On the one hand, land acknowledgments in email signatures are pretty annoying

On the other, an authoritarian ethno-nationalist political party, led by an increasingly fascistic cult of personality, is currently in control of the federal government, and is busily trying to destroy liberal democracy in America.

What I’m saying is that both the right and the left of the political spectrum in this country are problematic in different ways. Can I haz Atlantic magazine sinecure now?

This is nine and a half minutes long, but very much worth your time.

I’ve been surprised and dismayed to see a bunch of usually very sharp progressives, such as AOC, (eta: this is actually wrong in regard to AOC, who was using the phrase sardonically, not literally. Thanks to commenters for pointing this out and I apologize for the sloppy inattention to context). about “Woke 1.0” this week. As Bouie points out in detail, Woke 1.0 consisted of

(1) Things that never actually happened at all, like “purges” of conservatives from academia; or

(2) Trivial bullshit, like those annoying land acknowledgments, or that grad student in 2021 who accused you of committing an imperialism in a Twitter post.

Meanwhile, we’ve got peaceful protesters — white ones no less — being murdered in the streets by ICE, concentration camps popping up all over, people having their careers destroyed for the crime of being a black person in a high ranking position in the military, aka “a DEI hire,” trans people being deprived of basic civil rights for the crime of existing, etc etc.