That’s only because most “woke” people are radical liberals, who have good intentions but don’t have a scientific view of political economy and still have a soft-imperialist worldview. As conditions in the imperial core decline, they succumb to despair. The failing power of the empire and the rising resistance of the global south instills them with a sense of nihilism, because we are supposed to be enlightened and civilized (though we can no longer be said to be, with the rise of overt fascism in the west), while our enemies are regressive, authoritarian barbarians - two equal evils fighting each other, with no hope for anything better.
You only need to gain a greater understanding of the world, and particularly of imperialism, to break out of this mindset. We’ve occupied a privileged place in the world, bought off by the oligarchs to ensure support at home while they plunder the world. But this was always a gilded cage. It’s easy to look at the gold leaf peeling off the cage, revealing the rusting steel beneath it, and despair at how the world is getting uglier, but this only reveals that you haven’t imagined a life outside the cage. The rust is ugly, but it also weakens the substrate.
In short, the tide has already turned, and the day of liberation is approaching. It can’t come quick enough, but it’s coming nevertheless. If wokeness has made you despair, it’s only because you’re half awake - gripped by sleep paralysis and tormented by shadows. You only need to wake up, to become more woke, to see that the sun is beginning to rise.
There’s a simpler explanation: people who aren’t shitbags are made unhappy by being beaten down by shitbags, and the shitbags becoming more openly shitty.
You don’t need to bring a geopolitical philosophy into it.
The failing power of the empire and the rising resistance of the global south instills them with a sense of nihilism, because we are supposed to be enlightened and civilized (though we can no longer be said to be, with the rise of overt fascism in the west), while our enemies are regressive, authoritarian barbarians - two equal evils fighting each other, with no hope for anything better
No one is being instilled with a sense of nihilism because of a loss of American influence in the global south, and no one really gives a shit about our enemies and their moral character. People care about stuff like “healthcare”, “poverty”, “civil rights”, “not burning the world”.
The world, and life itself, is complicated and messy in 2026, and an awareness of it and the constant, always on vigilance of keeping up with all of the moral responsibility of trying to build a life that allows you to look yourself in the mirror every day in a world built to usher everyone into maintaining exploitative systems is draining and crushing.
If you don’t have to do that because you’re either ignorant of the machinery you’re part of, or don’t care, you just get to go about your life.
e: I misread your original post, I thought you were saying that both sides in the war were shitbags. I still think it’s too simple of an explanation in general, though. Such circumstances deserve a deeper look.
Why do you think things need a more complex explanation?
Do you really feel like this Iran incursion is somehow significant feeling compared to Iraq or Afghanistan?
Do you actually think that the hegemonic status of the US really enters into the consideration of most people, to say nothing of having a significant impact on their emotions? Do you think an awareness of that would actually make people feel better?
people openly supporting nazi’s are indeed simply shitbags
and yes non shitbags are sad to see people suffer, that is called empathy, it is only confusing to the shitbag party in the US because they generally lack said empathy
Yeah, definitely, but the world is much more complex than that. The current state of affairs is a result of historical contingency, and it isn’t going to last forever. As I have attempted to get across, the tide is already changing.
My point is that, even if the meme is true and woke people tend to be sadder than reactionaries, it’s because they aren’t woke enough. For instance, you have generally well-intentioned progressive liberals who support equal rights and oppressed people at home, i.e. they support gay and transgender people against social reactionaries, but when they see Iran and its religious and socially conservative allies actually striking hard at the fascist empire, actually turning the tide back, and rather than being happy about it they just see it as two equal evils fighting each other. They don’t see the broader situation and context - they’re woke to discrimination, but they aren’t woke to imperialism.
For the last 600 years, the world has been dominated by European empires. These empires enriched themselves through their colonies, using that wealth to grow ever more powerful and take over a greater and greater proportion of the world, eventually overcoming and dominating their former equals in India and China.
