[Salon] What Will the 'Un-Wokening' Mean for Foreign Policy? Probably nothing

https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/what-will-the-un-wokening-mean-for?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=4362854&post_id=165464514&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=210kv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

What Will the "Un-Wokening" Mean for Foreign Policy?

Probably nothing.

James W. Carden 6/8/25

Tbilisi-In 2024 Donald Trump made historic gains across all minority groups—and some Democrats have gotten the message. A new report from POLITICO notes that the putative 2028 field from which Democrats will select their nominee has been distancing themselves from the woke demagoguery that was perhaps the defining cultural feature of the Biden years. Former Chicago Mayor, White House Chief of Staff and Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emmanuel, has been quoted as saying Democrats ought to “Stop talking about bathrooms and locker rooms and start talking about the classroom.” Emmanuel, Gavin Newsom, Pee Wee Buttigieg, and Elissa Slotkin, are said to be trying to push the party back to the center in what is being called the “great un-awokening.”

It’s a start—I suppose, but what’s the point if these same characters persist in their delusions of American global hegemony.

As I have previously written, within the Democratic Party, the Party of Truman, which is the party of Cold War, of regime change, of democracy promotion, has, since the end of the first Cold War, triumphed over the Party of Roosevelt, the party of diplomacy, cooperation and reciprocity. If the Democrats have any chance of reversing their electoral fortunes, they will have to confront and then repudiate their foreign policy record which, since the start of the Obama years, has set off wars both hot and cold in countries as far afield and removed from core US national interests as Libya (where in place of Gaddafi there are slave markets); Syria (where in place of a secular dictator there rules a former leader of an al-Qaeda offshoot); and in Ukraine (where in place of a democratically elected president, we have the largest and bloodiest war in Europe in 80 years).

Meantime, thanks to the needless, counterproductive, and historically illiterate meddling in democratic elections by the woke mafia that runs the State Department and the NGO-media complex, the US has been busy making enemies out of potential friends and allies across the globe. Not least here in Tbilisi.

That someone with Rahm Emanuel’s biography (Daddy was a terrorist) made it as far up the White House chain of command during Clinton and Obama presidencies as he did is a testament to the selectivity of the security clearance process. His pledge to “un-wokify” the Democrats makes eminent electoral sense, yet his fealty to the foreign power that is currently conducting the greatest mass slaughter since the Holocaust should immediately disqualify him from serious consideration.

Recall, if you will, the embarrassing tantrum Emmanuel threw while serving as Ambassador to Japan when he refused to attend the annual marking of the great Truman war crime over Nagasaki because organizers refused to invite the Israeli ambassador. What country did he think he was representing? Emmanuel is far from alone in suffering from such confusion—Joe Biden, Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken certainly did; Lindsey Graham and Mike Johnson certainly do.

Trump is now arguably to the left (yes) of the aforementioned Democratic contenders on Israel and Palestine. Recall his snubbing of Netanyahu on his recent trip to the Arabian peninsula. A report from AXIOS described Trump as "increasingly fed up" and "upset" about the starving children in Gaza. On his flight back from the Middle East, Trump told reporters, “We’re looking at Gaza, and we got to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving. A lot of people. There’s a lot of bad things going on." Will he actually do anything about it? Probably not. But sympathy is a start. If he recognizes a Palestinian state (as he should and was rumored to be considering), it will give young people and minorities another reason to flee the Left. Meanwhile, the Democrats, despite their claims they have gotten the message, seem destined to remain wedded to the old way of doing business.

James W. Carden is editor of TRR.