First of all, for context, I freely confess that I’m a confirmed, left wing democratic socialist in the style of Albert Einstein, Noam Chomsky, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc., and thus an anti-interventionist pacifist, but not an isolationist.  I’m a non-globalist, non-neoliberal, non-neoconservative internationalist.  I’m an independent, disdaining both the GOP and the Democratic Party, but feel the Democratic Party is the greater evil.  I do not vote for lesser evils though.

Another confession: many people that I’ve cared for over the years, some whom I’ve loved, and even some after whom I’ve lusted, are among the “woke” who are the subject of this reflection.  I don’t like Donald Trump (who I’ve only met once).  I find him a childish, egocentric buffoon, but that doesn’t prevent me from admitting that he’s been treated in an outlandishly unfair manner by the corporate press, the Justice Department, his own appointees, traditional Republican leaders, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and, that, without a doubt, the presidential election of 2022 was manipulated, if perhaps not “technically stolen. 

The foregoing is to contextualize the following perspectives concerning the controversial nature of the postmodern term “woke”, to which I frequently allude.

To me, the term “woke” is a sort of neologism in the sense that during the past decade it has acquired very different meanings depending on who’s using it, in what context and for what purpose.  It no longer merely refers to the opposite of sleeping in a biological sense but has been given political overtones.  It is a self-anointed appellation by those I describe below, who consider it a positive metaphor but, in my opinion and as I use it, the people who apply the term as a self-description instead engage in futile, hubris afflicted self-defeating distortion of progressive values.  Because, as I indicated, I frequently use the term in my reflections, articles, reports and comments, I’m frequently asked what it means, albeit usually by people who clearly have their own opinions on the point and who are usually among those I describe as “woke”.  In any case, this reflection involves an effort to describe the term for both those people (whose minds are already made up as to its meaning), and for those who are honestly curious concerning its use in my discourse.  I note that, apparently, there exists a dictionary definition which identifies them in a manner which their adherents love, in essence, as selfless, well informed, well intentioned humanists.  I assume it was devised by a “woke” lexicographer.  I, find it misleading at best, hence this reflection.

From the foregoing it’s obvious that I’m at odds with those who describe themselves as the “woke”, a group that reminds me of Star Trek’s fictional “Borg” (because to the “woke”, resistance to them is futile).  The irony is that we purport to share the same goals and similar values: a more enlightened world, a more equitable world, one free of racism, misogyny and xenophobia.  A world where justice prevails and impunity and nepotism are minimized, an environmentally sustainable world where everyone is enabled to attain their highest potential.  But we differ on bellicosity.  Bellicosity in every sense (personal, domestic and international).  We differ on tactics and strategies.  And we differ on the essential need for mutual respect and for open minds and the importance of empathy.  “Empathy”, that psychological state of mind which enables us to understand (in a non-judgmental fashion) the positions held by others and the reasons for their actions and reactions.  Which enables us to maintain open minds and to listen at least as much as we preach, and to differ respectfully instead of with animosity.  I believe that only through the use of empathy and respect can we all evolve, changing our hearts and souls as well as our minds in the manner necessary to attain our mutual goals.  I derive great satisfaction from what I’ve learned from others, as well as from the shifts in attitude, especially concerning war and the military-industrial-intelligence complex, of many of the military personnel (both retired and active) with whom I’ve interacted.

In my opinion, politics, on a worldwide, not just United States basis, has not really been the realm of a liberal left versus a conservative right for a very long time.  Those are cultivated delusional illusions.  Rather, it involves a truly adversarial relationship between an alliance of deep states subservient to the primary Deep State (the one associated with the United States but with tentacles everywhere), versus diverse, divided and fragmented populists, “populists” being those who believe that traditional governmental institutions, self-described as “democratic”, are in fact, chokeholds to assure popular democracy is at best a dysfunctional illusion.  The rise in populism is being addressed by deep states though coercive communication-censoring policies, abuse of prosecutorial and judicial systems, and, if all else fails, by facilitation of the development of a capitalist oriented, for-profit market in votes through relaxation of procedures safeguarding against electoral fraud (e.g., identity verification, direct voting, verified ballot collection, etc.), oxymoronically, in the name of “democracy”.

