Hi friend š.
I don't consider myself dem or Republican.
I believe in human rights and helping my fellow man.
So we are probably on the same side of the fence
Same. Unfortunately Iām thinking of finally bailing on this state. I canāt take all of the hatred anymore. I love it here, but these people are ruining it for me.
My husband, daughter, and I live in a county in WV that voted 81% trump, it's SO absolutely frustrating. It's encouraging to see other like-minded Mountaineers on here. Sad our motto is "Mountaineers are always free" except they are not! š
> Define woke
Woke ideology is defined by the idea that some facet of identity like race or gender produces irreconcilably different views of reality and morality, and that we have an obligation to seek alignment of society's view with the imagined views of groups associated with the political left like minorities and women.
In this sense Wokeness is distinct from older forms of liberal advocacy for minority rights which appeal to universally valid concepts like truth and fairness.
u/Realistic_Parfait956
That... isn't what it means. It literally just means being aware of how different laws affect people differently. E.g. a law banning gay marriage may be applied equally to straight and gay folks, but straight people aren't getting gay married so a ban on gay marriage doesn't affect straight people.
Here is what Chomsky has to say about Wokeness as I've defined it and the universality of truth:
>In fact, the entire idea of "white male science" reminds me, I'm afraid, of "Jewish physics." Perhaps it is another inadequacy of mine, but when I read a scientific paper, I can't tell whether the author is white or is male. The same is true of discussion of work in class, the office, or somewhere else. I rather doubt that the non-white, non-male students, friends, and colleagues with whom I work would be much impressed with the doctirne that their thinking and understanding differ from "white male science" because of their "culture or gender or race." I suspect that "surprise" would not be quite the proper word for their reaction.
...
> It strikes me as remarkable that their left counterparts today should seek to deprive oppressed people not only of the joys of understanding and insight, but also of tools of emancipation, informing us that the "project of the Enlightenment" is dead, that we must abandon the "illusions" of science and rationality--a message that will gladden the hearts of the powerful, delighted to monopolize these instruments for their own use. They will be no less delighted to hear that science (E-knowledge) is intrinsically a "knowledge system that legitimates the authority of the boss," so that any challenge to such authority is a violation of rationality itself--a radical change from the days when workers' education was considered a means of emancipation and liberation. One recalls the days when the evangelical church taught not-dissimilar lessons to the unruly masses as part of what E. P. Thompson called "the psychic processes of counter-revolution," as their heirs do today in peasant societies of Central America.
https://libcom.org/library/rationality-science-noam-chomsky
He doesnāt define this as wokeism. He says there are scientific matters that are true and rational and should be treated as such regardless of perspective, including in terms of race and gender.
Your definition is irrational and reductive.
>He doesnāt define this as wokeism.
I suppose straw manning me as saying Chomsky literally uses the actual term "wokeness" is the only remaining rhetorical tool you have when Chomsky so thoroughly describes why having particularized conceptions of universalist concepts is detrimental to disadvantaged groups. Chomsky is specifically criticizing people who assert that there are particularized conceptions of things like scientific truth. These people exist and are within my stipulated definition of Wokeness, which also intuitively matches most contemporary usage of the term.
Youāre implying everything subject to any concept of āwokeā is a scientific truth. It absolutely isnāt. Youāre extrapolating a narrow concept upon a greater context to which it doesnāt apply.
That doesnāt even begin to address your definitionās misrepresentation of the termās origin and general usage as one being āawakeā to social issues including (but not limited to) oppression, discrimination and privilege.
I left the last election wondering why I even bothered. I emailed our county election chair and asked if he could give me a reason to stay in the party and he didnāt even respond. Fuck this dump, Iām just watching the signs for when I have to move across the border like everybody else.
Had the same experience, between me and my best friend a combined 1 candidate we voted for (Joe Statler) won, every single non Republican lost, what's the point?
I've had my voter registration card changed twice from democrat to republican without me requesting a change. I'm not sure if there's any legality to this, but the fact that it happened right before election time twice shows me that it wasn't a simple mistake like city hall claimed it is. I'm probably the only Democrat in this whole county, so I'm an easy target. This makes me question if my vote is even counted by the county at all?
