Ron DeSantis reveals he doesn’t have a clue what “woke” means
Like the proverbial million monkeys with a million typewriters, give Donald Trump enough time and he’ll finally say something that’s true. “I don’t like the term ‘woke’ because I hear, ‘woke, woke, woke.’ It’s just a term they use,” Trump said on Thursday at the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale, Iowa. “Half the people can’t even define it, they don’t know what it is.”
Of course, what motivated Trump to say that in the first place was his hatred for Ron DeSantis. DeSantis is also obsessed with the term “woke” and has said as president he would “destroy the woke mind virus.”
In the tit for tat war between the two men, DeSantis had to reply to Trump. “Look, we know what woke is,” the Florida Fascist retorted, then he went on to prove that he actually doesn’t have a clue what it means. “It’s a form of cultural Marxism. It’s about putting merit and achievement behind identity politics, and it’s basically a war on the truth. And as that has infected institutions, and it has corrupted institutions. So, you’ve got to be willing to fight the woke. We’ve done that in Florida, and we proudly consider ourselves the state where woke goes to die.”
If you were paying attention to his reply you noticed that DeSantis didn’t actually say anything. It was gibberish hiding behind more terms that he doesn’t understand. DeSantis underlines just how lazy and inept he is. Any child could come up with a better definition of what “woke” means to MAGA. At least, what they think it means.
But I’ll tell you what woke actually means, Ron. Woke means being compassionate. It means giving a damn about the rights and feelings of people who aren’t white, straight and male for a change. It means reading books and not burning them. It means putting science over superstition.
But every movement has people in it who carry some of the principles of the movement too far. For example, occasional overreactions by a minority in the woke movement have happened. Occasionally this has led to people being unfairly attacked by mobs on social media. While that is wrong it’s not what usually happens and it isn’t what being woke is about.
But, just as the MAGA crowd has deliberately identified Black Lives Matter with unfortunate instances of violence that happened during BLM protests, some members of the woke crowd have responded with inappropriate outrage to utterances that were innocently intended and made in the name of humour.
It’s what inevitably happens when social change is in the works and is part of the birth pangs of any positive reform. Some people get it wrong or go a little too far. But extremists do not represent the main ideas behind being woke any more than people who commit violence represent the main ideas behind BLM. But MAGA extremists and certain leftists like Bill Maher pretend that the extremists in the woke movement are all that there is. Therein lies the lie.
Of course, I can’t finish this piece without reminding everyone that Donald Trump is a hypocrite. No sooner did he make that rare and insightful observation that people who use woke don’t know what it means, than he went on to use the word in a derogatory way numerous times in an interview with Sean Hannity. And of course, his son Donald Trump Jr recently announced the launch of a “non-woke men’s lifestyle magazine.”
Like a million monkeys at a million typewriters, most of what Donald Trump has to say is gibberish. The churlish and childish man-boy trying to be president again sooner or later ruins even the rare and accidental moments when he tries to tell the truth. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.