TT 451: Musa al-Gharbi: WE HAVE NEVER BEEN WOKE
great new book
To some extent We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite by
prepared me for the election result. Highly recommended! It’s a breezy read by academic standards and I even laughed out loud a few times.To understand al-Gharbi’s argument, I needed to not just check my priors at the door, but also admit that I am part of the problem, part of the “new elite” of al-Gharbi’s title.
Al-Gharbi’s preferred phrase is “symbolic capitalists,” a group that has also been called “liberal elites,” “the professional-managerial class,” or “the creative class.” His book is packed with hard data that proves that this class — my class, roughly the top 20% — has continued to do better and better than the lower 80%, which has done worse and worse.
Today al-Gharbi re-posted an article from a year ago that proved to be devastatingly prescient about Trump’s win last night.
Hey, liberals are not the only problem. Hyland Harris told me this morning, “MAGA is the trojan horse for Elon Musk and JD Vance,” and that’s the genuinely unsettling part: bad actors using populism 101 for truly nefarious corporate purposes.
But. Today, when I’m casting around for who to blame, I’m also looking in the mirror. If you think I am wrong to do so, I suggest you read We Have Never Been Woke by Musa al-Gharbi.
Geoff Shullenberger does a fine overview of the book in his review, “Your Awokening isn’t Special.”
(Al-Gharbi’s quote, “If I’m trying to convince people not to bomb Syria, then I should be writing to people who do want to bomb Syria” makes a good point.)
I'm in the midst of al-Gharbi's book too, and I just read his article you linked to as well. My usual way to TL;DR it is to link to Stevie Wonder's classic hit "You Haven't Done Nothin'"!. Of course, linking to the music is a bit like the old tantric path to enlightenment; if you're already there, it nails in what you know already, but if you're not there, it's almost certain not to get you there however hot and pleasant it is.