Please, Don’t Wake Me

As we wait to see if our democracy, such as it is, lasts through the week, the question that still confounds me is what makes the maga movement so damn attractive to so many people. I’m not sure if there is a core belief system or philosophy of the movement other than fanatic loyalty to the leader and implacable hatred for anything they consider woke. But what does it mean to be woke and why is it anathema to them? In normal conversation the word woke just refers to the cessation of sleep and indicates a state of awareness of what’s going on around us. While it’s true that most of us don’t relish being roused from a good sleep, especially if all the day holds for us is the drudgery of work and interactions with people we dislike, we also recognize it is dangerous to sleepwalk our way through the day. Better to be awake and aware while driving a car or mowing the lawn, for example, and maybe even while voting, although the deleterious effects of engaging in that activity while asleep may not be as immediately apparent.

Why all the resentment about being aware? It seems that awareness about specific matters such as climate change, social injustice, and racial inequality is what especially irks those of the MAGArian persuasion. There’s also a preference for blurring awareness of their past misdeeds and those of their family, tribe, and country. Much better for those inconvenient episodes to be erased and treated as if they never occurred. Books, films or people that reveal things that are unflattering or unpleasant need to be banned and canceled. Unsubstantiated conspiracy theories are preferred to news sources providing information contrary to what they wish to hear. Expertise is unacceptable because it suggests that others know more about certain things than they do, and the need to feel in control is so overpowering that they would rather die dosing themselves with pseudo-remedies than subject themselves to a vaccine developed by actual experts. They are, however, in favor of religious freedom (except for people with different beliefs than themselves) and freedom of speech (except for those who disagree with them).

If that description of what MAGArians find so objectionable about woke-ness seems unfair and unkind, I hasten to admit that I myself (and perhaps all of us) have the same tendency to blot out what I don’t want to see. I have an impulse to dismiss a doctor’s dire diagnosis and seek alternative explanations and remedies. I don’t like to admit (especially to myself) that I have been wrong or acted badly or foolishly, or that someone I care for or admire did. It would be much more convenient if everyone held the same views I do and respected everything I said and did. In other words, I can understand the feelings underlying MAGArian attitudes. They are human feelings and reflect the sense that we are the center of the universe and everything revolves around us and our desires. Being woke entails accepting that those sentiments are the dreams we create in our sleep, but must abandon when we wake up into the real world and have to contend with the divergent realities all around us. I don’t blame MAGArians for wanting to remain in that delicious sleep in which they are all that matter, but I quake at the consequences when they convince themselves and act as if their dreams are reality and that actual reality is a hoax.

This is a stressful and difficult time to be alive. The rapidity of the changes going on around us are hard to comprehend and cope with. It’s hard for everyone, but those of us who have the experience of living with people from other cultures, who have traveled and read about different ways of being, who live in urban settings and have been exposed to a greater diversity of lifestyles, have a leg up on those who have lived their lives in narrower, more constricted settings. We are a little more used to change. Suddenly coming to terms with new ways of doing things, finding their skills and knowledge have become obsolete, having their firmest beliefs challenged, is a huge shock. In a state of denial, they become vehement and violent, unwilling to accept a conception of the world that’s so different from what they always thought it to be.

Woke people, too intent on opening the sleepers’ eyes to reality, maybe too eager to show off their own intellectual or moral superiority, or, just too panicked about imminent disasters to moderate the harshness of their message, are perceived as scolds, disturbing pleasant dreams. There’s no way out of the predicament we’re in without understanding and tolerating one another, but with all the power of the state in the hands of MAGArians delighting in the misfortunes of others instead of seeing them as their own, it’s hard to achieve.

Plato’s allegory of the cave seems an apt message for the moment. It describes prisoners chained in a cave, who can only see reflections cast on a wall, and take them for reality. If one were to get free and learn that those supposed objects were just shadows, not reality, and return to release the others so they could discover the reality behind the illusions they have become accustomed to, he would be scorned by them for talking about things they couldn’t see and didn’t believe existed. If he persisted and tried to drag them out of the cave, they would try to kill him because they were set in their own understanding of reality which he was disturbing.

The question is how to wake MAGArians who view being woke as a criminal offense?