Lloyd Lofthouse, author, former Marine, and former teacher, explains what it means to be woke. Some Republican politicians—notably Ron DeSantis— are trying to suppress “wokeness.”
Lloyd writes:
Anyone that attacks what’s known as “woke ideology” is supporting zombie thinking and belongs to a fascist cult of ignorance.
Wokeness means someone that is highly literate, well educated, well read, is a life long learner, questions claims and uses critical thinking, problem solving and rational logic to find out if there is any truth to what these fascist zombies are shouting.
Question: Are you woke?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There is a real chance that at some point in the presidential debates in 2024, the moderator will ask the candidates “What is a woman?” If that happens, let’s hope that the Democratic candidate doesn’t have problems answering it.
No answer will satisfy the right-wingers anyway, except identifying women by their genitals and reproductive function. If the Democrats take that cowardly route to appease the nutjobs, they deserve to lose progressive/left voters. I would like to see them answer with “why are you so obsessed with other people’s genitals?”
“If the Democrats take that cowardly route to appease the nutjobs, they deserve to lose progressive/left voters.”
Are you suggesting FLERP! is a nutjob? Or is your point is that Dems shouldn’t appease people like FLERP! who are not nutjobs?
dienne77,
You might want to first consult with FLERP! as to whether your reply “why are you so obsessed with other people’s genitals?” would alienate regular, normal people.
I understand from FLERP! that normal, regular people are alienated by gender identity activist language and unfortunately I suspect that any moderator who is asking a politician “what is a woman” in the first place is going to demand the politician define “woman” and not accept your reasonable answer.
Hopefully I am wrong and FLERP! believes your reply above is the perfect reply that won’t alienate normal, regular people!
Case closed! Hopefully FLERP!, you and I are in complete agreement that ” “why are you so obsessed with other people’s genitals?” is the ideal reply. Rare for the 3 of us to agree, if FLERP! does as well. Is it freezing below while the rest of us suffer through hellishly hot temps?
The center is not holding. That is a fact.
I do love your assumption that of course a moderator would embrace the right wing framing of what a very important debate question would be.
How would you suggest they answer that question? What is a woman?
Also, what is a man?
SCOTUS thinks a corporation is a person. Jackson and all of us, in that framing context, should answer to the right wing, “Anatomically, is a corporation a woman or a man?”
I don’t “assume of course” that a moderator will ask “what is a woman.” I think there’s a real chance of it happening, though. That’s why I included the words “there is a real chance” at the start of my comment.
I probably would say something like, “This is a silly question. What is a woman? Really? If you’re talking about biological sex, I don’t think there’s one person in this room, or one person watching this debate on television, who truly doesn’t know what a woman is. The woman who gave birth to me, my mother, is a woman. The woman who gave birth to my children, my wife, is a woman. My daughter is a woman.”
Then I might add: “Now, there are people whose biological sex is not female but who identify as women and want to live their life presenting as a woman. They should be treated with dignity, they should be permitted to live their life identifying as a woman, and they should not be discriminated against on account of their gender identity.”
But then again, I don’t identify as woke.
Of course, if I said that during the primaries, my candidacy might be be in some serious trouble.
Linda,
If a corporation cannot be a person then how does a $5 trillion dollar a year government funciton when all of its contractors and suppliers have to be limited partnerships?
Is one really going to argue that corporations should not be able to borrow money, own property, be sued, have a right to privacy, etc. When it comes to the law, the U.S. is dependent on corporations being treated like a legal person.
If a corporation is a person, do they have birthday parties? Do they laugh? Do they cry? Are they happy or sad? Do they go through stages of life? Do they wear diapers when they are first born? Do they have parents? In what way is a corporation human?
FLERP! says “My daughter is a woman.”
Yep. Are you saying that other people’s daughter’s are not women? And other people’s sons are not men?
The irony is that you probably have already met some women who you would reject as a woman and you don’t even know it. But surely when you find out, you will properly inform your children that they are not women. Maybe it is even a mom you met at a school function or the sister of one of your kid’s friends. No doubt your world would explode knowing that you had mistakenly referred to them as women for so many years when – in your properly non-woke mind – they are not.
NYCPSP, I just hope whoever the Dem candidate in 2024 doesn’t answer the question like you would. Unfortunately I’m not too confident in that hope.
I’m quite sure my children, and indeed your children, have no confusion about whether a trans women are biological females. The only question is what language they use to describe the difference.
