The Woke Party

I WEAR MY WOKENESS AS A badge of honor. MAGA cult members and their Republican evangelists have lost that war of words. But tepid Democrats shun it like the flu, hoping to avoid infection by that radical conservative pejorative. When was the last time you heard a Democrat say, “Yeah, I’m woke,” with confidence and a clear understanding that it means aware? Instead, if there were a “woke” vaccine, I feel certain Democrats would line up beside their Republican counterparts because shit sticks to everyone, regardless of who expelled it.

Everyone who loves liberal democracy, freedom, and equal rights needs to see this as an opportunity, not a threat. We need to seize the moment and turn it to our advantage. MAGA has turned “woke” into a pejorative, and we need to reclaim it as something to be proud of—an awareness that “in this case, government is the problem, not the solution.” God smite me for quoting Ronald Reagan.

Atop the long list of grievances our government must redress is its systemic denial of equal rights and protections under the law for all citizens. For those of us who recognize and embrace the inherent, Creator-endowed equality of every person, this is the gospel we need to spread to the Kool-Aid-drinking MAGA zombies. It needs to be done in an organized, coherent, and sustainable way, under a tent that includes everyone without devolving into identity politics.

I am advocating the creation of a new party of political awareness: WOKE—Working On the Knowledge of Equality. Imagine how Republicans as a group would react if one of their candidates were owned in a political race by a Woke candidate.

It’s time to jettison the party baggage packed 235 years ago by Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and Hamilton. Let’s upset this applecart of rotten-to-the-core fruit and start over. If you want to see a WOKE party and a WOKE candidate, let me hear an amen!