World War I was fought to divide up the world between blocs of these empires, with the Anglo-French-American bloc triumphing and taking the holdings of Germany and the old Ottoman empire (a relic of the previous era), and breaking up Austria-Hungary. But this arrangement was not stable - Germany wasn’t down for the count, and more importantly, the old European empires were declining while America was rising.
This was settled into a more stable system with the end of WW2 and the decolonization that followed, but this decolonization was only giving way to a new kind of imperialism - that of finance, currency manipulation, loans with conditions that made extraction easier. Soft power, in other words, with the occasional bout of violent domination. But the violent domination wasn’t official conquest - rather, new and more amenable governments were installed, enabling the continued expropriation of labour and resources from the colonized countries. Thus, the new empire, formed from the old European empires but headed by America, came to dominate the world from World War 2 until today.
Social progress tends to follow from economic progress. The women’s rights movement was born out of women entering the workplace. The gay rights movement emerged in the post-war period of prosperity. The colonized countries of the global south did not have these same prosperity, and social progress came to them later than in the imperial core. At the same time, aspects of social progress often came to seen as aspects of colonialism and foreign domination, clashing with traditional culture. Indeed, the imperial core uses socially regressive attitudes and policies in the colonized world to justify our domination over them. Just look at the war with Iran (the repressive mullah regime that executes gays and makes women wear veils) for an example. They aren’t as developed as us, and therefore we must crush and dominate them, and seize their natural resources for private capital. Thus, a lack of social progress in the global south (or third world, or whatever you want to call it) creates the justification for imperial domination, while imperial domination creates the conditions that hinder progress.
The victory of the colonized and the overthrow of the imperial yoke will create the conditions that foster social progress. It’s a precondition, so interpreting the socially conservative Iranian state resisting the American empire as “one evil fighting another” is wrong-headed. It’s historically progressive. The victory of Iran will be a victory for the world, which will help move history forth into a new post-imperial era. 600 years of this, over half a millennia, and it’s finally coming to a close. There is therefore every reason to hope and little reason to despair. Woke liberals do not see this, because they are not woke enough.
Oh. Yes, I think we can. It will come with progress. Racism is a powerful tool the ruling class uses to keep people divided and weak, but it can’t last forever.
That’s only because most “woke” people are radical liberals, who have good intentions but don’t have a scientific view of political economy and still have a soft-imperialist worldview. As conditions in the imperial core decline, they succumb to despair. The failing power of the empire and the rising resistance of the global south instills them with a sense of nihilism, because we are supposed to be enlightened and civilized (though we can no longer be said to be, with the rise of overt fascism in the west), while our enemies are regressive, authoritarian barbarians - two equal evils fighting each other, with no hope for anything better.
You only need to gain a greater understanding of the world, and particularly of imperialism, to break out of this mindset. We’ve occupied a privileged place in the world, bought off by the oligarchs to ensure support at home while they plunder the world. But this was always a gilded cage. It’s easy to look at the gold leaf peeling off the cage, revealing the rusting steel beneath it, and despair at how the world is getting uglier, but this only reveals that you haven’t imagined a life outside the cage. The rust is ugly, but it also weakens the substrate.
In short, the tide has already turned, and the day of liberation is approaching. It can’t come quick enough, but it’s coming nevertheless. If wokeness has made you despair, it’s only because you’re half awake - gripped by sleep paralysis and tormented by shadows. You only need to wake up, to become more woke, to see that the sun is beginning to rise.
There’s a simpler explanation: people who aren’t shitbags are made unhappy by being beaten down by shitbags, and the shitbags becoming more openly shitty.
You don’t need to bring a geopolitical philosophy into it.
No one is being instilled with a sense of nihilism because of a loss of American influence in the global south, and no one really gives a shit about our enemies and their moral character. People care about stuff like “healthcare”, “poverty”, “civil rights”, “not burning the world”.
It’s actually even simpler than that.
The world, and life itself, is complicated and messy in 2026, and an awareness of it and the constant, always on vigilance of keeping up with all of the moral responsibility of trying to build a life that allows you to look yourself in the mirror every day in a world built to usher everyone into maintaining exploitative systems is draining and crushing.