If a corporation is a person, presumably that means that dissolving it is murder. Has anyone ever been charged for murdering a corporation? If not, I’d say that’s a major oversight in our laws.
Also, what would a merger of two corporations be? Would that still be a person? How does that work? Conjoined twins exist, of course, but is there a case where two persons were permanently joined together after birth? Is there a name for such a merger and are they treated as one person or two? (For voting purposes, for example). If they work, are they taxed individually or separately? How about if they drive? Do they each need a driver’s license?
Also, if a corporation spawns “offspring” are there rules regarding abortion? For example, can the “embryo” of an offshoot company only be aborted for a few weeks before it receives personhood protection?
Also, are there different classifications for murder of a corporation?
For example, corporation murder in the first degree would be where you plan it all out ahead of time but second degree corporation murder would be where it is done on the spur of the moment in the heat of passion. And then of course , there is corporationslaughter , where you drive your car into the corporation headquarters while drunk.
Seems very complicated and I can understand why corporations and the Supreme Court need many lawyers to keep track of all this stuff.
And perhaps most important of all:
How does one detect a corporate heart beat and at what point does it first appear?
One more burning question:
Is there such a thing as corporationasia?
No, not a Chinese company, but physician assisted corporate suicide.
Given the frequency with which debate moderators (and journalists generally) adopt rightwing framings, it isn’t completely unlikely that some variant of this question might be asked by a moderator who wanted to dominate the airwaves in the days following the debate.
Corporations are people. But I hear it is too “woke” for any people to be non-binary. How does one identify whether the corporation is a woman or a man?
Could General Electric be a woman?
Good question. Is the corporation male or female? Gay or straight? Trans?
FLERP!,
“the moderator will ask the candidates “What is a woman?”
YOU asked the question, not me.
YOU answered the question, not me.
You could have just said ” “This is a silly question. What is a woman? Really?”
Why would you need to bring up “biological sex”?
Hey, maybe the moderator can show a photo of a naked person with breasts and a vagina and ask each candidate to tell them whether this person is a woman. Are you suggesting that the Democratic candidate – to win votes! – should begin by saying “I need more information about this person’s ‘biological sex’?”
FLERP!, it’s not a matter of whether or not you are woke — I don’t care.
But it is a matter of how you frame questions to make it seem like there is something wrong with being woke, while denying your own biases (both in race and gender).
It seems as phony as a self-described conservative Republican telling other anti-woke religious right Republicans that there is a real chance that the moderator at a debate would ask a question: “What is pornography?” and demand that the Republican candidate have a long comprehensive answer detailing when something is pornographic and when it is not (to win votes!) because “You know it when you see it” isn’t enough.
I didn’t ask the question. I just said that there’s a real chance that someone will ask that question to the candidates in a 2024 presidential debate.
You asked me the question. I answered it. You did not like my answer. In particular, you didn’t like my mentioning “biological sex.”
My own opinion (others may disagree) is that there’s nothing wrong with mentioning biological sex in response to the question “what is a woman.” Biological sex exists. Everyone knows it exists. Most people are not highly educated and highly intelligent, but that doesn’t mean they’re stupid.
This is an issue that Republicans absolutely love, because they know that most Americans think that people who think biological sex is irrelevant to the question of who’s a woman are wingnuts. Wingnut is a bad brand.
Flerp!, I also don’t understand the huge problem you clearly have with people who don’t identify either as a “he” or “she”. They are non-binary and their pronouns are “they”.
What kind of person gives a flying f…? When I was growing up, it seemed like 99% of Americans made fun of the word “Ms” (if they even had heard it.)
I can just imagine the precursors to FLERP! 50 years ago saying “There is a real chance that at some point in the presidential debates in 1972 the moderator will ask the candidates “When is a woman a Miss or Mrs.?” If that happens, let’s hope that the Democratic candidate doesn’t have problems answering it.” Of course, the person posing that question is doing so to “warn” the Dems to join them and the Republicans in crafting a reply that would demonize the use of “Ms”.
In 1986 the NYT started using Ms. Because the women getting belittled and demeaned by self-described “liberals” for using “Ms” for years didn’t listen to those telling them what to do.
I feel as if this whole faux “concern” about whether ONLY “women” can breastfeed is all manufactured outrage. Why is it so important to people to disown that? Why is it so wrong for the language to be inclusive?
Because right wing Republicans and their self-described moderate enablers will make fun of Democrats? Just like they made fun of people using the term “Ms”? Until they didn’t.