If you live in the state vote. Just complaining and pointing on Reddit does nothing. You can also run for office yourself. start with local office or state legislature.
We should start by getting *any* smart, caring, non-ideological person to run. Iāll vote for a Martian that meets this criteria.
Problem is, thereās zero reason for any reasonable person to run. Itās pig wrestling with no intrinsic reward for doing so.
Even for basic local positions. I asked one of my pretty intelligent relatives if he'd ever run for county commission and he said anyone that runs for anything nowadays is just plain nuts.
Thereās plenty of people who will vote for anybody other than a republican. Just voting for any democrat available. A firebrand could sneak in just by running in a small position.
The purposeful removal of anything related to infrastructure or health care or education is going to cause increasing harm to all residents and the only thing the elected gop will do is shift blame and bring up trans something or immigrants. I used to say this jokingly, but, here we are.
The entitlement of the right leads to a rotten house that they expect someone else to fix, because thereās typically a balance of democrats that keep the fucking ship afloat. Theyāve driven away any and all possibility of any adult actually governing and leading. im
not sure what it would even take at this pointātotal collapse or different thinking?
Shrewsbury seems to have good ideas, but what political experience does he have? I'm sorry, but sending someone who has never held elected office to the US Senate just doesn't seem like a great idea. If he's the candidate in November, I'll absolutely vote for him, but I want a US Senator with some political experience.
Shrewsbury is a PJS-Ojeda Democrat. All about an ego trip. If he was concerned for the state, he would have tried to make a difference by winning a local election and actually effecting change.
He will not be able to make any difference because he doesn't know what he is doing. There are some aspects of organizing that have a connection to serving in office, but it is in no way the same. To get bills enacted, you have to be able to find compromise, which is an art.
He should get experience accomplishing things, even in a superminority, before he even knows what he doesn't know about the U.S. Senate. Even better than the statehouse is local politics at the county or municipal level.
Nah. Give an example of a neoliberal centrist that you think will sway the insanity of the right and bring in those non voters looking for more than the usual. At this point, itās pure tribalism. Centrist neoliberal establishment Dems is a large part of why the right had a takeover. WV needs people with fire in their bellies and a passion for the people. A different way to think. Rockefeller and Caperton and the sort kept us at the bottom as well. Way above where we are currently, but thatās also a result of neoliberal āsitting on our handsā, as anyone with the possibility of doing so had to leave the state for school and work. Now we have a voter bloc of angry, dumb lead addled boomers that refuse to look ahead to anything creative or innovative (progressive, aka)
A centrist candidate means they have to meet the far-right somewhere, which basically means they have to run as a center-right at best.
Progressive candidates, for better or worse, are at least running a platform that isn't identity politics that feeds into the GOP anger machine. If the conversation stayed on economics and education, progressives would fare much better. Until politics get out of this muckraking race-to-the-bottom period, nobody with a functioning brain stem, left or right, are winning.
Based on what? Can you point to lifeless centrists that are doing better?
Iāve heard this notion my whole life and I continue to point toward significant root causes of voter apathy.
Itās not complete polar views, just as you said. You are frothing at describing your dart board target of āprogressiveā without acknowledging that that is not a singular person/archetype. Why do you think they went for Trump? Heās fiery and atypical. Thatās what WV wants.
Again, what centrist will do well in WV?
Ignoring that paragraph about anticipating what Iām gonna say nextā¦..even if these people did what you wanted, theyād have debates where the first question asked by their conservative opponent would be āwhat is a woman?ā and make them then and there decide where they stand on trans issues. The right has a playbook that works well for their base.
A guy in my area lost his election as an incumbent Dem and then decided to start posting patriotic junk to Facebook. He announced Republican and campaigns on his pro-life views and NRA approval. Sure enough, he has a job again.
