You Can Keep Having An Opinion Even When The Government Also Has It

Rebuts Naomi Kanakia's and Ross Barkan's thesis that being 'anti-woke' in 2025 (when the Trump administration is officially anti-woke) is intellectually bankrupt or complicit. Scott's spine: (1) the symmetric argument would have invalidated anti-racism under Biden, which is absurd, you can hold an opinion the government also holds and think it isn't going far enough or operates in spheres government shouldn't; (2) a careful object-level-vs-meta-level reconstruction of Kanakia, surfacing the embedded Nathan Cofnas argument (either you're a race realist or disparities are unfair, therefore remediation) and its known rejoinders; (3) against Barkan's 'whose side are you on,' the permanent-emergency trap and three defenses of non-emergency heterodoxy: rebuilding Democrats' credibility with voters who distrust them on wokeness, the lottery of fascinations, and the principle that arguments aren't soldiers.

Quality 75 · Excellent. Excellent band, low. Rigorous discourse analysis that steelmans then dismantles the strongest version of the opposing view; the 'you can share the government's opinion' framing and the 'arguments aren't soldiers' / permanent-emergency points generalize well beyond the specific spat. In the family of his strong recent discourse pieces (Twilight Of The Edgelords 77, Gaza 75); a notch in the weeds of two named articles, so low-Excellent.

Claude’s paradigm shift 48 · Moderate. Moderate. The object/meta distinction, arguments-aren't-soldiers, and steelmanning are core LessWrong/Scott method, not new at publication; the application to the 2025 anti-woke debate is fresh.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. Rigorous discourse analysis that steelmans then dismantles the 'you can't share the government's opinion' thesis, with generalizable points ('arguments aren't soldiers'; the permanent-emergency critique). Conceptual influence within discourse-norms discussion, topical, no material change — low RWI.

Humor 1/5 · Lizardman’s Constant. Serious argumentative essay on whether one can be anti-woke while the government also is; dry comic asides (the Clippy-warning fantasy, 'maybe Hitler planted some really cool trees one time', 'arguments aren't soldiers') but humor incidental to the argument → 1.