I don’t care what people identify as. But that doesn’t mean I want the Democratic Party brand to be the party of wingnuts.
“Wingnut is a bad brand.” Oh sure, that’s why the Republicans have become popular as the wingnut party! And any moderate Republicans are terrified to speak out against wingnuts.
In fact, it is just the opposite. If the Democrats stopped listening to bad advice from the people telling them to run away from culture wars and got the media to stop framing every question the way the far right wanted, they would do far better than they do now.
“What is a woman?” asks the moderator.
Democratic answer: “I think if my Republican opponent is now saying he can’t tell without taking someone’s blood, that we should move on to the issues that ARE important to Americans. Instead of having my opponent who wants to police people’s bedrooms telling us that the nice mom at school who runs the PTA is not a “woman”. Why are the Republicans so focused on sex?
NYCPSP, I can’t convince you that normal, regular people are alienated by gender identity activist language. All I can do is hope that your view is not shared by the people advising Dem presidential candidates. But I suspect it is shared by them.
Flerp-
“regular, normal people”…can you see how that might play well?
adding- not
Linda,
I am old enough to remember when “normal, regular people” were alienated by the use of “Ms”.
I guess I was never one of those “normal, regular people”.
I was one one of those apparently abnormal, irregular people who got alienated when I heard the supposedly normal and regular people getting all bothered when those “fem-Nazis” used the word “Ms.”
But it’s interesting to see that the propagandists are savvy enough to attack us woke folks by calling us “gender identity activists” now instead of “fem-Nazis”.
NYC-
Liberal terms/words get positioned as bad while a word like conservative doesn’t experience the same fate. The GOP is meaner and meanness persuades a large sector of the population.
“normal, regular people are alienated by gender identity activist language”
I was going to write a long comment. But on second thought. It speaks for itself. Volumes. Libraries, even. To paraphrase Snagglepuss. It’s exhausting reading crap like this.
Answer:
Of course, as has been clear since Saussure first articulated this in his Course in General Linguistics, language is arbitrary. A given sound can be adopted as indicating any meaning. However, once it has been adopted, it’s generally a good idea to be careful to hew to accepted definitions to the extent that they preserve distinctions and clarity and to avoid variant definitions that obscure distinctions and clarity. So, for example, there is a difference between being disinterested and being uninterested, and the difference is worth preserving.
In her groundbreaking The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir famously said that one becomes and is not born a woman. What she was referring to was the fact that cultures assign a lot of arbitrary, culturally transmitted roles, ways of behaving, manners of speech and dress, and so on to people of a particular biological sex. In English, we are blessed to have two separate sets of terms, male and female, on the one hand, and man and woman, on the other, and we can therefore preserve a truly important distinction and achieve much, much clarity in our thought by reserving the former to refer to biological inheritance (primary and secondary sexual characteristics) and the latter to refer to cultural acquired characteristics). Ofc, there is a range of variation with regard to biological inheritance, and some children are born intersex). And of course, some people can function as women or men without being female or male, respectively, if one preserves this distinction in one’s usage, which I would recommend for the sake of clarity in our thinking.
I don’t recommend that the Dem candidate give this answer to that question.
Yes, because it’s really important in the United States to convince the voting populace that one is a moron, and that’s not a moronic answer.
We live in this weird country in which not being bright and informed is somehow a qualification for office. We do a better job of vetting the person who is going to run a gas station than we do of vetting the person who is going to be commander in chief. It was death to Adlai Stevenson’s candidacy that people perceived him to have a brain between his ears, and nothing has changed since then, except that the kakistrocratic tumor in American political life has metastasized.
Reagan–>Shrub–>Trump–>?
Whoever it is, given this trajectory, the Republican Party should adopt the slogan, “Dumb and Proud. Say It Loud.”
Supreme Court Justices should be disinterested, but instead , the Majority are just uninterested (in the facts of a case before them, in the Constitution, in precedents, etc)
Exactly. You want a disinterested judge, not an uninterested one.
big difference!
“Which candidate would you rather have a beer with?”
yup
It’s actually worse than just that “not being bright and informed is somehow a qualification for office”.
It’s that being bright and informed is a disqualification.
And people wear their ignorance as a badge of honor.
It’s totally bizarre. I can think of few other areas in which people intentionally look for someone who doesn’t have a clue. However, I have seen this with some Principals who are scared to death of hiring teachers who know more than they do.
Debate moderator: What is a woman?
