Occam's Razor

Are you “woke”? If you are a Republican, being “woke” means that you are “overly” politically correct. For weeks I couldn’t decipher what Republicans meant by “woke”. It turns out I have plenty of company. USA Today surveyed people to find out what the term meant to them. I am one of the 56% who thinks it means “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices.”

So when I heard Republicans accuse people like me of being woke, it was “of course I am.” It takes a really closeted individual to not think that people in our country, principally minorities, have been systematically discriminated and oppressed over hundreds of years. Republicans like Ron DeSantis are going out of their way to make sure kids in public schools don’t find out by banning the teaching of our imperfect history in Florida public schools. Apparently to Republicans, acknowledging this truth means that you are hyper vigilant on these sorts of issues. You want reparations for minorities, even though you weren’t responsible for this oppression that Republicans often don’t believe happened, or was not a big deal.

Well, yeah, I want reparations, true reparations that help discriminated classes actually improve their prospects. I want anti-bias education and more diversity in schools, neighborhoods and in the workplace. Some of those that were discriminated against are also white. Many generally better-moneyed whites discriminate against other whites. They look down on “poor white trash” such as the rednecks that populate a lot of the Appalachians. The history of our country is absolutely rife with discrimination based on race, sex but mostly money. It’s largely a history of rich people hoovering money from those largely without much of it, and keeping systems in place to make sure it just keeps happening. Discrimination forever means misery forever for these people, and they just love being sadistic.

For example, Texas Republicans want families to start having babies again, and seem to be willing to give them tax credits and property tax relief if they do. But, of course, they are targeting undivorced parents only. Why are they anxious? Whites are having fewer children and that’s why there’s so many of them colored kids around. They don’t come out and explicitly say it, but it’s easy enough to read between the lines. Maybe with lots of white babies, whites won’t soon become a majority minority of the population. And that would make them a lot less anxious because what they really, really want is to not share power with any of those people who don’t look and act a whole lot like me.

Probably the biggest reason whites aren’t having more babies is because they can’t afford to have more of them. After all, Republicans are against child care subsidies … it’s socialism or something to have enough money not to struggle affording childcare.

But they also want a steady stream of poor white trash. Because they love to hire them for wages that you can’t live on. Mostly, they swallow hook, line and sinker the perpetual myth that they are temporarily displaced millionaires and that soon they will pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be the next Elon Musk. Most minorities at least have figured out their systemic discrimination. More prosperous whites don’t like poorer whites that much, but they prefer to hire them because they trust them more than, you know, those colored, queer and transgendered sub-humans.

It’s all so plainly obvious to me. It’s also obvious to most of us who aren’t Republicans, who form a firm majority of the electorate. Read this recent Navigator survey. Americans are adamantly against pretty much everything animating Republicans:

• They want their kids to be educated on what they actually need to thrive as adults, and not to be censored or indoctrinated in the schools. Democrats have a seven point edge on the question.
• Near two-thirds of those surveyed want the government to keep their kids safe in school
• A majority thinks the government should be working to make child care affordable
• 68% don’t want Advanced Placement courses in African American history banned

Lots of surveys show a large majority of Americans don’t want abortions banned and reproductive rights.

We also understand Republicans’ notion of freedom is actually tyranny. In today’s Washington post, Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman note Julie Marshall, who heads the local chapter of Moms For Liberty, who is pressing school boards in Florida to ban books. Yes, she defines liberty as not allowing kids to read books . For her, freedom means slavery, which is right out of George Orwell’s book 1984.

In all these areas, Republicans are running in the opposite direction of the majority of Americans. In doing so, all they do is make more voters mad at them. Assuming we can keep our election system free of corruption, doing more of this and in more extreme ways means fewer Republicans are going to be elected. This is the exact opposite of where most Americans want the country to go.

Republicans in the House are now racing to shutdown the government over a debt ceiling fight. The inevitable recession that will occur if they succeed they somehow figure will make Biden unpopular and help their candidates. The cuts they envision though basically stick it to the poor and minorities, which they think will be a vote getter. But it will be a crisis they instigated. Biden will be seen as brave if he refuses their terrorist tactics.

It’s amazing how clueless they are as they do everything possible to ensure their party loses power in the 2020s. They think that because they aren’t “woke” that everyone will see it through their eyes. Boy are they going to be surprised if they follow through because the 2024 election will leave the party walloped. You would think 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections would have given them a clue. But they remain blissfully ignorant, stuck in siloed echo chambers of their own making.