The purportedly “woke”, as I see them, are tools of the permanent government structure owned by the wealthiest among to which I alluded above as the “Deep State”, which is an informal but highly efficient structure comprised of ensconced bureaucrats unresponsive to democratic vagaries, the corporate media, the aforementioned military-industrial-intelligence complex and the newly empowered owners of the Internet’s technocracy, to which, during the past decade, has been added Big Pharma.  The role of the “woke” in that scheme (albeit perhaps a role of which they are not aware) is to distract the attention of liberals and progressives from the goals described above through polarizing identity politics, keeping us divided through wedge issues such as abortion, gun control, immigration, revisionist history and exaggerated racism and divisive gender related issues (using gender in the broadest possible context), all of the foregoing never to be resolved, as resolution would minimize their political usefulness.

The “woke” are characterized by a blend of naivety and hubris, believing themselves morally and ethically superior, better informed, wiser, more erudite and, most of all, entitled.  For some unfathomable reason, they’re convinced that the minds and hearts of those not yet “woke” can best be changed through ridicule and rhetoric, clever distortions, and ignoring past realities through creative fiction.  In essence, they’re intolerant in the name of tolerance (freedom of opinion and of expression be damned!).  Narrative replaces history (well, … okay, …it always has, but much more aggressively), in the belief that the past and even the present are irrelevant to the future, so long as both are presented in a manner that facilitates the belief that the future sought is inevitably preordained, a sort of five story mansion, but without a foundation or first story, just somehow floating closer to heaven.

It’s much easier to win arguments if truth is irrelevant, if it is “relative”, something flexible to be molded as best suits a particular occasion, and easily discarded when inconvenient, discarded to an abyss for those beliefs which, in an Orwellian sense, “never existed, … anymore”.  The “woke” are firm practitioners of that verisimilitudinous art form in the firm belief that the means justify the ends, and thus, as so often happens in those cases, there’s a shift and the means become the ends, the former ends fading into oblivion.

“Merit” is, as I see it, a pejorative to the “woke”, a synonym for racism, and for misogyny, and for xenophobia.  To them, quotas are essential in everything; something glaringly obvious in the entertainment industry where accurate reflections of society and history are irrelevant and every scene must now include non-existent racial and gender balances, with positive attributes concentrated among women and minorities, especially African Americans and those who adhere to sexually alternative lifestyles, and negative attributes are primarily ascribed to Caucasian males older than forty.  Of course, “merit” has always been an elusive concept, especially where nepotism provides an alternative, and, of course, merit has never been all that relevant in the apparently eternal political-favors-based-favoritism-system in which we humans appear to have always lived.

So, the “woke”, to me, are a sad irony involving a diversion of energy and human resources that could really make a difference in the attainment of the values and the world to which they and I both aspire; to which most people aspire., but which, as economist Thomas Piketty’s ground breaking studies and analyses clearly demonstrate, is becoming more and more distant and more and more unlikely as we become more and more polarized, more and more embittered and more and more successfully manipulated by the cynics who joyfully rule as all.

Rule us all as surely as though we were ringwraiths and they possessed Sauron’s once and future ring.

Of course, the “woke” who’ve read my reflections and opinions probably reciprocate my perceptions, believing me to be as delusional as I perceive them.  And that’s fine.

Paraphrasing the refrain used in adds concerning historically black colleges: “An open mind is a terrible thing to waste”.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Mirrors can be useful things if used objectively, but the truth is frequently uglier than we care to bear. Who we’ve become politically, perhaps who we’ve always been, is an all too accurate example.