Trump: someone with a pussy to grab
Yup. Pretty much what everyone heard him say a few days before the 2016 election, and to almost half of the American electorate, this made no difference whatsoever. Just ask April, below.
You know, boys will be boys.
Judges are supposed to be disinterested but the current Supreme Court majority are religinterested.
“Frat boys will be frat boys” — Brett “I like Beer” K.
what is a woman? = Willie Horton = gays in the military = CRT = the next thing to distract us from reality
How come they never ask “what is a man”?
I hope our resident purveyor of “woke is evil” right wing propaganda can explain why that is? Why the obsession with what a woman is and not what a man is?
No doubt because Republican politicians don’t particularly like that question. “Never ask a question Republicans don’t want to answer” seems to be the guiding belief of the so-called liberal media. “Always pose the questions by framing them as Republicans want” is the guiding belief of no one who is actually a moderate or progressive.
That distraction is going to be there whether or not I raise the topic on this blog. We have a lot of advance notice that it’s going to be there. Best not walk into a buzzsaw. Dems should ditch the activist language games and talk like normal people. Or they can do the thing they’ve been doing and talk about how this whole transgender thing is a Republican distraction, and see how that works.
Greg-
A thread that included you has a story about Blagojevich posted by jsr. It’s interesting. Diane’s post was July 19 (about Garland), jsr’s reply was at 4:47, July 21.
Linda
I assume that jsr’s comment on Blagojevich is supposed to “prove” that when it looks like there is no investigation and prosecution going on, the opposite is true.
But the problem is that for every case where that is true, there is another case where little if anything in the way of prosecution actually IS going on.
I posted the example of be non-prosecution of individual Wall Street bankers for fraud in the case of multib illion dollar frauds perpetrated by the big banks in the leadup to the financial metdown of 07/08.
But one could also point out the non-,prosecution by Obama DOJ of US officials who engaged in and ordered torture of prisoners during the Bush admin.
And one could also point out non-prosecution of pharma company officials for fraud that led to the opioid epidemic and the death of hundreds of thousands.
And one could also point to the non-prosecution of officials responsible for the Flint Michigan lead poisoned water catastrophe.
The list is very long and it’s really a waste of time even arguing with someone who is essentially saying “Look at this case where people were surprised to learn when the indictments came down that there actually was a thorough investigation and prosecution going on”.
Choosing one such case to supposedly “prove” the rule is called cherry picking and actually proves precisely nothing.
FLERP!,
Running away from this is what makes people believe there is something wrong with it.
If your point is that the so-called liberal media will do everything in its power to make this an issue, then I agree.
But if your point is that there is ANYTHING that a Dem can say that will stop the media from using this issue to push the right wing propaganda that the Dems aren’t to be trusted, then that’s simply an excuse to bash the Dems when whatever answer they give is used to blame them for why the media is working overtime to demonize them.
It’s similar to Black Lives Matter and de-fund the police.
It didn’t matter what Biden said about not defunding the police. If you were one of the far right folks who hated BLM, you hated Biden because you knew he wanted to de-fund the police no matter what he said.
There is no answer that will appease the folks who identify themselves as “normal and regular” and sneer at “gender identity activists”.
If people won’t vote for Democrats because of the way they define a woman, then they weren’t going to vote for Democrats at all.
The rest of us supposedly “abnormal” folks don’t get all hot and bothered about whether a medical journal refers to “people who breastfeed” or “women who breastfeed” and while some people might not particularly like the “people who breastfeed” language, they definitely would not vote to empower the far right Republican party because they were just so outraged and offended about that. They would vote for empower the far right Republican party because they were homophobic and transphobic. Not because of the definition of “woman.”
Why don’t you ask your kids what is really important? How a politician defines a woman??
People who cite semantics are really talking about issues. Language isn’t the issue. Stopping the normalization of LGBTQ issues is.
enjoy the buzzsaw.
Poet
Thanks for writing what you write. You express what I feel, only, attached to an “A” game.
Flerp
In my calculation, you seek out teachable moments for yourself and others which you package with a restrained prickliness to throw Diane’s living room guests off. You’re like that colleague/acquaintance who is murky. You think he’d share his umbrella on a rainy day and, …
Btw, “Buzzsaw”, when it’s seen in your head, it’s been reduced to a sawing blade of grass?
NYC
I rely on your superb elucidation skills to hone mine. It’s a joy to watch your logic unfold.
I would ask the moderator when he or she decided he was straight or gay male or female. When the moderator replies they didn’t have to think about it . Then follow up with now think about that.
