Since we are in a bit of a national holding pattern around the “Anticipation of Trump Arraignment” moment, I am going to take this bit of an interlude to revisit the prickly issue of what I now will call-out as: “Anti-Woke Derangement Syndrome.”
I can’t tell you how often I continue to come across commentary and criticism of the phenomenon of being “Woke.” And so much of it is in the nature of, “I was (or voted as) a Democrat until the woke left came along. I cannot abide this intolerant leftism or people and a party that tolerate it; and so I quit.”
I’ve recently addressed this fundamental misreading of what is “woke,” but feel compelled to do so again.1
Woke is US (of A). Always has been and hopefully always will be.
Ours is still a grand experiment in democratic governance based on the Founders’ extraordinary vision of a nation: “Of, by, and for the People” with “Liberty, Equality, and Justice for All.” Thankfully, throughout our history, patriots and other democracy-driven strivers have carried-on exploring, enlarging, and enhancing the depth and breadth of our understanding of democracy and its applications in governance and in the rest of our lives.
Almost all of these strivers have annoyed the “powers that be.” They were the woke of their time:
Free the slaves? How offensive to God and Nature. This is very annoying. Let’s fight a Civil War over that.
Give freed slaves the rights of actual citizens? Hell no. This is very annoying. We can’t abide those “uppity Blacks” and their elite liberal supporters Let’s agree to fight this for the next century or as long as it takes thereafter.
Enable women to vote? Are you kidding? This is very annoying. How preposterous.
Explicitly put into law the fact and protection of equal rights for women? Ridiculous. Very annoying. Of course women are equal already and, anyhow, whatever.
Give full and equal the rights to gay people? This would upset the natural order of things. Very annoying. Forget about it.
Women speak out about and demand remedies for discrimination and abuse in the workplace? How unfair and annoying to me (Too?)!
Black Lives Matter? DEI? Depends. On whether it upsets me.
Recognition and rights for people who don’t inhabit, fit into, or accept traditional gender and race categorization (because, really, show me a time when that really hurt anyone?)? Clearly just a bunch of rabid “Woke” Nazis.
In all of these cases and so many more, to be on the “wrong” side of these quests was/is often to be called-out, confronted, or at least, to be made uncomfortable. Long-established cultural and institutional norms are challenged.
The response to this can range from, “Geeze, I need to rethink my assumptions.” to some form of “Anti-Woke Derangement Syndrome” (AWDS) that can manifest as anything from tuning-out to literally starting a Civil War.
Well, thank God and Country for these great woke explorers, pioneers, and persistent carriers of the torch of democracy and all of its potential!
Is each succeeding wave of such blazing the trail of democracy upsetting to many (mostly white men)? Yep. Does each succeeding and often overlapping quest for actual — and not just formalistic trappings of — Democracy make a lot of people nervous and uncomfortable? Yep!
Does being “woke” in all of these instances put one at the leading edge, or on-the-pulse, of democracy in the making?
Has each of these quests and many others been indispensable to the ongoing enhancement of our understand of the Founders’ vision and to the achievements of the promise and potential of democracy? Yep.
Has each of them had elements and/or moments of hubris and overreach? Yep.
Does this make any of these quests any less critical to our history and to the promise and potential of democracy?
Nope.
All of this and more is the price and the privilege of being a party to our nation’s extraordinary, if not fully conceived, experiment.
So, let’s give the brave and sometimes reckless pioneers a break — especially the young ones that we really need to nurture so that they are able to carry-on these explorations. Let’s give them a hand
Let’s help them carry the torch.
There’s a reason that Lady Liberty sits in New York’s harbor and that this matters not just to us but to freedom- and democracy- seekers everywhere.
The “woke” in our modern parlance are just another wave of people yearning to breathe free. We should welcome them. We are their affirmation and they are ours.
Let’s conquer AWDS.
Woke is, and hopefully always will be, US (of A)!
I acknowledge that this is primarily the critic of “Wokeism” from the political liberal-center to the political right. There is also an important set of critiques of “Wokeism” from the political left-of-center to the political left that I do not address here, but will do so in a forthcoming post.