Republican politicians like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis proudly endorse his crusade against the word “wake up” and all things associated with “awakening.”
But what does “wake up” mean? For those who have not yet faced the existential threat of awakening, there are two definitions.
If you believe in dictionaries, Merriam-Webster defines “woke up” as “consciously and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).”
If you think dictionaries are a Marxist tool and support politicians like DeSantis, “awakening” means “Uhh, something? Probably the worst thing imaginable. Definitely something that needs to be stopped.”
Making people think about things sounds ouchie
For example, let’s say I’m a white male, which I am, who has to attend a mandatory diversity training session at my job. In that session they inform me that sexism and gender discrimination are real. Y that America’s long history of racism continues to negatively impact Black people.
If I have to see the world through a lens other than my own, there is a chance that I will start to think about things differently or have feelings.
How is that fair?
Ideological mobs make us run scared. It’s time to defend ourselves.
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Don’t worry, DeSantis is on the case.
In Florida, DeSantis is fighting the good fight against whatever the word “awakening” means. He recently signed a law that doesn’t sound ridiculous at all, the Stop WOKE Act. But before all awakening could be stopped, a federal judge relied on the First Amendment – the awakening part of the US Constitution – to prevent the state from enforcing part of the law.
Can you believe it? Now the awakening is raging unabated throughout the great state of Florida, probably.
Don’t make non-outcast people like me feel bad
The judge wrote that the law, which prohibits businesses and schools from teaching diversity or history in a way that might unfairly make non-marginalized people like me uncomfortable, violates the First Amendment and includes “a nude point-of-view-based regulation of speech.”
Really Florida? Is a 16-year-old girl mature enough to have a baby but not an abortion?
That’s ridiculous. Yes, the law attempts to regulate other viewpoints in the workplace or in schools, but there is no need to bring the word “naked” into the discussion. That sounds like waking up.
The First Amendment turned “upside down”
in his fault In preventing Florida from enforcing the Stop WOKE Act as it relates to businesses, US District Court Judge Mark E. Walker wrote that Florida had “turned the First Amendment on its head” and is trying to win an argument by “gagging your opponents”.
That seems totally unreasonable. All the law tries to do is prohibit discussions of racism or sexism that might cause white people like me to feel “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress.” Haven’t we suffered enough?
The Churchill of the war in awakening
The good news is that this legal setback doesn’t stop DeSantis. He made his belief in war very clear. in a speech on Saturday:: “We must fight the awakening in our schools. We must fight the awakening in our businesses. We must fight the awakening in government agencies. We can never, ever surrender to the ideology of awakening.”
It was as if the Republican Party’s governor and possible presidential candidate was channeling Winston Churchill, if Churchill had the charisma of a slightly buzzed undertaker and was only concerned that the Nazis might come to the shores of England and teach the British children that racism is something that exists.
Imagine the random acts of awakening to come in Florida
My fear, and I am sure the fear facing many Floridians right now, is that as long as the Stop WOKE Act is stopped, dangerous riots will break out across the state.
One can imagine the tragic news in the coming weeks:
►A 52-year-old Osceola County man was listed in fair condition Thursday after he fainted over listening to a group of social justice warriors running wake-ups talk about the gender pay gap in his company’s break room .
►A 15-year-old white student at Cocoa Beach High School was diagnosed with “acute wake-up nausea” Tuesday after a history class in which the teacher suggested that racism in America didn’t end when slavery was abolished .
►After a mandatory workplace training seminar on inclusion, a 43-year-old woman from Kissimmee collapsed upon learning that gay people are real and was rushed to the nearest Emergency Awakening Exposure Center, where she was revived by old episodes of “The Club 700”.
That’s the kind of dystopian world that awakening ideologues want us to live in, one where “understanding” others is “good” and where people who “can’t remember the past” are “doomed to repeat it.” .
There will be no thought on my watch
NO, THANKS!
It’s time to open your eyes and wake up when you wake up, people. This is war. And the first step to victory is to close your eyes and not be awake.
More satire and humor columns by Rex Huppke:
A defense of Domino’s Pizza, which Italy has rudely rejected. More for me please.
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Is the ‘awakening’ responsible for heat waves in the US and Europe? Absolutely.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ron DeSantis declares war on work, even as the Stop WOKE Act is halted