If “woke” is bad then is the opposite of woke good?
What social conservatives would say that being sane or rational and not tolerating the delusions of others.
If woke are the criticial thinkers then how can they stand up for the rights of women when they refuse to use the term women and use, birthing people instead?
I have never heard the term “birthing people.” It must be a thing among the people you hang with. Yes, I stand up for the rights of women and men.
With all due respect, Diane, I think you’re a little out of touch on these matters.
First sane answer I have read so far. There are so many “unwoke” people who try to listen, but they cannot get past the screaming and irrational thoughts and vitriol that come spewing from the woke. I have never seen such a destructive element present in our society. It will destroy our country.
April Featherkile
Mr Potato Head is looking for you . And when you are done with the faux outrage go Sponge Bob .
From a left of center progressive senator:
“The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate compared to its peer nations and Black women and Black birthing people in the United States are three to four times more likely to die than white women and white birthing people due to pregnancy-related complications,” said Sen. Booker.
Snark does not work if one if not willing to use Google for one minutes. Look it up. It is as stupid to use the phrase “birthing people” as Latinx or “people of color.”
Language changes all the time. Often, it changes due to social changes. In this case, young people are awakening, have awakened, to the realities that they can have various and fluid gender expressions and sexual orientations and that there are significant differences (and possible variations) in sex, gender, and sexual orientation, and they are in the process of inventing new language to reflect these new understandings. All this is a great new birth of freedom and human possibility and is to be celebrated.
Ofc, it is completely predictable that at the same time there are people who are clueless about or fear the social changes taking place and the concomitant linguistic innovations are doing what reactionaries have always done in response to such change.
There has always been extreme reaction from some older people during periods of dramatic social change. An early Sumerian cuneiform inscription reads that “Children no longer obey their parents or honor the gods.” Some old people at the time reacted strongly to those scandalous Strauss waltzes people were dancing to.
These diatribes by those who object to the emerging and evolving attempts at new language to describe these new understandings sound a bit like they are being uttered in a basement, to invisible friends, by Sméagol. And ofc, it almost goes without saying that those diatribes are backward and provincial, which is somewhere on the opposite end of the spectrum from woke.
Yikes. Correction:
Ofc, it is completely predictable that at the same time there are people who are clueless about or fear the social changes taking place and that those people don’t like the concomitant linguistic innovations. These folks are doing what reactionaries have always done in response to social change.
“Birthing driving people”
If women are “birthing people”
Then what the heck are men?
The “birthing driving people?”
Or maybe “pacing kin?”
Self driving cars may eliminate the need for men altogether.
And when the bots take over completely, both men and women will be eliminated, along with the whole debate about what to call them.
The bots are coming
Bots are coming
Cars and trucks
Humans numbing
Sitting ducks
Bots replacing
All the folks
Bots erasing
Gals and blokes
Bots producing
Other bots
Humans losing
All the spots
superdestroyer,
Yep, you sound like the folks very upset because a Democratic politician used the term “Ms” in the 1970s!
How dare they say “Mrs., Miss, or Ms”!!! Don’t those Dems understand how offensive that is to say Ms! All the Mrs Jones and Miss Jones are simply outraged.”
Diane, do you mean to tell me you don’t nuthin’ ’bout birthin’ no babies? Gone with the pun.
I birthed three babies but I don’t consider myself a birthing machine.
Thanks for being “woke,” Diane, and keeping all of us “awake” as well! 🙂
Emphatically, yes!
Woke people are just a bunch of elitist intellectuals who think they are smarter than us normal people. WE are the ones who should run this country–not intelligent, aware, critical thinking, problem solving, rational elitists. That’s why we elected normal genius patriots like Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Bobert, Louie Gomert & Matt Gaetz!
The biggest of the unwoke—the brain dead—is Trump. What a bunch: Trump, Boebert, Greene, Gohmert, and Gaetz. Collectively the worst people ever elected. Stupid. Selfish. Hateful. Bigots. Racists. Not the America I love.
It is odd to only call conservatives bigots and racist when Kendi is calling for the creation of a “Department of Antiracism” that will hunt down thought criminals or the Congressional Black Caucus is demanding race-based reparations along separate and unequal treatment of whites versus blacks that only benefits blacks. The people to call racist are the people at places like the UC System, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas, Harvard, and UNC-Chapel Hill who use(d) race-based admission standards.
