I get a kick out of the current moniker used to dis those with whom they disagree (“Woke,” Sept. 25). I find it funny that some think it is better to be the opposite of woke: asleep.
Betraying the oath to uphold and protect the Constitution? Ignoring the rule of law? Marginalizing those who are different? Denying climate science? Ending reproductive health care? Weaponizing the Department of Justice for personal retribution? Eliminating the global trends report from intelligence officials? Arresting and incarcerating farmworkers? And so many more threats and damage to our democracy.
Sure sounds like it should be better to be woke than asleep at the wheel.
Christine Mulholland
San Luis Obispo
This article appears in Oct 9-19, 2025.
Christine:
Your version of “democracy” has ruined our economy, has stolen the wealth that should be in the hands of working American men and women and placed it in the hands of a small coterie of douchbags, has made America a dumping ground for the world’s poor and to which they enter from undefended borders, has sent our industrial base overseas, has put financial tollbooths on the basic services and amenities any humane and self respecting society provides to its hardworking people, has made college pointless when there are no jobs for graduates other than driving taxis, has debased the dollar to the point where you practically need a wheelbarrow of dollars just to buy a loaf of bread, has made home ownership impossible for anyone under 75 years of age, has put our country 40 TRILLION dollars in debt, has interjected Big Brother in everything from our cellphones to our home appliances, has destroyed a free press, and has put the interests of an unmoored class of globalists and banks ahead of all of us. Our government basically wants us dead.
Cut defense spending in half.
Balance the budget.
Build the wall.
Deport the 40 million illegals running around.
Prosecute the employers that hire them.
Institute national healthcare.
Tax the rich.
Create publicly owned factories run by public employees.
Protect social security.
Support the arts as was done by FDR’s New Deal (Diego Rivera et al.)
Stop foreign intervention.
Bring our troops home.
Use our resources for actual Americans, not illegals.
Get rid of H1-B visas, hire Americans.
Stop bailing out failing corporations.
To pursue your woke/asleep at the wheel analogy: Perhaps it is better to be “asleep”, that “woke at the wheel” when you are aiming your metaphorical “vehicle” to run down and crush the rest of society.
Glad to see that New Times highlights my column from February 23, 2023 with the headline, “You can call me ‘woke,’ but I prefer the term Wide Awake. Glad to see some resounding echo of that theme in your letter, Christine!
John A:
That’s the lie libs tell themselves, that those who voted for the Republican party are just “asleep” or gullible or that they got snookered. I hate to burst your party’s bubble, but many of us left your party and for me, it was your Commander in Chief providing, allowing, and assisting that crook in Ukraine to fire MLRS missiles deep into the Russian heartland last Fall. That was it. When I found myself pointing out to my wife and stepson a large drainage ditch under the railroad tracks near my residence where they could hide when Russia decided to retaliate and NUKE THE 7NITED STATES, that’s when I realized I had to join the millions of former Democrats out there who have fled from your party. As a Boomer, do you not remember the cold war? Have you forgotten the lessons? Do you not remember the Cuban missile crisis? Have you taken leave of your senses? What choice does any man who loves his country and family have in those circumstances when the only candidate out who says he will end the war “within 24 hours” is from an opposing party but vote for him? What were our choices? Vote for the wine mom Kamala Harris? Absolutely not. Will Trump end the war/money laundering operation in Ukraine? Sure doesn’t look like it, but at least he said he would, the Dems are so beholden to the military industrial complex, those words could never leave their lips. Pray we don’t get nuked.