A reflection of sorts:

The voting dead used to be a reliable Democratic Party constituency.  They won the presidency for young John Kennedy in 1960.  In Illinois.  In Chicago to be precise.  Home town to another slick president almost half a century later.  It’s a bit trickier nowadays to convince the deceased to continue to exercise their political rights, but the concept has morphed and we have voters who’ll vote as their told, no matter what.  To vote as if they were zombies.  Whole “blocks” of them, … Well almost, there are always those inexplicable few who insist on exercising their own judgment, but they’re pretty few.

A “motley bunch” is a misunderstood expression.  It does not denigrate the nature of its members, rather, it makes clear their diversity and perhaps even, their diverse goals, backgrounds and aspirations.  Today, the Democratic Party is a motley group comprised of one large ethnic group, African Americans; women desperate to preserve their ability to discard their would be progeny; those unhappy with their gender; feminists who have a flexible approach to misogyny depending on the political leanings of particular misogynists; the rebellious children of the very wealthy; artists of questionable talent other than their ability to self-promote; pseudo journalists much more talented in creative writing than in seeking the truth; creative academics and historians interested in molding the past as they wish it had been; and, government bureaucrats, especially of the quasi-permanent mole variety.  But it is a “motley” which rather than generate synergy, is merely subservient to the billionaire classes who own the Deep State, the potentates who, like Sauron’s ring in Tolkien’s novels, ruthlessly rule us all.

The GOP is not a motley, it is much more homogenous than the Democratic Party, albeit now divided into two ideological groups: traditionalists like the Bushes, the McCains, etc., also owned by the Deep State, but now a majority seems to be comprised of right wing populist libertarians who in some, but unfortunately not all, aspects, oppose the Deep State.  Too often all of the foregoing are supportive of the Deep State’s primary business, perpetual conflict and a quest for global hegemony similar to that once enjoyed by the Roman empire, not cognizant of the fact that the human cost is all too similar quantitatively to that paid by the victims of the Nazi’s own pursuit of hegemony.  Unlike the Romans though, who cared not a whit about moral justification for their actions, the United States is compelled to justify itself through hypocrisy, deception and self-delusion, something it inherited from the British (from who it inherited its own hunger for hegemony).

Political independents, a heterogeneous group whose members  purportedly form a larger block than either Democrats or Republicans, together with members of minor political parties like the Greens, the Libertarians, etc., could theoretically change the current United States cascade towards mutually assured oblivion but seem trapped in a quagmire, hypnotized and unable to move or act, as though charmed by a snake, the snake being the corporate media that convinces them, briefly but regularly (during electoral cycles), that the exercise of their better judgment would be anathema and would assuredly bring on an apocalypse.  And that their efforts would, in any case, prove futile.  The current apparent only choices, choices between a bombastic and childish lesser evil (Mr. Trump) and an utterly corrupt war monger (Mr. Biden, the clear Deep State designee), illustrate the foregoing.

Thus, we, as a People, become more and more polarized, more prone to violence and psychological and sociological anomalies (like mass murder both abroad and at home).  We sit sort of idly watching and perhaps kvetching as the Deep State destroys more and more of everything around us, whether our environment or our fellow men and women, especially the aged and the very young.  Destroys them sociopathically and amorally for the profit of the billionaire class, to the delight of the laughing and smirking hyenas (my apology to hyenas) who comprise our purported cultural leaders (i.e., massively overpaid albeit usually ignorant glitzy entertainers and athletes).

A conclusion:

That is by all appearances who we are today.  Ugly is as ugly does.  Perhaps it’s just the predictable evolutionary path of who we’ve always been as a group, although perhaps individually most of us seem very different.  One wonders if nature’s purported natural selection of the fittest still applies, and just what that might imply.

A sort of Cassandric entropy seems to shout that we’ve already passed the point of no return, hence, our current epigram at birth would seem to be “abandon all hope ye who enter here”.