LOL. Many of those in the radical right wing Republican Party attended Ivy League Schools. Both Cruz and DeSantis as well as others are products of the Ivy League.
And Trump graduated from Wharton. These facts do not speak highly of those schools. And they tell us that the reputations that come with simply having graduated from one of these prestige schools are not deserved. Clearly, one can graduate from Harvard or Yale and be an ignorant moron.
Btw, there is a famous video short of someone walking around a Harvard graduation and asking people why we have seasons. Almost no one can answer the question even though the answer is taught in elementary school science.
That’s undoubtedly because most Harvard grads (and Harvard accepted students) skipped elementary school because they were so gifted and talented (and daddy had bribed the District Superintendent)
As many conservative commentators have written, about 90% of the students at the Ivy Leagues and Ivy-likes would call themselves progressives. However, such political declarations will not keep those progressive elites from working in workplaces that are much whiter than the U.S. on average, to living in very white neighborhoods, and to sending their children to private schools that are much whiter than the their local community public schools. Being an elite progressive will not keep them from having a massive environmental footprint, from having a traditional marriage and family, and from avoiding most of the programs and policies that are called progressive.
For those elite Ivy Leaguers who have all of the education and critical thinking skills, it is always do as I say, not as I do.
On at least one occasion, according to someone who also “partook”, Matt Gaetz woke up with an underaged girl whom he had paid for sex.
Does that mean he is woke? Or just that he once was woke?
Maybe it depends on what the meaning of is is.
All the scandal surrounding Gaetz has not deterred him from running again. Mark Lombardo, an ex-Marine, is running against him in the primary.
We have two systems, the justice system and the just us system. The latter gives Epstein a sweetheart deal in which his spends his very short prison sentence going to his office and having conjugal visits, doesn’t indict and prosecute Trump for crimes to committed right out in the open, and let’s Gaetz continue to walk free when any of us commenting on this blog, having committed the same offense, would have been arrested immediately.
My guess is that Gaetz will be relected.
I’d also bet that having sex with a minor (sometimes referred to as “statutory rape”) makes one more (not less) likely to get elected as a Republican in Florida. Kinda like killing an unarmed person with an AR. Shows you’re a real man.
Sorry about the typos in that post
In Epstein’s case, the Florida “Correction” System effectively allowed “Rape visits”, where he continued to rape young girls off site during his release hours.
The right wing zombie apocalypse will glom onto any word or phrase (lies) to demean liberals/progressives and then repeat it ad nauseam all across the right wing media complex 24/7, ad infinitum. Other right wing memes: Trump won the election, Biden is a socialist baby-killer, Canadians come to the US for health care, Social Security is going broke, Bernie Sanders owns 3 homes, corporations are people, the 2nd amendment solves everything, liberal media bias, tax cuts and deregulation will save the economy, universal health care will lead to socialism, Stalinism, communism and vampire bats in the attic, AOC has a vast collection of designer clothes and shoes, etc.
I woke the morning after the 2016 election to the reality that the Country I lived in had elected a person who was so far from anything ever elevated to the presidency before. The feeling I had was a decisive change from how I had felt before.
When the word, woke, began to be used, it was attempting, as are most words, to efficiently summarize those emotional reactions many were having to events in race relations during the Trump presidency. Some people who had not considered their world in one way, had awakened to a different feeling about their world sort of like I did after the 2016 election. It was a good word, and it threatened the growing far right, which sought actively to smear the word with negative emotion.
As long as we are discussing random words, we are not talking about the massive corruption in the political leaders who stand to lose face if their constituents ever woke to find how impossibly criminal they are
I don’t know. Reagan and Shrub were pretty bad, too. They had more adults in the room. Both were arguably corporate presidencies in which the people around them all understood that they couldn’t be allowed near the matches and cutlery.
But yeah, the choice of Trump for the Presidency by almost half of the electorate was a sign that the idiocrasy is upon us. And he still has many, many millions of supporters among Americans who think it’s fine to have a president who thinks we should send astronauts to the sun, thinks that stealth airplanes are actually invisible, is impressed by how the Continental Army captured the British airports, thinks doctors should try injecting patients with disinfectants, is mad that Denmark wouldn’t sell Greenland to him, wanted the military to kill or, short of that, maim BLM protestors and Border Patrol to kill or maim asylum seekers. Half of America. Morons. Utter imbeciles like their Glorious Leader, Don the Con.
cx: Idiocracy
Their constituents certainly know about the corruption and they not only don’t care, they view it as a badge of honor, something to wave around and taunt liberals with.
