I need to come up with a new name or new tag for this series. Maybe “grad-school bullshit”?

In any case, I coincidentally followed up some reading on the philosophy / transracial / transgender / dogpile-on-someone-not-perceived-as-woke story that has gone viral now that it has reached New York magazine with a piece that offers up this gem:

Reflecting on what he called “the woke identity,” Freddie DeBoer observed a tendency among some leftists to forcefully reject the work of persuasion with excuses like, “It’s not my job to educate you.” The not-yet-woke are to be chided, not engaged.

“The problem with making your political program the assembly of a moral aristocracy is that hierarchy always requires exclusivity,” DeBoer argues. “A fundamental, structural impediment to liberal political victory is that their preferred kind of moral engagement necessarily limits the number of adherents they can win. It’s just math: you can’t grow a mass party when the daily operation of your movement involves finding more and more heretics to ostracize from the community.”

Source: Seven Reasons the Left Is Losing – The Atlantic

This is exactly what I’ve experienced several times in the past six months, all from people who generally share the same concerns I do but are so busy looking for a wrong-doer (pardon the pun on my last name — and yes, that’s how you pronounce it) to flog that they’ve piled on me for raising the simplest questions or trying to look at the big picture.

I don’t have much to add … yet. I’m thinking of pitching a piece about how the academic left is suffocating the political left.

But I’d like some input. I’m planning to seek it out, but you’re welcome to leave some here, too. Or email me. Or reach me on social media. Or just yell at me. Whichever. I’m listening. (To most of you, anyway.)