The difference between “the old” and “the zoomers” is explained, I think, by the difference between MLK and Stokely Carmichael. Both groups admire the dedication of these two men, but I think most of us old folks see that dedication as separate from wokeness, while the zoomers see it as part of wokeness. And that’s why they see wokeness as having a positive side. At the happy hour, Handa explained that wokeness did have an important message to teach (not his exact words) and that’s why zoomers don’t want to be seen as unwoke. Since his first post argued that the truly woke intimidated most zoomers into silence, I asked him what was the positive side of wokeness. In reply, he listed all the good things that the truly woke do. But he listed no positive attribute of wokeness. I agreed with him that the woke are especially well-meaning, dedicated people. And he agreed that well-meaning people could do (and have historically done) some truly horrible things. That left open the question, as he pointed out, of whether wokeness was making the woke well-meaning and dedicated or whether the well-meaning and dedicated tended to get caught in the corrupting trap of wokeness. Carmichael and King, I believe, provide the answer. Before he was woke, Carmichael was a freedom rider and was renowned for his work registering Black voters. At that time, he and King were incredibly dedicated anti-racists and were wide awake regarding social injustice. But they were not woke. Then Carmichael became the personification of the Black Power movement and the Honorary Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party. In the process, he turned on MLK. He said that “integration was irrelevant when initiated by blacks,” i.e. by the civil rights movement. And that integration was an “insidious subterfuge for the maintenance of white supremacy” (UC Berkeley, Oct. 29, 1966). By today’s woke standards, intent doesn’t matter so, yes, that would make MLK a white supremacist. And the Black Panthers, who were at first mainly anti-white, became Marxist-Leninists and required their members to study Mao’s “Little Red Book.” In the end, it was learned that they had brutally tortured and murdered some of their own members. So I think Handa and I agree on what is wrong with wokism and that the woke are most often particularly well-intentioned and dedicated. But I don’t think Carmichael’s wokeness gets credit for his dedication or good works in the civil rights movement. Instead, I think it helped blot out the best politics our country has ever seen — the politics of civil rights. Carmichael quotes: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/blackspeech/scarmichael.html