Wake me up when it's over

What is Woke?

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/ WOHK) is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination".

So this must mean they aren't alert to Racial Prejudice and Discrimination?

I beleive that is is far deeper than that. 

I was recently asked by a Republican friend (he gave me a Trump hat to add to my Trump Bear collection), If I knew the meaning of Woke.

At first I was going to give him a long drawn out answer       (which I will here in a moment), but instead countered with, 'what do you think it means'?

At the time of this writing, he still hasn't responded.

Which nicely sums up the reason for this article.

Let me digress a little to help explain what I think WOKE means, and I think you are going to be shocked by my answer

As a child of the 60's I remember watching on TV the Selma bloody Sunday and Dr. Martin Luther King and Detroit riots and asking my parents why are the black people so mad?

(being a white child in a small white town in the middle of Michigan I didnt know or see any African Americans on a regular basis)

I remember my mother saying: 

"its because they havent been treated very well in history and they are tired of being pushed around...I guess"

She was a kind of stepford wife now that I look back on it, so that answer makes perfect sense.

But how did she learn that? CRT maybe?

NO. we didnt have that nonsense back then. She knew that from living in the depression era and stories from her parents and grandparents about slavery, as well as history books.

And that is where my explanation begins:

We have the anit-woke movement because we dont have an enemy to fight anymore so now the Republicans are looking inwards for a fight. They are the classic schoolyard bully.

I remember the Cuban Missle crisis.., our enemy was The Soviet Union and Communism..specifically Nikita Kruscehv and Fidel Castro.

It was simple for all of us R and D to join hands around the flag and work to defeat communism!

Just in my childhood alone, both Kennedy's and Dr. King were assinated on prime time TV!

Every night we saw bombs dropping on villages in Vietnam and protestors outside of the capital protesting everything from the war to racism!

We were a country in flux, but we could always find an enemy to agree on... THE SOVIET UNION and the NUCLEAR threat!

Now to anyone under 50, this is just silly talk...but I clearly remember sitting under my desk in case the air raid sirens went off!

We had the Moon race and Nixon.

True corruption reared it ugly head at the turn of the decade with the Nixon tapes and his resignation which brought in a new era of  Peace.

People often wonder how Obama became President after a war monger like Bush.

Easy, We did the same thing with Carter in the 70's. 

We were tired of war and corruption and wanted a gentler kinder man and that was who we got.

But we still had enemies to collalesce around. 

The Iranian kidnapping and later release under Reagan. 

 

We still had the Soviet Union, a perrennial favorite of boogeyman to threaten everyone with.

When Reagan visited Berlin in 1987 and told Gorbachev to 'Tear down this wall', it wasnt about Drag Queens or getting rid of affirmative action. It was about freedom and choice!  

A Republican shouting to the world about freedom and choice. Hard to imagine that today isnt it?

Then Iran/Contra started moving us into left/right camps. We saw the corruption again on a grander scale, while internal policies shifted to the wealthy and the war on poverty started to become the war on poor people.

With the collapse of the Berlin wall and the fall of the Soviet Union, we no longer feared our boogeyman and started looking closer to home to find one.

At that time we had AIDS and of course the Gay Community became the next victim of anti-Woke mentality.

It wasnt until the bombing of the World trade Center in 2001 that we finally had another Boogeyman to focus ourselves on and what better man to lead us into the wrong battle with the wrong people than George W. Bush...

(the first  Republican President elected by the minority of the voters)

First it was the Iranians under Reagan and now the Iraqi's under Bush. ( I'll let historians and phycholigists figure that out)

But, we had a new Boogeyman! 

We were happy to not worry about teaching children about the Civil War and Bigorty and racism. We didnt really care about the GAYS.. because we had a handle on AIDS finally, and none of the Brown people at the border were a concern because we could kill them nightly on TV with jets and tanks!

We could watch our mighty war machine bomb the crap out of people we didnt like with reckless abandon in HD!

But then came Obama and his progressive wishy washy 

lets not have wars philoshphy and help poor and

 old people with affordable health care 

and that left millions of haters with no one left to hate.

Since nature abhores a vaccum who better to fill that role than a a carpetbagger from NYC selling a bag full of hate seeds for the right price and BANG!

Now we get the war on WOKE...

You mean the war on my history? 

The life I fully remember living since childhood?

The history you dont want to be taught to our children, the history that was taught to you? 

Only so you can win an Election?

I think if you need to find the cancel culture you need only look into the mirror!

You are trying to cancel my lifetime of memories!!!

Yes I'm WOKE, I'm WOKE as Fuck, because I lived through it.

I marvel how Republicans like to throw 'we freed the slaves' back at Democrats when discussing racism..

well, like my dear old dad used to say:

 "What have you done for me lately"? 

Anyone under 50 doesnt remember history, so they want to try and recreate it for their own personal convenience.

Well, I think I found out who the next boogeyman is...

Make America Great Again?

You mean like this? 

NO Thanks.