Recovery tips for MAGAs suffering Woke Derangement Syndrome
Right in that there Bible
Jeffrey Denny
Woke woke woke woke woke woke woke.
Sounds like a duck with a broke quacker. A hilarious joke you’d hear on “Gutfeld!,” Fox’s “king of late-night comedy.”
But Republicans can’t get enough of woke. They see it everywhere.
Woke candy. Woke Lego. Woke corporations. Woke troops. Woke nongender personal hygiene products such as Charmin. Woke babies keeping Socialist parents up all night with feeding, comforting and grooming. Woke grammarians triggered by misuse of the past tense of “wake” and general Zillennial disregard for language. Woke Ewok when your autocorrect is dyslexic and obsessed with “Return of the Jedi.”
Yet woke is bringing America together again — both progressive and regressive.
Like how everyone hates Bezos.
Left-wing Progressives love woke because it means, “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),” according to Merriam-Webster.
Right-wing Regressives love woke because it means, “taking deliciously nasty delight in attacking liberals for defending people we hate,” according to Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Leaders of The Party Formerly Known as Grand are gearing up to put woke atop the 2024 election ticket as leading candidates compete to hate woke the most.
No wonder: Polls, surveys, focus groups, and message testing show that woke is an election winner when your party has painted itself into the MAGA corner you need but revile and disdain, and you have no earthly idea how to make America greater.
Give MAGAs the word-association test, and the results are consistent across the board:
Teachers and librarians: Woke.
Education generally: Woke.
Traffic safety: Woke.
Scientists saving lives: Woke.
Chick-fil-A healthy choices such as Naked Nuggets: Woke.
Exposing our innocent children to liberal pedophile grooming with Urban Dictionary Trump locker room talk such as “naked nuggets”: Um, what? “Naked Nuggets”? LOL!
Fox News (after revelations about secretly hating Trump and suckering fans): The woke corporate liberal media lies more than the Fox corporate media because Fox says so.
For the MAGA base, woke hate tests off the charts better than woke hope. What choice does the GOP have but to feed MAGA woke hate if they want to win elections for power and money?
But let’s get psychological.
It’s important to understand the root emotional cause of this powerful political phenomenon that rules and renders the Republican Party powerless and promises to destroy America.
The forthcoming latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Sixth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-6-TR) that I imagined has recognized the MAGA pathology as “Woke Derangement Syndrome,” or WDS.
WDS victims suffer from clinical obsession about woke to the point it has become a life-destroying addiction. The only relief is another hit of Tucker Carlson Tonight.
But deep down, WDS is a cry for love.
Bullying then playing victim when challenged by victims — more a feature than a bug of Trump and MAGAism and clinical narcissists—might be the best way Persons With WDS can express their identity, agency, personhood and feelings.
Hate can be just as intoxicating as love. George Costanza, the model for all men, was smitten with Jerry Seinfeld’s masseuse girlfriend because she hated him.
With greatest respect to a certain Republican Senator from South Carolina, performative anti-LGBTQ Republicans often are self-loathing LGBTQ in denial and protesting too much.
Like most recently how Conservative Political Action Conference head Matt Schlapp sexually assaulted a young male GOP staffer and blamed the liberal media for reporting the confirmed facts.
Hate, however, often transitions into love. Like in countless classic “hate-to-love” movies where enemies wind up hugging it out. Like most Katherine Hepburn screwball comedies or “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”
You get a sense that if Marjorie Taylor Greene had a decent therapist, she would drop the hate and proclaim her wicked crush on Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Not just for the attention MGT craves, but really for love and pitching a new reality TV series: “Marjorie Hearts Alexandra.” (And if AOC resisted, you know MGT would stalk her, making the show even more riveting.)
Message to MAGAs suffering from Woke Derangement Syndrome: We hear you.
Thoughts and prayers for your pain. We get it. We know your heart, like Harvey Fierstein in “Torch Song Trilogy” is screaming, “I JUST WANT TO BE LOVED! IS THAT SO WRONG?”
If you want to get that WDS monkey off your back and get clean, here are four tips from a book you love more than anyone, The Holy Bible:
1. “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.” (Matthew 7:12). Imagine you’re LGBTQ facing hate, rejection and ridicule instead of love and acceptance for who you are.
2. “Love your neighbor as yourself” (James 2:8). Your universe of family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers probably includes people struggling with anti-LGBTQ hate, rejection, and ridicule. You may not know about it, as many courageously suffer in silence. But don’t be that ugly neighbor that decent people avoid!
3. Jesus was a friend to outcasts (Matthew 9:10–12, Luke 7:36–50). Think about this as you hoot at “Gutfeld!” about canceling the cancelers. The excesses of wokism are easy targets. Only sociopaths shoot fish in a barrel.
4. “He that is without sin let him first cast a stone” (John 8:7). Do liberals sometimes go too far in pushing wokeness? Sure, just like MAGAs sometimes do in pushing White supremacy, Christian nationalism, election lies, and hate for people the hated liberals are defending.
The simple test and path forward for MAGAs suffering from WDS is: Are you motivated by hate? Or love?
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
