Woke

June 12, 2023

Republicans are obsessed with the word “woke,” but famously are having a very difficult time actually defining what it means. They approach woke the same way Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart approached obscenity. He wasn’t sure how to define obscenity, but he knew it when he saw it. I suspect Republicans don’t know what woke is either, but they believe that they know what it is when they see or hear it.

Republicans apologized for the mob that attacked Congress on January 6th. Trump wants to pardon the hundreds that were convicted. Tucker Carlson denied it ever happened. Others blamed it on the FBI and AntiFa. However, the faux tough guys on the right, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, believe they are threatened by the woke mob, which is coming soon for a school or bathroom in their neighborhood.

The anti-woke mob gets riled up by an alphabet soup of social concepts like DEI, ECG, BLM and LGBTQ. If it has initials, they hate it. It’s called acronymophobia. I suspect they are clueless about what is behind the initials. It is a lot easier to hate concepts than to make an effort to understand what they really mean.