People knew all about Trump before they voted for him.
This included millions of (fake) “Christians” who didn’t give a hoot about his pussy grabbing, Stormy relationship and friendship with Epstein.
They are pure religious opportunists, willing to overlook pretty much anything if it advances their religious crusade.
Yup. But they did give a hoot about his racism and his sexism, which they shared, and he delivered for them by appointing “justices” who tanked Roe and Casey.
Roy, my daughter (then 13) cried when I told her that Trump had beaten Clinton. I felt like I was in a daze for several months.
Flerp, you and Roy should get your brilliant daughters together!
My actual point was that the frame of mind I experienced, the realization that something had changed dramatically, was akin to the feelings that caused someone to coin the term woke
Yes. Beautifully observed, Roy.
Well, I’d say, “I think women are superior to men, and all those inferior men that are working to subjugate them and turn them into chattel again should join a male-only Mount Athos community and let women rule the world.”
But I wouldn’t stop there.
I’d continue with, “That also means men living with women have to wear unhackable chastity belts (men and boys starting at age 12 – ah, well, maybe age 10 would be better) to insure they’d stay faithful, out of trouble, and offer more protection for everyone from STDs. It allegedly would also put an end to kidnapping mostly females of all ages and forcing them into the illegal global sex trafficking industry.”
After the moderator silenced the male uproar, I’d add:
Here’s some evidence to support my allegations.
“Taking this approach, the researchers actually found gender differences for every one of the 10 aspects of personality that they looked at – women scored higher, on average, on enthusiasm, compassion, politeness, orderliness, volatility, withdrawal, and openness, while men scored higher on assertiveness, industriousness and intellect. The researchers said that these would not have shown up in studies at the level of the Big Five traits, as used in most earlier research.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161011-do-men-and-women-really-have-different-personalities#:~:text=Taking%20this%20approach%2C%20the%20researchers,men%20scored%20higher%20on%20assertiveness%2C
“Women, for instance, tend to be warmer and more sensitive (on average) while men tend to be more assertive, research suggests.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-instincts/202012/6-subtle-psychological-differences-between-men-and-women
Then, I’d finish with, “My conclusion is that if the world did this, the threat of war would be greatly diminished (since male psychos like rasPutin and Traitor Trump would be forced into a high-security, secluded, Mount Athos all-male community without ever leaving) and protecting the environment would become a priority in the world. Oh, one final thing: all male narcists in those all-male communities of monks in a Mount Athos community would be forced to live by a vow of silence.
I don’t know anything about superiority, but the unfortunate fact is that the vast majority of violence in this country comes from men, not most men, some men. A lot of the violence that women face comes from the hands and weapons of men. While it is often mentioned, nobody seems too committed to stop it.
Who is woke? Well, Garland isn’t. He’s fast asleep.
I thought I told you to keep quiet! Don’t you see the “Do Not Disturb” sign? You cad!
Don’t worry, Bob. He is just waiting until China and Africa meet and salmon sing in the street. He will doubtless move sometime after Trump takes up yoga, and Stephen Miller starts donating to The Immigrant Legal Defense Center.
Being There
Chauncey Garland likes to watch
Congress hearings on TV
Loves the questions and the plots
Most of all, to simply be
“I’m watching and I will be watching all the hearings, although I may not be able to watch all of it live. But I’ll be sure that I’ll be watching all that. And I can assure you that the January 6 prosecutors are watching all the hearings as well,”
— Chauncey Garland
Ya had to go there . Let me get that telescope out . I think I can see the tail .
If I ain’t woke I’m dead!
The term “woke” is actually weird. It’s the past tense of a verb used as an adjective.
It would make more sense to say “awake” or “awakened” .
Then again, who am I to say what is weird?
I am always making up new words to fit my poems.
SDP, the term comes from African American Vernacular English.
It’s a double feature horror movie
:
The Right of the Living Dead meets
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers
The GOP could make up a story about “Broccoli” shortage and blame it on leftist hippie democrats who want everyone to eat Kale. Tweet it one time they go crazy.
Their podiums are just a puppet stage for the loudest bully they can find. All they need is a word Their audiences could care less what they say, think, believe, or will do for the country.
