Woke Is Not An Insult and We Must Fight Back
This post is hard to write. I feel nearly impotent with rage and it’s recurring, every day, since the 20th. After the rage comes the feelings of abject terror and helplessness. Yes, I am talking about the president and what he and his Project 2025 cronies are doing to dismantle the foundation of the federal government. It’s barely been a week, y’all. I strongly encourage you to read Heather Cox Richardson‘s Substack every single day to keep up with it for as long as you can. Today I am going to talk about a lot of things but my main point is that woke is not an insult. And we MUST fight back.
Last Time
Last term I looked at DJT with derision, and rolled my eyes at everything he did. Because it seemed like he came in after the inauguration completely inept, and unprepared to fulfill the duties of his position, and everyone around him seemed like they were equally scrambled as they made the transition from private business to public governmental officials. He had blunder after blunder and they were horrible, and rage-inducing, but there was an overall feel in my social circles of “look at that buffoon he really has no clue, does he?”
All That Has Changed
That’s not what’s happened this time around. No. He and his people have had time to prepare. They published it all for anyone to see in Project 2025. And now? The moment he was sworn in they came in and began implementing all those horrible initiatives at breakneck speed.
Illegal and Dangerous
Not that he has any legality to be doing all that he’s doing. There’s nothing the government likes more than procedures and standards. There’s a way to do things. that DJT seems to think he’s entirely exempt from. But he’s steamrolling through and no one in his camp is willing to stop him. And there’s seemingly little anyone can do with a president who’s determined he doesn’t have to follow the laws that are there for a fucking reason.
Terrifying
It’s frankly terrifying. I feel sick about their attacks on immigrants. I’m scared shitless about their attacks on equality. And the funding freezes, the firing of all the inspector generals, the attempts to drive out thousands of career federal workers. It’s all terrifying. And the speed at which it’s happening is flat-out astonishing. There are no procedures in place to do any of the horrible things he’s announcing will happen. But he keeps pumping out order after order. And nothing is more in DJT’s sights than Wokeness and DEI.
Woke
I am so, so sick of the word woke. WOKE IS NOT AN INSULT. And it boggles my mind how the word has been twisted into something that IS an insult, something that a conservative magahead is completely repulsed by. Woke is used derisively as if it’s maybe the worst thing ever.
What if we…
Let’s do a little thought exercise. In your mind, I want you to replace the word woke with the word empathy. Automatically, the concepts surrounding the term woke are framed completely differently. Where woke is used as an insult, having empathy is a trait that a logical person wants to embody.
Empathy and Kindness
Someone who is ‘woke’ has empathy for others, and cares about the obstacles another person might face in their lives. A person with empathy can imagine a world where things are made easier for everyone, not just themselves.
It’s honestly as simple as that. Woke means caring about the lives of others. It’s being able to look at things from a different perspective. Woke means you worry about the barriers others might face to get to the same goals that might be easier for you. Woke means that even if something wrong in the world doesn’t affect you, you still want to fix it for those who it does. If something can be done to facilitate a better life, someone who is “woke” wants that. It’s so freaking simple, and I don’t understand how it’s been so skewed and vilified. Well, I do understand how. It was a whole campaign on conservative socials. But it still honestly boggles my mind.
Possible Retribution for BLM Protests?
There is no one pettier than DJT. I wonder if this campaign against DEI is in part a petty punishment for the protests that happened under his tenure as president. It would take a lot to convince me otherwise. And it was a campaign. The rhetoric spun around all the maga circles until the language was thoroughly streamlined. Now, everyone says the same old lines. So predictable.
Let’s Talk About DEI
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0DEI is the new thing the maga heads are attacking. DEI stands for diversity, equality, and inclusion. Never in a million years would I expect that it’s the new ghost in the room, that they’ve spun and now all of a sudden a DEI hire means that person was hired in an inequitable manner.
DEI is a lot of things. It’s about breaking down barriers people of color might experience, and so so much more. It’s about women, it’s about people with disabilities, it’s about people with mental health struggles, it’s about poor people! It’s about LGBTQ people (And as an aside, another whole rant will be dedicated to the trepidation I feel for my fellow rainbow associates.
DEI is ADA, folks. And that’s frankly terrifying on another whole level. I don’t understand why someone would be against all of these things that I was raised to believe were good things. Equality? Inclusivity? Diversity? These are now bad things?
What would an ideal world look like to these people?
No wait. I already know. Cis-white males in charge and everyone else subjugated and oppressed. It took him 9 days to open his first concentration camp. We’re so far down the slippery slope and I hope everyone understands that.
Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street
Deep into a discussion about current events with a friend, I pointed out that a lot of these people need a good preschool lesson on kindness. And it suddenly occurred to me just how backward this all is. We’re upside down, folks. The world they want to make is not the world I was taught, from a very young age, that we as a society should aspire to have.
I was born in 1980 and that means that my early years were peak Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street years. I watched those shows every day. And the messages and morals of these shows became deeply foundational to me. And I know I am not alone. People of my generation were taught about a different world from all this dystopian nightmare that we’re seeing with DJT.
Sesame Street
Let’s remember the world that Sesame Street taught us about. Who lived on Sesame Street? We had a diverse cast of human characters and Muppets. The characters were women, Latino and Hispanic, Black, White, immigrants. There were people of all color, and there were people who had a disability. The Muppets were also diverse and had their own quirks, their own origins, etc.
Sesame Street taught us that this was the world that we wanted to embrace. That diversity is a good thing. That we as a society are working to build a world in which we can listen to the voices of people from all walks of life. Sesame Street helped to give young people of my generation a well-rounded perspective on how things are, and how things should be to allow everyone to live their best life.
Wikipedia points out that:
During Sesame Street’s first season, some critics felt that it should address more overtly such affective goals as social competence, tolerance of diversity, and nonaggressive ways of resolving conflict. The show’s creators and producers responded by featuring these themes in interpersonal disputes between its Street characters.[59] During the 1980s, the show incorporated real-life experiences of its cast and crew, including the death of Will Lee (Mr. Hooper) and the pregnancy of Sonia Manzano
Mr. Rogers
Mr. Rogers, too. He talked to us and helped us to learn about our emotions, how to regulate them, how to feel about ourselves and others. His life lessons came from a place of deep empathy for all people. He wanted us to be able to understand the perspectives of others and how our lives might shape our beliefs and identities. He wanted to teach a generation how to live together.
They Shaped a Generation
Both of these shows taught us, the generation that I belong to, that we want everyone to live a life that is fulfilling, even if they have a disability, even if they are coming into the country from another country. And I embraced that lesson. Deeply. A whole generation of kids did.
The people who think that because I strongly support equality, diversity, and inclusion in my life means that I am some woke liberal who has been brainwashed should remember the worlds that we grew up watching and the morals of the shows we watched as children.
Our Voices
It’s critical at this point we stop doom-scrolling and do SOMETHING, ANYTHING to fight back. We have got to do something. Someone has to do something. Our country is being dismantled. We will be rounded up, and people are going to die. And I cannot stand by and let that happen while I do nothing.