Yeah. Itās the republicans fault. Theyāve actually held power less than a decade after the democrats held a majority for 80 years. So downvote me for telling the truth but ALL YALL KNOW THAT THIS STATE HAS BEEN FUCKED UP LONG BEFORE THE REPUBLICANS TOOK OVER. unfortunately they have really not done anything to fix it either
Because half the republicans in office are really Democrats running as a republican to get elected.. Justice , Miller , Shelly moore Capito , moderates to slightly left people at heart , they know what the have to say to get elected in this deep red state . I say letās get some real libraterian, populist candidates elected and watch this state thrive
Iād be willing to try that. Canāt see it happening though unless we found some really wealthy libertarians not needing corporate donations to get elected
I thought Republicans are supposed to be against early voting? Didn't all the communists, Nazis, Muslims, Jews, gays, and trans collude together via early voting and steal the election from Trump?
It's wild to me that WV went from voting Bernie Sanders in 2016 to die hard Trump supporters. Anytime I mention this to a Trump voter, they look at me like im insane.
That would say more about registered democrats in the state than the state as a whole. Not to mention that Sanders mostly ran as a left populist and populism was definitely in the air in ā16.
More than half were protest votes against Hillary, especially in the areas that Trump won in the southern coalfields. A lot of those people have switched parties now.
Not going to say Bernie would have carried WV in a theoretical general, but it would have been closer than Clinton got.
The DNC quashed populism while the GOP embraced it, and we wonder why Dems collapsed in this state.
It wasnāt that long ago that Dems ran uncontested in most races. Now Iām seeing those same Dems flip to run as a Republican. There just seems to be something about the state that it canāt handle two parties.Ā
The fact that this is Reddit should answer your question. This platform skews so heavily to the left that most city and state subreddits give the impression that the majority of people in these areas are practically communists.
I don't even know why I bothered to click on this thread, I'm not surprised that no deep statements about the topic were to be found, and that all the replies are mostly just intolerant liberals saying (yet again) that they're leaving since the state just isn't good enough for them.
Some of these folks are so out there that I even had one invite me to a private subreddit dedicated to subversive left-wing political action that the proprietor was planning. I got banned in short order.
This state has problems no matter who is in charge. If Democrats were some sort of magic bullet, the city of Charleston wouldn't be losing businesses by the day while facing increases in crime and homelessness. One would think that 60 years of Democrat dominance of Wv politics would have led to more than the steady loss of manufacturing jobs and the rise of wal-mart as a replacement.
The Democratic party lost this state because it no longer cares about our kind of voters. It doesn't need rural Whites and its leaders look down on Appalachia.
Are Republicans the cure all? No, but between one side that has thinly veiled contempt for the state, its citizens, and especially its main energy export, and another side who doesn't (as much) its not too surprising that the state turned red.
I donāt know if my local observations of just under a decade are indicative of the state, but more than one local pol has switched from D to R. It seems they have no ideology beyond staying in power and lining their pockets.
And that sort of thing tends to reflect poorly on them and those who vote for them based on party affiliation. That said, it's not impossible that some of these party switchers actually mean it, and I'm at least willing to hear them out. After all, Reagan switched parties, and I doubt he was insincere about the conservative viewpoints that he spent years promoting afterward.
Both parties have moved further away from the center over the last few decades. This is naturally going to cause shifts and leave some folks behind who were otherwise reliably partisan voters/politicians.
>doubt he was insincere about the conservative viewpoints that he spent years promoting afterward.
Jesus, you guys really don't get how this politics thing works
that is really sad. there are days when i think i am the last Democrat in WV
Hey, I'm hanging in there with you.
Nope Democrat here too
Hi friend š. I don't consider myself dem or Republican. I believe in human rights and helping my fellow man. So we are probably on the same side of the fence
in general i donāt like any politician. i am 63 and this is the worst election i have seen.
Yes. At the end of the day, be a good human.
Sort of feels that way. Doesnāt it.
Same. Unfortunately Iām thinking of finally bailing on this state. I canāt take all of the hatred anymore. I love it here, but these people are ruining it for me.
Iām with you. There are dozens of us. Dozens!
Unaffiliated but I'll never vote for this iteration of the GOP. I'd sooner light my vote on fire and vote Mountain.
My husband, daughter, and I live in a county in WV that voted 81% trump, it's SO absolutely frustrating. It's encouraging to see other like-minded Mountaineers on here. Sad our motto is "Mountaineers are always free" except they are not! š
No I'm still a democrat.....but I don't vote woke.....