Rally Agenda – 30 minutes – charge $100 entry “donation”
Curtain Opens – some “USA” song blares – American Flags and maga flags everywhere
Speaker appears:
“Hunter’s Laptop” – the chanting begins
“Biden’s Inflation” – 5 minutes of cheering
“My Two Mommies” “My Two Daddies” and 5 more minutes of chanting
“Obama … anything” – 10 minutes of hooting with predictable language
“Hillary’s emails” – the crowd goes crazy, the weapons go off, cue the fireworks, exit stage right
There’s the substance of the Guilty Old Party. 13 words and their constituents think they’re geniuses
As for “woke” – they love it because they can be racists without having to use words they know they can’t say on tv
Yeah, one of these people is ranting in the commends on my blog right now about Furbies–those creatures of the overheated imaginations of rightwing wackos. Like the Satanist teenagers that police departments were so worried about in the 1990s, these are nonexistent, you know, like CRT in schools and George Soros caravans and Jewish space lasters and some sort of vast Antifa conspiracy. Antifa actually consists of two twenty-year-old boys from Portland who like to dress up like Neo from the Matrix and go break things.
cx: In the comments
Hilarious, Wait. You nailed it.
This GOP grievance biz is extremely lucrative and quite easy. All one needs is the morals of the con artist. Obviously. I mean, Trump does it, and he’s a total moron.
Since this discussion of woke nests seems to center around the definition of woman and not the definition of what a man is, I would like to discuss the elephant in the room which is the reason we all care. The decisions we make affect our children.
The big issues seem to center around who gets to play a particular sport and who gets to use which dressing room. I don’t think most people care about bathrooms–more and more of them seem to be designed for one person at a time.
Okay, sports first: I was neutral on this issue until I started looking at statistics. Men’s heights are normally distributed with a mean of 70 in and a standard deviation of 3 in. Women’s have a mean of 64.5 in. And a standard deviation of 2.5 in. Translated this means that 50% of men are taller than all but 1.4% of women. In otherwords, a biological male transitioning after puberty has a rather big advantage in some sports. As long as numbers are small, maybe it isn’t a big deal, but if I was the parent whose daughter was cut from a team in favor of a trans woman, I’d probably be ticked off.
Now for dressing rooms: Most teen an preteen girls are pretty sensitive about their bodies and don’t really feel comfortable undressing in front of each other. I can imagine how I woul have felt if there was somewone who I would have perceived as male in the room. Heck, when I swim at the Y, most do the adult women in the room try to find a secluded location to change in.
I don’t really care how someone identifies, but I do care about how the decisions we make affect my daughter and other young women. It is one thing to discuss issue se philosophically, it is another thing entirely to live with the consequences.
We are in the midst of a period of social change, and sometimes (often) it takes the older people some time to catch up.
https://labblog.uofmhealth.org/rounds/youth-transgender-people-should-use-bathroom-theyre-most-comfortable
On every issue, just about, if you actually poll young people, they are far, far, far more woke than are their elders.
Young people in the US and in Europe and in some other places in the world are recognizing that gender and sex are different things, that sex is not completely binary, that gender identification can be on a spectrum and fluid, that sexual orientation can be chosen and fluid, and these understandings have NOTHING to do with what teachers are teaching them but with social change and learning among the kids themselves. How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Par-eee?
One has simply to attend to the pop culture media that kids consume. This stuff simply isn’t a big deal to most young people now. It’s their elders who are freaked out, like the folks who used to complain about those scandalous romances coming out of Germany or that Devil music known as jazz. LOL.
“What should have been EMERGENCY investigations into a conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States, should have already been out bringing people in before grand juries and issuing indictments. The urgency of the defense of American democracy went out the window with the appointment of Merrick Garland.. . . . He will not carry out investigations as elections are coming. That means you have stopped the wheels of American government. You have stopped it out of deference to people that tried to overthrow the American government. I mean, there is a time to go and get a sip of water during a gun battle, OK? But you don’t go out and say that you are going on a vacation to Acapulco during a war. So this is what is happening.” –Malcolm Nance, Executive Director, Terror Asymmetrics Project
Lloyd Lofthouse employs a lot of name calling. I don’t find that admirable and it negates any claims of higher order thinking. I know children who are better at it than he is.
I like all of Lloyd’s posts. Democrats have played the restraint response to the GOP’s deplorables without effect. If you read what the mental health experts advise, you’ll learn that the shrill, ugly voices at Murdoch’s Fox escalate when not confronted with voices as nasty as theirs. The pathology of the right wing requires aggressive speech back.
McConnell doesn’t back down because winning at all costs is his goal. Verbal attacks against him let him know he’s been in a fight.