I wish writers would look up the dictionary/Wikipedia definition before spouting off in the letters column.
For instance: “Woke is an adjective derived from African-American English used since the 1930s or earlier to refer to awareness of racial prejudice and discrimination, often in the construction stay woke. The term acquired political connotations by the 1970s and gained further popularity in the 2010s with the hashtag #staywoke. Over time, woke came to be used to refer to a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism and denial of LGBTQ rights. Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States,” according to Wikipedia.
I realize “woke” is used by many groups who pay little attention to proper definitions. It is a way to draw attention to their “issue.”
However, I still prefer that letter writers check the definition first and put pen to paper/computer second. Much like a debate society does to ensure the debate does not wander from the topic.
Gail Lightfoot
Arroyo Grande
This article appears in Volunteers 2026.
Evolution also occurs with our language, not just biological organisms. The term “woke” has evolved from a relatively specific meaning, to a wider all purpose epithet to be hurled against those annoying leftist “cause” people, much like they fling the epithets “racist”, “sexist”, ” fascist” and all the different “phobes” against those who refuse to agree with them on any issue.
John:
You forgot “deplorables,” and other polysyllabic words which the common person may not know but serves as a polite way of insulting them. That’s how libs are, they wig out when conservatives call things as they are but in truth, they do the same thing but in a way most people might not know.
Hillary Clinton cracks me up, a small town, backwater, lawyer from Arkansas, so desperate for power and recognition by the NYC, east coast snob elites, she overlooked her husband’s philandering and actually thinks she is now one of them.
Once again, Gail Lightfoot, like a statement coming from the Chinese public information officer or press secretary, declares what the correct definition of a word is or what the “correct” way of looking at something is. We are just rogues and loose cannons, shooting off perspectives that don’t jive with “proper definitions.” “Definitions” which Orwell noted, when defined by liberal authoritarians like her, are only allowed one meaning:
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thought-crime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now.”
FYI: Gail Lightfoot is a Libertarian, not a liberal.
John:
Noted. She does possess many of the same inclinations as a modern day lib though, as seen in many of her windy contributions.
I was a libertarian for many years and have been aware of Ms. Lightfoot for a long time. Maybe older than me. Of course, she’s just a free loader to Mr. Fly in his belief that his generation was somehow cheated by past gens. Ms. Lightfoot is quite firm in her ideology that is basically Calvinist and Social Darwinist in the idea that you make your own way in the world and the government has only one job, to protect its citizenry. The rest is up to you. I grew away from that thinking a long time ago, and to claim she has any liberal tendencies is laughable.
Actually, if that is part of Lightfoot’s belief system, “…government has only one job, to protect its citizenry,” it’s actually rooted in John Locke’s writing, which is to say, very American. Maybe it’s you who is wrong, Michael. Locke also believed another role for government was to protect private property, that’s all.
There is no “market, the Fed IS the market. Our economy is fake and totally financialized, we have become Soviet with a planned economy. The Fed hand picks which companies (banks and hedge funds) survive, a little liquidity here, a little theliquidity there, lol. It’s a joke. We export nothing. Those that are actually employed just pretend to work.
If it wasn’t for taco shops, liquor stores, gyms, nail salons, tire changing shops, and marijuana dispensaries, our economy is just big banks and hedge funds, lol. This is how the government expects to pay back 40 trillion in national debt, lol.
Our economy should have collapsed in 2008, instead, it’s been kept on life support by bailouts. What a farce. Between taxes and inflation, everyone is getting poorer, wages haven’t kept up with inflation in decades, lol. Instead of using cheap money to build factories, it was used for stock buybacks and executive bonuses. These very executives are dumping their own shares in the very companies they manage, lol. Nothing is even real, lol. Property values are fake, money is fake, and with AI, images, music, and literature are fake. This is America, land of the fake, home of insolvency.