Woke is just not that offensive to most people

A week ago Kos of Daily Kos reported in a Ukraine update that Russia claimed to have taken the whole of Bakhmut. Ukraine disputed that. Even so a flag ceremony was performed. But the claim doesn’t mean good news for Russia. Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner group would now pull out and leave the defense of the city and any future offense to actual Russian military. All that still leaves Ukraine in a good position on the heights west of town. As for the town, there’s just rubble. The next day Kos explained the term pyrrhic victory. The term is named after King Pyrrhus who defeated the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC, but the victory was so costly that he knew another battle with the Romans would be a defeat. And Kos applied that to Russia taking Bakhmut:

The fight for Bakhmut did change the trajectory of the war. It fixed Russian forces in the area, stopping attempts to advance around Vuhledar, Kreminna, Svatove, and Adviika. It cost Russia around 100,000 casualties, and it depleted Russia’s ammunition stocks. ... Furthermore, Russian forces are so depleted around Bakhmut that small squad-sized Ukrainian pushes are retaking several kilometers of territory in the city’s northern and southern flanks.

A couple days ago Mark Sumner of Kos reported that Russia set two goals for the invasion.

On the day that Russian tanks rolled across the border into Ukraine, Putin set two straightforward goals in a speech to the Russian people: “de-Nazifying” and “demilitarizing” Ukraine. Essentially, that meant bringing down the Ukrainian government and destroying the Ukrainian military.

Putin has repeated those goals many times since then. But by that measure the invasion has failed. The Ukrainian government is stronger with higher domestic and international support. As for the military, Prigozhin is puzzled how Ukraine now has one of the strongest militaries in the world.

“If at the start of the special operation they had 500 tanks, hypothetically speaking,” said the Wagner leader, “now they have 5,000 tanks. If 20,000 men were able to fight before, now it’s 400,000. … F*ck knows how, but we’ve militarized Ukraine.”

I’d explain how it happened – attack a country and it’s going to beef up its military – but I doubt he’d listen. Does he not understand something so basic? Yesterday Sumner reported not much is going on. There are skirmishes along the front, but not much movement. As for Bakhmut, the daily attacks and shelling have stopped. Now that the Wagner group is gone Russia has little desire or ability to press westward from the town. The Society of Secret Library Friends tweeted another reason keeping books out of kids’ hands is a bad idea. The book that’s mentioned is on several banned books lists.

A 10-year-girl in Delaware picked up “It’s Perfectly Normal” while at the library with her mother. When they came home, she showed her mom the chapter on sexual abuse and said, “This is me.” She was being abused by her father, and it was the first time she’d spoken about it. The father was convicted, and the judge said, “There were heroes in this case. One was the child, and the other was the book.” Also a hero was the librarian who made this book available on the shelves. The author wrote “I wish we never had to talk with kids about any of these aberrant behaviors. But we have to do so because kids have a right to have accurate information that can keep them healthy and safe. They need to know how to get help to make any abusive behavior stop.”

This thread is based on a story in Bookriot with the title Sex Ed Books Don't "Groom" Kids and Teens. They Protect Them. I’m sure that implies those that banned these books don’t want kids protected. Capital and Main of the Kos community explains how the climate crisis is also a health crisis. Bugs and bacteria can adapt to a changing environment faster than humans can.

The scientific press is filled with examples of how the changing climate is opening new pathways for insects following the heat, fungi following the moisture, algal blooms proliferating in warming waters fed by phosphate-based agricultural runoff—and how all are being buffeted by the frequency of the extreme swings in temperature and rainfall.

The species of mosquito that is most responsible for transmitting some nasty diseases is expanding its range in the US. Ticks that carry Lyme disease have a longer season. Warmer temps help the proliferation of the fungus that carries Valley fever and rates are rising. Ocean warming helps spread a bacteria that infects shellfish and is easily transmitted to humans, where it causes digestive and skin ailments. And many more. In an Earth Matters report for Kos Meteor Blades discussed several interesting articles. Here’s a few of them. Stan Cox, writing for Climate Dreams reminds us technology alone cannot get us back to where we were or need to be. Even though there has been a tremendous growth in wind and solar the use of fossil fuels for generating electricity has dropped only a bit. And as we shift to electricity and need batteries for storage, our need of lithium, cobalt, and nickel is several times known reserves. That need will never end as billions of tons of batteries will die and need to be replaced. Recycling won’t solve that problem. Tara Lohan at The Relevator wrote there is now a race to plant trees. But this isn’t a silver bullet.

