by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The issue with the term “woke” is it is so loaded now — and so defined by people who use it for whatever they need it to mean — that it’s really hard to pin down an exact meaning. In general, relative to my point of view, to be “woke” means you are a cultural Leftist who has such a ridged orthodoxy on certain issues that you would rather the United States become a MAGA fascist state than give centrists some wiggle room.
But that’s just me. I suppose in the minds of ambitious Republican politicians, “woke” is a nebulous catch-all of far Left agendas that scare your voters. But because being against the “woke cancel culture mob” polls well, you slather the term over anything — and I mean ANYTHING — that it in anyway seems “liberal.”
Because the term “liberal” has become so hated, so loaded within Republican ranks that you can’t use it at all for any reason. You can’t even use it to describe what the United States is — a liberal democracy.
There is no denying that younger generations have different social expectations that can leave old coots like me at a loss. And, yet, at least I’m willing to admit and acknowledge that just because I don’t understand what the youngins think, doesn’t mean it’s automatically wrong.
But the obsession with this or that thing being “woke” in the minds of MAGA Republicans is part of a broader macro problem — the political center no longer exists in the United States and the two sides are receding from each other at an astonishing rate.
Neither side understands the other and the MAGA Right seems determined to either establish a fascist state in the United States or force the issue of a National Divorce.
In the end, once things grow far more existential in nature, the very notion of this or that thing being “woke” will seem rather quaint.