If you don’t have to do that because you’re either ignorant of the machinery you’re part of, or don’t care, you just get to go about your life.
e: I misread your original post, I thought you were saying that both sides in the war were shitbags. I still think it’s too simple of an explanation in general, though. Such circumstances deserve a deeper look.
Why do you think things need a more complex explanation?
Do you really feel like this Iran incursion is somehow significant feeling compared to Iraq or Afghanistan?
Do you actually think that the hegemonic status of the US really enters into the consideration of most people, to say nothing of having a significant impact on their emotions? Do you think an awareness of that would actually make people feel better?
people openly supporting nazi’s are indeed simply shitbags
and yes non shitbags are sad to see people suffer, that is called empathy, it is only confusing to the shitbag party in the US because they generally lack said empathy
Yeah, definitely, but the world is much more complex than that. The current state of affairs is a result of historical contingency, and it isn’t going to last forever. As I have attempted to get across, the tide is already changing.
x to doubt
I dont understand
My point is that, even if the meme is true and woke people tend to be sadder than reactionaries, it’s because they aren’t woke enough. For instance, you have generally well-intentioned progressive liberals who support equal rights and oppressed people at home, i.e. they support gay and transgender people against social reactionaries, but when they see Iran and its religious and socially conservative allies actually striking hard at the fascist empire, actually turning the tide back, and rather than being happy about it they just see it as two equal evils fighting each other. They don’t see the broader situation and context - they’re woke to discrimination, but they aren’t woke to imperialism.
For the last 600 years, the world has been dominated by European empires. These empires enriched themselves through their colonies, using that wealth to grow ever more powerful and take over a greater and greater proportion of the world, eventually overcoming and dominating their former equals in India and China.
World War I was fought to divide up the world between blocs of these empires, with the Anglo-French-American bloc triumphing and taking the holdings of Germany and the old Ottoman empire (a relic of the previous era), and breaking up Austria-Hungary. But this arrangement was not stable - Germany wasn’t down for the count, and more importantly, the old European empires were declining while America was rising.
This was settled into a more stable system with the end of WW2 and the decolonization that followed, but this decolonization was only giving way to a new kind of imperialism - that of finance, currency manipulation, loans with conditions that made extraction easier. Soft power, in other words, with the occasional bout of violent domination. But the violent domination wasn’t official conquest - rather, new and more amenable governments were installed, enabling the continued expropriation of labour and resources from the colonized countries. Thus, the new empire, formed from the old European empires but headed by America, came to dominate the world from World War 2 until today.
Social progress tends to follow from economic progress. The women’s rights movement was born out of women entering the workplace. The gay rights movement emerged in the post-war period of prosperity. The colonized countries of the global south did not have these same prosperity, and social progress came to them later than in the imperial core. At the same time, aspects of social progress often came to seen as aspects of colonialism and foreign domination, clashing with traditional culture. Indeed, the imperial core uses socially regressive attitudes and policies in the colonized world to justify our domination over them. Just look at the war with Iran (the repressive mullah regime that executes gays and makes women wear veils) for an example. They aren’t as developed as us, and therefore we must crush and dominate them, and seize their natural resources for private capital. Thus, a lack of social progress in the global south (or third world, or whatever you want to call it) creates the justification for imperial domination, while imperial domination creates the conditions that hinder progress.
The victory of the colonized and the overthrow of the imperial yoke will create the conditions that foster social progress. It’s a precondition, so interpreting the socially conservative Iranian state resisting the American empire as “one evil fighting another” is wrong-headed. It’s historically progressive. The victory of Iran will be a victory for the world, which will help move history forth into a new post-imperial era. 600 years of this, over half a millennia, and it’s finally coming to a close. There is therefore every reason to hope and little reason to despair. Woke liberals do not see this, because they are not woke enough.
But how would we?
How would we what? I’m not sure what you mean.
No longer be racist
Oh. Yes, I think we can. It will come with progress. Racism is a powerful tool the ruling class uses to keep people divided and weak, but it can’t last forever.