How wokeness weakens the West but empowers China

WHNBW really got noticed in the US - I'd spotted a thumbs-up in New York Times (NYT). What recent books would Musa himself recommend?

He advanced Elizabeth Currid-Halkett's The Overlooked Americans, giving the lie to negative perceptions of smaller-town America: "There's a lot more social cohesion, people flourishing, less inequality."Another suggestion was Trump's Democrats, burrowing into forever-Democrat districts that flipped for Trump in 2016.

The author is frank: "Part of the reason Princeton was interested in publishing the book is because I'm a black Muslim." But they weren't getting any identity-focused academic-influencer: "If I hadn't been from a military family, if I'd just grown up in Manhattan, I would've been confident, progressives are on the right side of history."

Cautions the book, "woke" isn't just a left thing. Says Musa now: "Right-leaning symbolic capitalists actually tend to think about social-issues pretty similar to their peers on the left, they're often not much more practically oriented to solving problems."

This happens in Australia too. Sussan Ley "Liberals" are conning and donning Labor tropes - UN net-zero, gender-equity, identity-groups. Shadow Treasurer's new chief-adviser is academic Steven Hamilton, a hyper-immigration shill.

As Musa reminds me, upon Romney's 2012 loss to Obama, Republicans considered going "more hip" on race and gender. Even when Trump 1.0 won in 2016, Musa perceived a "broad continuation". Not so, with Trump 2.0.

Compared with Scandinavia or a Singapore, I complain, Anglosphere nations baulk at putting citizens first. Musa points to the state universities of US, which prefer full-fee cash-cow international students, frustrating "local kids".

World-champion at this scam, I note, is remote Australia. Astonishingly, we glom nigh on 15% of the global international-student trade, faking this as "export education".

Has identity-politics now supplanted equality-politics? "This identitarian approach is actually very compatible with very high levels of inequality," Musa responds. "We can miss, what are the baseline conditions for [suffering] people who are not advantaged. The GDP can go up to the moon, it isn't helping people."

I recall that rentally-challenged dad on ABC-TV, urging a migration pause, but mocked by a Labor Minister. He pitched a protest tent by Albanese's $4m beachside mansion.

Would he have been treated less cruelly, we wondered, had he ticked diversity-boxes? "There's this narrative that all white people have the same privilege, which is false," Musa ventures. "Poor white people, they must really suck. You're born on third base, and you can't get across the home plate?"

Can western nations push back towards greater equality, or will wokeness reign? For the US, Musa expresses "mild optimism".