Regular readers know that I always look on the bright side, or at least I do every Good Friday when I post a certain clip from Monty Python’s Life of Brian. But I’m about to look on the bright side again, or at least speculate that there may be a bright side.
Nowadays, so far as Republicans are concerned, every bad thing that happens, happens due to people being woke. For instance, Ron DeSantis would like us to believe that the pigs at Silicon Valley Bank failed because they were woke, and not because they lobbied for a change in the law that allowed the corporate officers to stuff their own pockets while sending the bank into bankruptcy. They’ve been pounding away at it for more than a year now, so there’s every reason to believe that they’ve at least succeeded in getting people to believe that woke is bad.
Let me step back a bit, for after all, we need to define our terms. Well, here’s a fairly concise and accurate definition:
In November, when asked under oath what “woke” meant during a court case, Ryan Newman, DeSantis’ general counsel said, “Generally, the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”
Yet somehow, we are supposed to shudder at anything woke. Of course we all know that the sub-text of that definition is that we shouldn’t address injustice, we should perpetuate it.
Well, the bright side, if we can believe the USA Today pollsters, is that 56% of Americans consider woke a positive term, with 39% (Fox viewers all, presumably) consider it a negative. I take this sort of poll with a cube of salt, but still, it indicates that a substantial portion of Americans are capable of seeing through the bullshit. In fact, making the side even brighter, I think it means that for a substantial number of people, if something’s being pushed by Republicans, it is presumed to be bullshit. The fact that they are congenital liars is becoming clear to the American people, at least, looking on the bright side, we can hope that such is the case. However, we must never forget how P.T. Barnum noted that you can never go broke.
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