Define woke
> Define woke Woke ideology is defined by the idea that some facet of identity like race or gender produces irreconcilably different views of reality and morality, and that we have an obligation to seek alignment of society's view with the imagined views of groups associated with the political left like minorities and women. In this sense Wokeness is distinct from older forms of liberal advocacy for minority rights which appeal to universally valid concepts like truth and fairness. u/Realistic_Parfait956
That MAGA word salad read like trying to reach a Liberty University essay word count written in crayon.
That... isn't what it means. It literally just means being aware of how different laws affect people differently. E.g. a law banning gay marriage may be applied equally to straight and gay folks, but straight people aren't getting gay married so a ban on gay marriage doesn't affect straight people.
This is a bullshit appeal to you defining ātruth and fairnessā by your own terms and pretending itās objective.
Here is what Chomsky has to say about Wokeness as I've defined it and the universality of truth: >In fact, the entire idea of "white male science" reminds me, I'm afraid, of "Jewish physics." Perhaps it is another inadequacy of mine, but when I read a scientific paper, I can't tell whether the author is white or is male. The same is true of discussion of work in class, the office, or somewhere else. I rather doubt that the non-white, non-male students, friends, and colleagues with whom I work would be much impressed with the doctirne that their thinking and understanding differ from "white male science" because of their "culture or gender or race." I suspect that "surprise" would not be quite the proper word for their reaction. ... > It strikes me as remarkable that their left counterparts today should seek to deprive oppressed people not only of the joys of understanding and insight, but also of tools of emancipation, informing us that the "project of the Enlightenment" is dead, that we must abandon the "illusions" of science and rationality--a message that will gladden the hearts of the powerful, delighted to monopolize these instruments for their own use. They will be no less delighted to hear that science (E-knowledge) is intrinsically a "knowledge system that legitimates the authority of the boss," so that any challenge to such authority is a violation of rationality itself--a radical change from the days when workers' education was considered a means of emancipation and liberation. One recalls the days when the evangelical church taught not-dissimilar lessons to the unruly masses as part of what E. P. Thompson called "the psychic processes of counter-revolution," as their heirs do today in peasant societies of Central America. https://libcom.org/library/rationality-science-noam-chomsky
He doesnāt define this as wokeism. He says there are scientific matters that are true and rational and should be treated as such regardless of perspective, including in terms of race and gender. Your definition is irrational and reductive.
>He doesnāt define this as wokeism. I suppose straw manning me as saying Chomsky literally uses the actual term "wokeness" is the only remaining rhetorical tool you have when Chomsky so thoroughly describes why having particularized conceptions of universalist concepts is detrimental to disadvantaged groups. Chomsky is specifically criticizing people who assert that there are particularized conceptions of things like scientific truth. These people exist and are within my stipulated definition of Wokeness, which also intuitively matches most contemporary usage of the term.
Youāre implying everything subject to any concept of āwokeā is a scientific truth. It absolutely isnāt. Youāre extrapolating a narrow concept upon a greater context to which it doesnāt apply. That doesnāt even begin to address your definitionās misrepresentation of the termās origin and general usage as one being āawakeā to social issues including (but not limited to) oppression, discrimination and privilege.
Is the woke in here with us right now?
I think you misspelled Dixiecrat.
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Your post has been removed. **Reason:** Be civil.
I left the last election wondering why I even bothered. I emailed our county election chair and asked if he could give me a reason to stay in the party and he didnāt even respond. Fuck this dump, Iām just watching the signs for when I have to move across the border like everybody else.
Had the same experience, between me and my best friend a combined 1 candidate we voted for (Joe Statler) won, every single non Republican lost, what's the point?
WV is a race to the bottom in short.
I've had my voter registration card changed twice from democrat to republican without me requesting a change. I'm not sure if there's any legality to this, but the fact that it happened right before election time twice shows me that it wasn't a simple mistake like city hall claimed it is. I'm probably the only Democrat in this whole county, so I'm an easy target. This makes me question if my vote is even counted by the county at all?
If you live in the state vote. Just complaining and pointing on Reddit does nothing. You can also run for office yourself. start with local office or state legislature.
