There is a difference between changing your mind and shifting your tactics, between evolving in your views and abandoning them because they’ve become unpopular or politically perilous. When Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, quoting a political ally, recently suggested to ABC News, with a laugh and a smile, that “Woke 1 was crazy,” she became the most prominent progressive figure distancing herself from wokeism. Ideas once upheld in doctrinaire terms are now treated as an embarrassing phase.

James Talarico, the Texas Democrat running for a U.S. Senate seat, has admitted that “there are some statements that I’ve made that I certainly regret,” and that some of his old comments may now seem “cringey.” Some commentators on the left have joined in the revisionism, acknowledging that cancel culture may have occasionally gone too far. It’s a noteworthy evolution, especially for anyone who was around to witness the die-on-this-hill dogmatism of the peak woke era — say, circa summer 2020.

So, before that time goes farther down the memory hole, I have one question for the formerly woke: If you can dismiss it so casually now, how much of it did you truly believe at the time? How much was conviction, how much was a pose, how much was groupthink, how much was fear? If you did believe it, jettisoning it now should take something more than a sheepish grin. You should explain the shift, not just explain it away.

My hope is for a modicum of intellectual accountability from the political class. When the formerly woke look back, what specifically do they now regard as crazy or cringey? Do they regret particular beliefs, or just the provocative ways they expressed them? Not every politician must explicitly disavow what came before, but when political leaders reject their own old ideology, the price of elision should be higher.