Why the right is so terrified of "woke"

Long ago and far away in a country where we all seemed to believe in roughly the same reality, many people in a political party that traditionally talked up law and order and guffawed that liberals needed to put on their "big-boy pants" to face the harsh facts of the world lost their minds. How did this happen? Well, they were reminded that there was such a thing as white privilege. They had forgotten about it, possibly on purpose.

They were told that, yes, white privilege is a thing, and it's pretty obvious. They fumed and feigned outrage at this accurate report on the state of the real world until they convinced themselves that it was a huge lie and an outrage. Coached by their favorite enablers in the media, they worked themselves up into an emotional lather until they could act their parts somewhat convincingly, even with all the unrealistic lines. Think of the Stanislavsky Method in acting, except this was the Limbaugh Method of acting out.

Of course it wasn't just about white privilege; that's just the most obvious aspect of the advantages that individuals or groups enjoy (or do not enjoy) in our society, without having to show any particular merit. When the renewed discussion of privilege was extended to male privilege, white men — incongruously led by an obese man-boy in orange makeup sporting a spun-sugar combover — embarked on their White Men's Campaign of Endless Grievances.

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Were the founding fathers "woke"? Compared to the modern-day GOP, definitely

So many things in our society can be understood by thinking back to high school. Think of nearly any Hollywood film about suburban teenagers, in which the good-looking spoiled brats of the country-club set get their comeuppance in the third act after reveling in all sorts of bad behavior. These days, roughly a third of the country seems to be rooting for the obvious villains in a new version of that story, now unfolding in our troubled democracy. It could be called "White Men Whining III: The Retribution," but honestly we've already been gifted the best possible title: "Florida: Where Woke Goes to Die."

Joking aside, the privileges afforded by stereotypical or conventional "good looks" are undeniable. Like all other forms of privilege, they provide people with entrée, a form of soft power that can corrupt one's thinking pretty quickly. Handsome boys and beautiful girls often age into vapid adults as a result of this privilege; they never had to put any effort into being accepted. (Read W.B. Yeats' "A Prayer for My Daughter." He knew all about this.) White men may not be able to jump — according to stereotype, of course — but they are well positioned to fail their way up corporate and political ladders, often all the way to the top for the ones who are tall and blandly handsome and sport Ivy League degrees.

The fight against "woke" (a term with a longer history than most of us may realize) is strikingly similar to the fight the right previously waged against "political correctness": It's an existential battle against allowing people to be awakened — by reading novels and history, by attending plays, by watching and listening to actual news — through open discussion of privilege or systemic racism or, to use a different but related term, the underlying and nearly invisible structures of caste in America. It is a fight to stop people from talking about those social structures, or about the combination of religious zealotry and political ideology at work to foreclose women's bodily autonomy. It's a fight to prevent young people from expressing their sexual and gender preferences, to make it more difficult for certain groups of citizens to vote, and to keep books that might make the most hypocritical and closed-minded evangelical Christian pastors uncomfortable off the shelves of public schools and libraries.