It is sticky. It's what we have. So one knows what you mean when you talk about wokeness.

I'll just sketch it out. I'm not going to fall into your trap.

Because I was going to say quite famously. I know what I mean by it. I don't like it. But I know what I mean by it.

First and foremost is a way of sorting the world into groups of oppressors and groups of oppressed.

And then in that kind of binary, there becomes a status position that applies to anybody who can

be the victim in that duopoly. So oppressors are oppressed, be the victim. And then this way of thinking of reality as being organized into systems

that most people are not aware of and that, you know, you have to be awakened to, and you have to see

through the systems, and then you're in a state of exception where the normal rules, procedures,

values, and informal norms of liberal democracy no longer apply because you have to

write the kind of power imbalance on behalf of the victims. So you suspend things like

brief speech that in more liberal times you would extend even to your opponents because you

understand that this is a value that everybody benefits from upholding.

But that doesn't apply in times of wokeness.

And so that was certainly something that the left indulged in to great excess when they were ascendant.

And it's been very interesting to see that they haven't been replaced by a movement on the right that is genuinely conservative, that is interested in procedure,

or interested in simply moderating back from the excesses of this kind of illiberalism,

but is in fact replacing it with a very distorted and perverse mirror image of that same excess,

but for the team in charge now, but using also the real force of the

government in the process. And so you have the same kind of cancel culture, you have the same

dictated language, compelled speech, opinions that are verboten, this kind of power play through

neologism and making people say the pre-approved vocabulary. And then you also have this real dislike of any

type of in-group contrary. And there's no space for minority opinions within the group. There's

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