Letter to the Editor, Lincoln Journal-Star, Feb. 12, 2025.

As a Nebraskan, I’m naturally concerned about wokeness. The nation, and most Nebraskans, elected a president whose entire mission appears to be centered around “anti-wokeness.” If that doesn’t make anti-wokeness important, I don’t know what would. 

The problem is figuring out what “wokeness” means. 

We can compare “woke” with neologisms from the past that were employed as ideological  labels. I remember a few decades ago, conservatives seemed obsessed with the spread of “Islamofascism.” But as with “woke,” the definition of the term appeared pretty random, sort of circling around the idea that to be Islamic and an enemy of the United States is to be Islamofascist. 

Then there are the words that “surround” a term like “woke”, such as when the president pairs the epithet “woke” with companion labels like “communist, globalist, leftist, Marxist,” etc.  By association alone, we can understand that to be “woke” is to NOT be a good MAGA Republican. Maybe that’s enough.

In truth, we all know what words really mean—or don’t mean. To MAGA conservatives, those of us who support DEI initiatives, those who support helping refugees, those who condemn the demonization of all marginalized and powerless Americans—we are “woke”.

So what should a never-Trump Republican call folks who witnessed the chaos and lawlessness of Trump’s first term, and then voted for another one?

I think the term we’re looking for would simply be the opposite of woke. 

Not “anti-woke,” which limits them to what they are not.

Perhaps the word is “asleep”.