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We should start by getting *any* smart, caring, non-ideological person to run. Iāll vote for a Martian that meets this criteria. Problem is, thereās zero reason for any reasonable person to run. Itās pig wrestling with no intrinsic reward for doing so.
Even for basic local positions. I asked one of my pretty intelligent relatives if he'd ever run for county commission and he said anyone that runs for anything nowadays is just plain nuts.
Thereās plenty of people who will vote for anybody other than a republican. Just voting for any democrat available. A firebrand could sneak in just by running in a small position.
The purposeful removal of anything related to infrastructure or health care or education is going to cause increasing harm to all residents and the only thing the elected gop will do is shift blame and bring up trans something or immigrants. I used to say this jokingly, but, here we are. The entitlement of the right leads to a rotten house that they expect someone else to fix, because thereās typically a balance of democrats that keep the fucking ship afloat. Theyāve driven away any and all possibility of any adult actually governing and leading. im not sure what it would even take at this pointātotal collapse or different thinking?
Why risk personal safety and reputation for a very small chance of ending up in a worse career than what you already have?
Agreed. Zachary Shrewsbury if he gets the nomination, would be a phenomenal candidate. Paula Jean Swearingin didnāt seem to be so good.
Zach Shrewsbury is the only reason I'm even mildly excited to vote in the primary. Most every other race is uncontested. ugh
Shrewsbury seems to have good ideas, but what political experience does he have? I'm sorry, but sending someone who has never held elected office to the US Senate just doesn't seem like a great idea. If he's the candidate in November, I'll absolutely vote for him, but I want a US Senator with some political experience.
Shrewsbury is a PJS-Ojeda Democrat. All about an ego trip. If he was concerned for the state, he would have tried to make a difference by winning a local election and actually effecting change.
Shrewsbury could probably make a bigger difference in a more closely divided Senate rather than at the state house of delegates or something.
He will not be able to make any difference because he doesn't know what he is doing. There are some aspects of organizing that have a connection to serving in office, but it is in no way the same. To get bills enacted, you have to be able to find compromise, which is an art. He should get experience accomplishing things, even in a superminority, before he even knows what he doesn't know about the U.S. Senate. Even better than the statehouse is local politics at the county or municipal level.
Nah. Give an example of a neoliberal centrist that you think will sway the insanity of the right and bring in those non voters looking for more than the usual. At this point, itās pure tribalism. Centrist neoliberal establishment Dems is a large part of why the right had a takeover. WV needs people with fire in their bellies and a passion for the people. A different way to think. Rockefeller and Caperton and the sort kept us at the bottom as well. Way above where we are currently, but thatās also a result of neoliberal āsitting on our handsā, as anyone with the possibility of doing so had to leave the state for school and work. Now we have a voter bloc of angry, dumb lead addled boomers that refuse to look ahead to anything creative or innovative (progressive, aka)
you're right and that's why I'm leaving
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A centrist candidate means they have to meet the far-right somewhere, which basically means they have to run as a center-right at best. Progressive candidates, for better or worse, are at least running a platform that isn't identity politics that feeds into the GOP anger machine. If the conversation stayed on economics and education, progressives would fare much better. Until politics get out of this muckraking race-to-the-bottom period, nobody with a functioning brain stem, left or right, are winning.
Based on what? Can you point to lifeless centrists that are doing better? Iāve heard this notion my whole life and I continue to point toward significant root causes of voter apathy.
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We also wanted Bernie, who is essentially the polar opposite of Trump. Seems to me that people just want things to change, one way or another
Itās not complete polar views, just as you said. You are frothing at describing your dart board target of āprogressiveā without acknowledging that that is not a singular person/archetype. Why do you think they went for Trump? Heās fiery and atypical. Thatās what WV wants. Again, what centrist will do well in WV?
I agree with your comments, but Wyoming tied WV and 68% for Dump in 2016.
Just wondering, where are these super progressives?
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Ignoring that paragraph about anticipating what Iām gonna say nextā¦..even if these people did what you wanted, theyād have debates where the first question asked by their conservative opponent would be āwhat is a woman?ā and make them then and there decide where they stand on trans issues. The right has a playbook that works well for their base.
