“Not everything in the world is a noun, a verb and ‘woke.' Thinking that way is how we end up with Republicans de-regulating these banks to the point where they become ticking time bombs for the economy.” -- Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), quoted by Dave Weigel in Semafor, addressing the latest use of "woke" in the SVB collapse by bad- faith Republicans to distract from the root causes of the failure, a major one being Republicans rolling back Dodd-Frank regulations in 2018. Gallego is running for the Senate seat currently occupied by odd duck Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), who supported the rollback, along with a handful of other corporate Democrats.
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"... Rather than looking to understand what it is that people are saying or what they actually believe, these people base their definition of 'woke' based on what it feels like to them. They're basically like the prisoners in Plato's Allegory of the Cave. They assume that what they see in front of them is all there is to the world and they have no interest in interrogating further. They assume that because they have never personally experienced systemic oppression and feel that they have not personally engaged in it that it must not exist and that those who say they experience it are lying in order to steal power that does not rightfully belong to them.
"It would be as if I defined Christianity as a flawed religion that is all about getting to tell people who aren't like you that they are going to burn for all eternity so that you can alleviate your low self-esteem and feel like you are better than they are. While this might accurately describe how I have interpreted most of my personal interactions with Christians, it would be ridiculous and delusional to say that without considering what Christians believe Christianity means. It would also be ridiculous to assume, just because I cannot fathom believing in God, that people who say they believe in God must be lying..." -- Robyn Pennacchia, in Wonkette, upon reviewing how a number of right-wingers attempt to describe "woke."
We would again refer readers to as good an etymology of "woke" as there is, here.
