Defending the Indefensible: What ‘Woke’ Really Means
Why is woke stuff bad? Because it’s woke. Just ask New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd... who’s come back from the dead end of Hillary hating to become a “respected” pundit. --Just kidding! She’s full of beans as always, grasping for a non-existent contrarian middle.
This week she joined with James Carvelle in the blame game with Wokeness Derails the Democrats, a critique of legislative sausage making in response to Republicans winning the Virginia gubernatorial election.
The question raised by Tuesday’s debacle for Democrats is: Now that President Biden’s high poll ratings and good will are squandered, how do they turn the mishegoss into a winning message?
There’s some truth in what James Carville told Judy Woodruff: “What went wrong is this stupid wokeness. Don’t just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Wash. I mean, this defund the police lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools.”
Woke is code. When Judy Woodruff or whomever hears that word, the next question out of their mouths needs to be “What do you mean by woke?”
https://twitter.com/nhannahjones/status/1457141450450296837?s=20
The correct answer to that question in Republicanese involves a bunch of other code words specific to the things that the right would like to do away with. “Black Lives Matter,” “Defund the Police,” “Socialism,” “Antifa,” CRT, anything having to do with sex outside of procreation, words that make them uncomfortable, and, of course, “science.”
The truth is that conservatives have weaponized ‘woke.’ It’s the twenty-first century equivalent of the N-word, a verbal cue unlocking a panoply of Fox-style bigot propaganda.
Right wing persuasion these days, absent of having programs or ideas to sell, is all about encouraging a sense of victimhood. The Other, whoever they are, are out to take stuff, according to the gospel in Newt Gingrich, Book 1, Verse 22.
This is how propaganda works. Mainstream media’s all-too-often reporting normalizes murky, dog-whistle terminology that is used to stoke white resentment. It’s not new to American politics. There was a time when the shoe was on the other foot, when segregation-loving Democrats stood up for their white southern constituents.
Here’s Lawrence Glickman, from the Three Tropes of White Victimhood in the Atlantic:
White opponents of Reconstruction routinely claimed that “social equality” was being “crammed down our throats, with the aid of the brute force of the negro”; or that white people’s rights were being “trampled into the earth, in order that an aristocracy of four million negroes shall be established upon their graves”; or that Black “iron heels” were stepping on white necks to “crush out their last hope of liberty.” All of these images reversed the reality of power in the postbellum South.
Beyond the not-so-thinly disguised racism, “woke” is also a word aimed at the over 60 crowd (because nobody under 60 uses it) to attach victimhood to situations that are otherwise indefensible.
Let’s talk about Aaron Rogers, who weaseled his way out of getting vaccinated, caught COVID-19, and went on talk radio to make his case.
Let’s cut to the chase. The Green Bay quarterback “lied” (Terry Bradshaw’s words) to the world last summer, claiming he was “immunized.” In fact, he’d gone to a homeopathic doctor, a move the NFL found insufficient when Rogers asked for an exemption. He claimed he was allergic to an ingredient in the Moderna and Pfitzer vaccines, something the NFL would have been glad to confirm, but no proof was given. He claimed to be worried about vaccines causing sterility, something any good doctor could have provided information on.
From NFL.com:
After learning he had contracted the virus, the 37-year-old said he consulted with podcast host Joe Rogan on treatments.
"I've been taking monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, zinc, vitamin C and D, HCQ (Hydroxychloroquine) … and I feel pretty incredible," Rodgers said.
The FDA has not authorized or approved ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19 in
So, after all that stupidity, Aaron Rogers wants to play the victim, saying the “woke crowd” is after him.
He’s getting a ten day suspension for endangering the lives of everybody who he’s had contact with. In a world where justice was served, Colin Kaepernick would have been signed to replace him.
While we’re talking about “woke,” let’s check out Senator Ted Cruz, who decided taking on Sesame Street’s Big Bird for an imaginary Tweet about getting vaccinated for COVID-19 was a worthwhile effort.
https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1457108504498642953?s=20
Enough with the “woke’ already. Democrats can and should walk and chew gum at the same time. Infrastructure’s great. Biden’s not getting credit for half of what he’s doing and/or blame for the other half.
But if there’s no push back on the GOP’s trash talking, the midterms are going to look mighty bleak. Here’s columnist Will Bunch:
I know it’s Political Punditry 101 to decry the tribalism in modern American politics, but that feels ridiculous when the Republican tribe has made it clear it will never disarm. It’s much better for the Democrats to proclaim that they, too, are a tribe — and that its tribal values of expanding democracy and citizenship rights, valuing objective learning and knowledge, and addressing problems with actual governing are the truest American values.
This will probably not gain the Democrats more than one or two votes in Bath County, Va., because those votes are simply not there for the getting. Nor should they be, if the county’s voters are wedded to such antithetical values. But the Democrats lost an incalculable number of votes last Tuesday — and they’re on track to do so in 2022 — by failing to convince their core constituencies they’re fighting for their culture. What are Black and brown voters supposed to think when they see a party fight harder over property taxes in Silicon Valley or the Upper West Side than against voter suppression? What are 18- to 29-year-old voters supposed to think when West Virginia coal millionaire Joe Manchin is making climate policy?
These voters will turn out to fight for their culture — if they are called upon — because we’ve seen it happen before. Young folks and Black and brown voters turned out for Biden in 2020 less because his platform called for expanding child care and more because he pledged to fight for “the soul of America” against Trumpism. Democrats can bring these voters back next year by reminding decent, democracy-loving Americans that their party is the thin blue line between them and book burning, a culture of ignorance, and the end of free and fair elections. That would mean an end to watching the culture war from the sidelines. It means actually fighting to win — and to kill all the bastardization of real American values.
https://twitter.com/z3dster/status/1457487736613527553?s=20
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