That is the topic of my latest column for The Free Press.  Excerpt:

It is important to distinguish between the positive side of wokeism and the unreasonable side. The positive side supported gay rights and discouraged racism in the public sphere. The unreasonable side brought us cancel culture, stifled discussion, insisted on very particular views of race and gender identity, boosted DEI and other race-discriminatory policies, and generally made America a more intolerant place. It was most of all about who had the right to steer the agenda of public discourse, and who had the right to push out dissenters.

The unreasonable side, since it was about power and control, had negative vibes built into its core. Fortunately, American society pushed back against many of the most objectionable manifestations of those negative vibes, but did we get rid of the negative vibes themselves? I do not think so. The American people still seem pretty low in trust, unhappy with America’s position in the world, glum about the economy and cost of living, and increasingly skeptical of both AI and billionaires. That is all happening at a time when the American economic situation, while mixed, is by no means as terrible as it was in, say, 2009. Happiness and mental health seem to be lagging behind the country’s actual achievements.

So what has been happening? The forces behind wokeism no longer command so much public attention and respect when they argue about terms and pronouns. Instead, left-adjacent movements have arisen with a contrasting emphasis on action, and often action of a terrible sort. California is considering, for instance, an unworkable tax on billionaires in the state, one that even most left-leaning Democratic politicians do not support. It might nevertheless pass through via referendum…

What’s more, it is possible we are entering an era with a new culture of assassinations. There have been assassinations of Charlie Kirk, of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and several attempts on the life of President Trump. It can be debated how many of these killers had direct connections to the political left, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that left-wing rhetoric about democracy destruction helped make such actions conceivable.

The social energies of the American left have moved away from the realm of speech and into plans for concrete action, whether in politics, through attempted wealth confiscations, or through organizing violence. In retrospect, wokeism, for all its problems, was a relatively harmless way of distracting activists and keeping them  Negative busy with wars over words—a less-bad allocation of social energies than what we are now seeing. So while I would not say I long for the return of high wokeism, I recognize it has been replaced by a left-adjacent movement that is worse.

Worth a ponder, do read the whole thing.  I should note I do not let the right off the hook either, though the column is mainly about what has succeeded Wokeism.  Negative emotional contagion has affected both the left and right wings today.