To which, unfortunately, no pithy rejoinder comes to mind.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

The corporate media is in hyperbolic, hysterical meltdown.  The thoroughly unpleasant Mr. Trump has rejected their narratives and continues to express his beliefs, whether all too accurate or deluded, on one of their own platforms, the very much discredited and disdained CNN.  But, the corporate media, its supporters in the bureaucracy, the judiciary, prosecutorial authorities and the legal profession, as well as victims-on-demand, remain as dedicated as ever to assuring that he shan’t govern, no matter what the electors think about the choices being foisted upon them by the Clintons, the Bidens, or the slickly subtle Obamas.

Mr. Trump had a Town Hall meeting on CNN this week and he spoke his mind during a week in which those who not only disdain and dislike him (like me), but avidly hate him, attained a series of triumphs in the legal system, albeit perhaps transitory.  Unfortunately, notwithstanding their machinations, he was not universally rejected.  Indeed, polls show that the United States electorate prefers him to the inept and unscrupulous mad man the Deep State has imposed on us all, with, of course, the full-fledged support of the corporate media, Mr. Trump’s own intelligence agencies and the oxymoronic Department of Justice.

Perhaps, assassination is now the only option if the United States electorate continues to seem disinclined to yield and cooperate.  Who knows, it’s happened before in the United States, at least according to rebel Democratic Party presidential contender, Robert F. Kennedy III, who, if his own prospects take off, may face the same hazard as Mr. Trump, in his case, a family tradition in the form of a curse.

What’s very sad is that the belligerent and unpleasant Mr. Trump and the utterly corrupt and apparently senile Mr. Biden are clearly not the only choices.  Sure, most of the options presented to us by the Deep State (Republican and Democrat alike) are terrible, but, in addition to the apparently decent Mr. Kennedy, there’s Tulsi Gabbard, although she’s veering sharply to the right on moral issues, and the always decent Dennis Kucinich.  There’s former Virginia Senator James Webb, and even recently fired sort of journalist (the closest thing to one we had within a major media organization, but no Assange), Tucker Carlson.  And perhaps, promoting other alternatives, we have a real live version of Ben Bova’s fictional Sam Gunn, blended with Robert Heinlein’s Delos David Harriman, who seemingly likes to stir the pot hoping something interesting will pop up: Elon Musk (whose name my mind keeps confusing with Nikola Tesla).

The problem, of course, is us.  The intellectually malleable electorate, which, if the Deep State shouts BOOOOO loudly enough, promptly return to the wolves’ fold to be slaughtered like the foolish sheep we are, actually more a hybrid between lemmings and sheep.  All elections, according to the Deep State and its minions, are existential choices between evil and lesser evil.  The good, ensconced in smaller political parties and independents, is never (heaven forbid, or maybe hell) an available option.

BOOOO!!!  The evil Russians are coming again!!!  BOOO!!!  The evil Muslims who hate freedom are around every corner.  BOOOO!!!  The evil Chinese seek to take over the world.  Vote for our choice, good old Joe, or else.  And keep on earning all those dollars we need to extort from you in the form of taxes, essential to finance our liberty loving, sort of democratic aspirations.  Peace is only viable through constant war; and freedom and liberty and respect are only possible through constant meddling and coups, hard and soft (and military interventions when sort of absolutely necessary).  But don’t worry, we’ll finance a great deal of the costs through constant increases in the permissible ceiling for our national debt, already greater than our gross domestic product, but who cares, as long as we can keep printing dollars and force others around the world to accept them, or else.  As Louis XV heartily extorted his People, shortly before the unfortunate Louis XVI and the French Revolution, “Après moi, le deluge” (After me, the flood).

But, … BOOO!!!  The damned pesky BRICS countries (Brazil Russia, India, China and South Africa) seem to be expanding (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria and who knows who else), and threatening to take away our printing presses.

Elections are once again around the corner, so BOOO, BOOO, BOOO and BOOO some more!  Interestingly, from a small segment of the electorate, a seemingly responsive sound resounds in the form of a “raspberryish” booooooo!

That damned Trump just won’t let sleeping dogs lie!
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.