31/01/2023
Words matter.
For your consideration: Woke
Originally used in the Black community meaning "keep your eyes open", it more recently took on the meaning of understanding and awareness of social issues.
Now, for the purposes of this little commentary, there are two sides: Left and Right. It is appropriate as the middle doesn't really use the term.
So where were we...? Oh yes, the left adopted the word, as if they were under attack. As if all at once the complicated social ills that have affected, and continue to affect, society for 100 years was just discovered, the left decided that as a generation, they were the ones most profoundly impacted. Life was too hard, harder than ever before and more unjust.
The right just couldn't have this so they too adopted the word into their language, but as a negative description of the left. To be "woke" was to be soft, weak, and, most likely, communist. They were definitely socialists and on top of that, lazy.
The right is all about freedom. Freedom of movement, freedom from "big government", freedom to own guns that probably aren't even in movies. Its about the freedom of speech, which the left is against for their "cancel culture" agenda.
This is where it gets muddy...because now the right is an equal player in the cancel culture wars.
As the left was a movement for its followers to remove their support for those they saw as unfavorable or with intolerant views, the right is taking it one step further and building this same "cancel culture" and entrenching it into laws.
Although Gov. Ron DeSantis is probably the most well known purveyor of "conservative wokefullness" (I doubt that's a phrase that will catch on...), he's not the only one. To be clear, the left is still doing this too although with 24hr news cycles, the right is getting all the press at the moment.
So my question to you is: If we are to have a society where freedom to speak, freedom of religion, freedom to protect oneself and ones family, freedom to think and have opinions, and the freedom to discuss these opinions in open forums without being "cancelled" by either left or right, how do we do so without a democratic society?
The whole "woke" nomenclature will end but the right's blatant, and they are just as blatant as the left, moves to limit free speech unless of a conservative lean or to punish private companies through their leadership for even moderate statements, is a red flag. Its government telling people what they should be comfortable in saying just as much as the left is using cancel culture to do the same thing.
Don't be fooled, my friends on the left or the right. There is no freedom in trusting others to think for you or limit information. It's not just opening the door or creating a slippery slope, its pushing you down the mountain.
Like many in this age of stupidity, I face an existential question: Am I woke? I assume not, because Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hasn’t tried to ban me.
