I don’t agree with TPM Reader PC on the inevitability of this. But I think he captures certain key dynamics of language and power.

I think it is important to view the “wokeness” field of battle as primarily and initially as a raw display of shifting power relationships.

In this light, the use of constantly changing norms of language is not a bug but an epiphenomenal feature.

In a sense, the whole rightwing fear and pushback against “wokeness” is a tacit acknowledgement that, actually, the culture war is already over and they lost.

From TPM Reader DW …

Great piece today…I had several phone conversations with Shelby in the early 2000s. I grew up in Memphis, but have lived in NYC since 1997. What started as a discussion about The Moviegoer with Wynton Marsalis turned into a discussion on white southerners and race. Wynton has been a mentor to me, and through him I’ve gotten to score several films for Ken Burns. Shelby is difficult to pigeon hole, as you know.

I’ve been making my way through your emails about this morning’s post on language. I’ll likely be publishing some of them later. One was from longtime TPM Reader NG who writes: “I am wondering if TPM could do a piece on the African-American use of the term “woke,” which has been appropriated and turned into a culture war cliche that ridicules black history/struggles and either self-victimizes or self-aggrandizes the person who bandies the term about.”

If you’ve watched even short clips of the Fox News host’s nightly show, you know the look.

I started the day thinking about two very disparate topics that intersect at a point that has been on my mind a lot recently. If you can indulge me for a moment I’ll try to explain how they connect and the larger point.

Remember Shelby Foote?

I was reminded of him recently because I was reading a couple things about the novelist Walker Percy. And it turns out the two of them had a lifelong literary friendship going all the way back to middle school. Foote, a Mississippian, wrote a bunch of novels and histories about the Civil War. I only know about him because he was a central figure in Ken Burns pathbreaking documentary The Civil War, which came out about 30 years ago and created the model for all the other documentaries he’s done since. Many of Burns’ core techniques seem obvious now. The visual idioms seem like they’re part of the cinematic argot of our culture. But they were actually quite new. It was remarkable at the time how he managed to bring to life a period which had only a limited photographic record, no video and no audio.

In any case, back to Shelby Foote, who died in 2005 at the age of 88.

From TPM Reader ED …

I was ten when we landed in the US and I’m 60 now. I’ve been a citizen for 40 years and had a great life and career here. All along, I loved and trusted the goodness and fairness of this country in a way that a US born citizen probably can’t relate to. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best in the world, and I felt lucky and privileged to live and retire here. Like Colonel Vindman exemplified in his testimony, “Here, right matters”. After Trump, I’ll never see the country or its people in the same light again. I’ve been disappointed and disillusioned in US institutions and frankly it’s people. So many voted for him twice! (I blame Fox for that, but that’s another subject)