Act of 1957, which she’d read about in Robert Caro’s book, Master of the Senate. Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson agreed to so many compromises to get it past the segregationist Southern senators that many liberal supporters of Civil Rights were inclined to vote against it. Johnson, according to Caro, won the liberals over by arguing that if they passed “one civil rights bill, no matter how weak … others would follow.” Also, “Once a bill was passed it could be amended: altering something was a lot easier than creating it” (893).

Perhaps Johnson was thinking of the Social Security Act of 1935, which excluded agricultural and domestic workers, thus excluding 65 percent of Black workers in deference to the Southern segregationist bloc. By 1957 the act had been amended six times with more to follow, and the 1950 amendment extended coverage to farm and domestic workers.

Will Harris legislate like her boss did?

Perhaps our most popular piece of legislation was the result of compromise.

Sometimes when we fight, nobody wins.

In a generally unflattering profile of VP Kamala Harris in the Atlantic last October, this was the most damning passage in my view (emphasis added):

Harris’s aides once described her to reporters as potentially a key emissary for the administration in Congress—helping corral votes by way of “quiet Hill diplomacy.”  But she lacked the deep relationships needed to exert real influence. Congressional officials told me that Harris rarely engaged the more persuadable holdouts on either side of the aisle…. Harris shifted the terms of the discussion when I asked how her Senate background had proved useful in the administration’s push for legislation: “I mean, I think the work we have to do is really more in getting folks to speak loudly with their feet through the election cycle”—an unusual image, though the point was clear enough: Electing more Democrats might be more effective than trying to twist more arms.

For now, Senate Democrats are not fighting for time with Harris when she’s on the Hill. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a Democratic office that actually engages with her or her team on a regular basis,” one Democratic senator’s chief of staff told me. Traditionally, this person said, officials from the executive branch who visit the Capitol are cornered by lawmakers hoping to get their priorities before the president. But few people are “scrambling to make alliances” with Harris.

In The Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands It and Campaigning Undermines It, Amy Gutman and Dennis Thompson argue that in a representative democracy elected leaders need to be able to shift back and forth between campaign mode and governing mode if they want to govern effectively. One cause of polarization, they argue, is that US election seasons—especially for the presidency—last so long.

Here's their point:

Compromise is difficult, but governing a democracy without compromise is impossible….

The compromising mindset displays what we call principled prudence (adapting one's principles) and mutual respect (suspecting opponents). . . .

The uncompromising mindset that characterizes campaigning cannot and should not be eliminated from democratic politics. But when it comes to dominate governing, it obstructs the search for desirable compromises. The uncompromising mindset is like an invasive species that spreads beyond its natural habitat as it roams from the campaign to the government. (1, 16-17, 22)

President Biden succeeded in getting major legislation through Congress because he understands this need for principled prudence and mutual respect in governing and he proved that even in these polarized times it is possible to work out bipartisan compromises. Harris’s comment, and her “fight” slogan, suggest that she thinks the only way to get worthwhile legislation passed is to win enough seats in Congress so she can avoid negotiating with the opposing party. But the reality of American politics now and in the foreseeable future is evenly divided government, along with a Senate filibuster, that makes legislating impossible without compromise. Even within the Democratic coalition, compromise with conservative party members is sometimes necessary, as Biden discovered when Joe Manchin blocked the Green New Deal.

Hopefully, Harris can pivot from fighting and winning the election to compromising and signing legislation as president.

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