What is "Woke"?

Former Bernie Sanders spokesperson Briahna Joy Gray asked a conservative author to define "woke" last week, and the author choked, setting off a national discussion on what "woke" means. "Woke" is an ideology that demands the promises of liberalism (pursuit of happiness, equality, liberty), made for centuries by illiberals (structural racists/classists), be realized immediately. William Gladstone, England's MP later PM, said in 1868 that "justice delayed is justice denied". In 1951, Langston Hughes averred that (to paraphrase) a "dream deferred is a dream denied".

In 1963, MLK said "I have a dream".

"Wokism" rejects delay— at the very moment the illiberal cultures produced by 200 years of industrial capitalism, and 400 years of Euro-Am colonialism, shudder and collapse into the war of all against all, enveloped by an increasingly hotter more carbon filled climate. The backlash against "wokism" is launched by those who learned perfectly that the idea of progress contains within it an agenda (Progressivist Social Darwinism) to use the idea to prevent its realization. Rome wasn't built in day, goes the cliche. It was destroyed in a few weeks, goes another.