The World Economic Forum launched a 1 trillion trees initiative in 2020. The Bonn Challenge aims to restore 865 million acres of deforested landscapes by 2030. Individual countries have set their own targets, too, like Canada’s announcement to plant 2 billion trees in 10 years. These reforestation efforts have been spurred by the need to store more carbon to fight climate change and help create habitat for dwindling biodiversity. Planting more trees can also help reduce air pollution, prevent erosion, and provide cooling shade for everyone from city dwellers to creek-swimming salmon. Seems like a perfect solution to a lot of problems, including two of our biggest: climate change and biodiversity loss. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it may seem. There are a lot of ways that tree planting can go awry—especially as people aim to hit arbitrary metrics. This includes planting trees in the wrong places, like in native grasslands or wetlands. Or planting nonnative trees that take up too much water or create other dangerous conditions.

Steve Hanley at CleanTechnica reported that achieving climate justice means there should be a “polluter pays” price tag, the amount fossil fuel companies should pay to clean up the environmental harm they’ve done. Over all this should be more than $200 billion a year. Oil companies should be able to pay this easily. Saudi Aramco should pay $43 billion a year – out of profits a bit less than for times that. ExxonMobile should pay $18 billion out of a profit of $56 billion. Shell and BP together should pay close to $31 billion out of a combined profit of $68 billion. Affording it isn’t the issue. The official word is the debt ceiling won’t be hit until June 5. And it looks like most Republican members of Congress will be on Memorial Day break until then. Perhaps negotiators will do better with them out of town. On Wednesday Joan McCarter of Kos reported that McCarthy and a lot of other Republicans are shouting: It’s not our fault, don’t blame us! Alas, the Capitol Hill press corps has bought that line. It also seems Biden has bought into it as well. McCarter wrote:

House Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal put her finger on the problem of both messaging and the media on Wednesday. It’s a good lesson for the White House on how to set a narrative. A reporter asked if progressives “are ready to tank” a deal. “No, no, no,” she said. “That is exactly the problem. When the media reports this as not their fault.” “Let’s tell the truth here,” she continued. “We are not tanking anything.” That’s the message.

No word on whether that’s changed the press corps thinking and reporting. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community reported Rep. Matt Gaetz said the quiet part out loud, when referring to the Republican debt ceiling bill the House passed several days ago. Said Gaetz:

I think my conservative colleagues, for the most part, support Limit, Save, Grow, and they don’t feel like we should negotiate with our hostage.

Glad we got that cleared up. Kos reported that Republican candidate Nikki Haley took her line about wokeness being a “virus more dangerous than any pandemic” to a gathering of New England business leaders. It didn’t go over well. So Kos discussed that the skewering of wokeness that plays so well with the base is flailing with others.

The reason is simple: While they once focused on convincing the broader public about their issues with a single-minded ability to clearly define their boogeymen, their media bubble has them turning inward. They agitate themselves into a tizzy, happy to ignore an outside world that remains perplexed at the hysteria and oftentimes simply bored. Ultimately, for a party that once pretended to talk about the issues that “real America” cared about, they’ve surrendered any such pretenses. You can bet that just about every Republican disapproves of the word “liberal,” or “Joe Biden.” But when one-third of Republicans are okay with “woke,” you know you have a problem. Woke is just not that offensive to most people.

Add to that the accusation that Fox News is woke. Yeah, their employee handbook discusses that transgender people are allowed to use the restroom of their choice and other related good stuff. There is a reason why they rant about being woke. The more they rant the more likely they are to get airtime on conservative media. And that is a lot more fun than actually discussing health care or climate change. Though Republicans can’t seem to define “woke” I’ll give it a shot: Any thing or concept that interferes with the perception of able straight white Christian guys are and are naturally supposed to be at the top of the social hierarchy with the right to oppress everyone else is “woke.” Jesse Duquette tweeted a cartoon, introducing it by writing:

Rightwing death cultists would rather 8-year-olds apply tourniquets than tenderness. F--- em.

The cartoon shows one child in a pool of blood, a second child bleeding profusely, and a third trying to help the second and saying:

At least this isn’t as traumatic as having to read books about black and gay people!

Ted Littleford tweeted a cartoon of a badass dude bristling with guns and with “Second Amendment” tattooed across his belly, saying:

Why do you let morons like me decide my guns are more precious than your child?

Dave Whamond tweeted a cartoon:

[Donkey:] It’s so sad that our country is so divided! [Elephant:] No, it isn’t!