Woke is often just a veneer for milquetoast neoliberalism/neoconservatism. Which is fine, to a certain extent, because it's not the boogeyman that the right believes it to be. But it's bad because it inherits the issues of neoliberalism/neoconservatism1/ https://twitter.com/SameeraKhan/status/1346445325914025984

Lack of accountability, politics as stardom and hero worship (exemplified in the Oman quote about Thatcher), superficiality, obsession with optics over results, with slogans over pragmatism, with personality over nuanced social analysis, hubris and blindness to flaws 2/

Also a love for simple solutions and a reduced ability to understand second-order effects, or unintended consequences, or concerns that go beyond what is glamorous, trendy and hip (see, for example, the lessened concern over maintenance works) 3/

It's not that those issues didn't exist before neoliberalism/neoconservatism, but they've become more prominent in the post Thatcher and post Reagan age. Politics has become more histrionic (it's not a coincidence that Reagan was an actor) and more media-friendly.

This is a problem because what looks good on paper, in a slogan, in principle it's not always good on a practical level. The Iraq War was fought (in part) due to the ideas of people who thought that democracy building would have worked in Iraq as it had in post-Nazi Germany.

On paper the plan looked perfect: get rid of Saddam, a hostile dictator, and finish the job through occupation and state-building, to gain a democratic ally in a strategic area. In practice the invasion produced a string of disasters.

So I'm left suspicious of many plans that look good on paper according to liberal democratic standards until there's more information and debate about them. What LOOKS effective and what IS effective are not the same thing.

My biggest worry with woke ideas is that they can be used to stop or inhibit debate about plans and project that look good on a surface level and on paper - just like patriotism was used to paper over the flaws of the idea of invading Iraq.

Vaguely feel-good, glamorous, hip and trendy hashtags, ideas, concepts are dangerous not because they're harbingers of doom, but because they can't be used as a substitute for nuance, or deep analysis, or debate, or caution, or considering alternatives.

Furthermore (as it was the case with the Iraq War) a cause that looks convincing and noble can be used in disingenuous and self-serving ways (see the recent use of diversity rhetoric to oppose a ban of Wall Street lobbyists, an argument proposed by...Wall Street lobbyists!)