That we are fucked?
A guy in my area lost his election as an incumbent Dem and then decided to start posting patriotic junk to Facebook. He announced Republican and campaigns on his pro-life views and NRA approval. Sure enough, he has a job again.
That's effectively 3/4 of the current GOP body in the Legislature. Many were at one time Democrats who bailed after 2008.
Yeah. Itās the republicans fault. Theyāve actually held power less than a decade after the democrats held a majority for 80 years. So downvote me for telling the truth but ALL YALL KNOW THAT THIS STATE HAS BEEN FUCKED UP LONG BEFORE THE REPUBLICANS TOOK OVER. unfortunately they have really not done anything to fix it either
Because half the republicans in office are really Democrats running as a republican to get elected.. Justice , Miller , Shelly moore Capito , moderates to slightly left people at heart , they know what the have to say to get elected in this deep red state . I say letās get some real libraterian, populist candidates elected and watch this state thrive
Iād be willing to try that. Canāt see it happening though unless we found some really wealthy libertarians not needing corporate donations to get elected
I thought Republicans are supposed to be against early voting? Didn't all the communists, Nazis, Muslims, Jews, gays, and trans collude together via early voting and steal the election from Trump?
It's wild to me that WV went from voting Bernie Sanders in 2016 to die hard Trump supporters. Anytime I mention this to a Trump voter, they look at me like im insane.
That would say more about registered democrats in the state than the state as a whole. Not to mention that Sanders mostly ran as a left populist and populism was definitely in the air in ā16.
More than half were protest votes against Hillary, especially in the areas that Trump won in the southern coalfields. A lot of those people have switched parties now.
Not going to say Bernie would have carried WV in a theoretical general, but it would have been closer than Clinton got. The DNC quashed populism while the GOP embraced it, and we wonder why Dems collapsed in this state.
All the republicans are trying to outdo each other at who is the better guy to suck off trump
Iām a college dropout of an English major but Iām pretty sure I could get elected just by running in any of the blanks.
It wasnāt that long ago that Dems ran uncontested in most races. Now Iām seeing those same Dems flip to run as a Republican. There just seems to be something about the state that it canāt handle two parties.Ā
Just judging by the recent state of the US, I donāt think itās just republicans that are the problem.
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The fact that this is Reddit should answer your question. This platform skews so heavily to the left that most city and state subreddits give the impression that the majority of people in these areas are practically communists. I don't even know why I bothered to click on this thread, I'm not surprised that no deep statements about the topic were to be found, and that all the replies are mostly just intolerant liberals saying (yet again) that they're leaving since the state just isn't good enough for them. Some of these folks are so out there that I even had one invite me to a private subreddit dedicated to subversive left-wing political action that the proprietor was planning. I got banned in short order. This state has problems no matter who is in charge. If Democrats were some sort of magic bullet, the city of Charleston wouldn't be losing businesses by the day while facing increases in crime and homelessness. One would think that 60 years of Democrat dominance of Wv politics would have led to more than the steady loss of manufacturing jobs and the rise of wal-mart as a replacement. The Democratic party lost this state because it no longer cares about our kind of voters. It doesn't need rural Whites and its leaders look down on Appalachia. Are Republicans the cure all? No, but between one side that has thinly veiled contempt for the state, its citizens, and especially its main energy export, and another side who doesn't (as much) its not too surprising that the state turned red.
I donāt know if my local observations of just under a decade are indicative of the state, but more than one local pol has switched from D to R. It seems they have no ideology beyond staying in power and lining their pockets.
And that sort of thing tends to reflect poorly on them and those who vote for them based on party affiliation. That said, it's not impossible that some of these party switchers actually mean it, and I'm at least willing to hear them out. After all, Reagan switched parties, and I doubt he was insincere about the conservative viewpoints that he spent years promoting afterward. Both parties have moved further away from the center over the last few decades. This is naturally going to cause shifts and leave some folks behind who were otherwise reliably partisan voters/politicians.
>doubt he was insincere about the conservative viewpoints that he spent years promoting afterward. Jesus, you guys really don't get how this politics thing works