Now that We Aren't Woke Anymore, It's Time for a Reawakening

Once again, last week (before Monday's shooting in Madison, Wisconsin), we solemnly commemorated the December 2012 murders of 20 schoolchildren and their six teachers in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. And in an odd confluence of events, a judge rejected a bid by the satirical newspaper, The Onion, to purchase Alex Jones' Infowars and turn it into a satirical version of his own lunatic conspiracies. The sale of Infowars is part of Jones' personal bankruptcy case, which he filed in late 2022 after he was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in defamation lawsuits regarding the Sandy Hook shooting.

Jones repeatedly called the event a hoax staged by actors bent on gun control. Jones' cruelty traumatized parents and survivors for years afterward, and although he eventually conceded that the shootings were real, that admission occurred long after the damage had been done and his profits from others' misery had soared.

One finds evil like that in fiction—Shakespeare's Iago or Dickens' Havisham, the Hawthorne characters who exclude themselves from humankind and then wonder why their lives are haunted. But Jones' lackeys, many of whom are parents themselves, remain callous to other parents' grief because they must have their guns.

In the unwoke mansion where MAGA lives, empathy occupies a very small room somewhere out back—unpainted, unfurnished, unheated, and unvisited.

It is this attitude that permits tens of millions of American citizens to parrot the inscription on the Statue of Liberty but find no issue with a plan to expel millions of men, women, and children who have come here to find the liberty that their own countries cannot provide.

And it is this attitude that Donald Trump relies on, for his policies center on separating and isolating the "others." Everything we thought we knew regarding "the greatest commandment" or of mankind reflecting the "image of God"—that's gone now, its demise sped up by the new anti-Christian Christian-right and its MAGA jeerleaders.

This past week we saw just how degraded and desolate our attitudes have grown when we learned that police who worked to apprehend the murderer of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson received threats for their involvement in the case while the alleged murderer himself, Luigi Mangione, gathered a retinue of admirers. His accomplishment? He shot a person in the back.

We can assume he chose his target to illustrate some disenchantment with health care in America, but let me repeat something for all those who wish to elevate Mangione to stardom or martyrdom—he shot a man in the back. In the eyes of the law, his act differs little from the murders of those defenseless schoolchildren or the sniper attack on a presidential candidate. It's the same cowardice.

Our healthcare system may be broken, but we don't have to be. At the very least we can recognize brutality and inhumanity. Blaming one CEO and gunning him down in cold blood is to miss every imaginable point. We know, for instance, that insurance companies thrive when political leaders provide a friendly atmosphere. The GOP, the party of big business, has done so, but beyond that, they have worked continuously to prevent health care for all and have tried, ad nauseam, to undo even the minimal benefits of the ACA. If we want to stop big business from having free reign in America, we need to study the issues, then get off our butts on election days and elect candidates who have shown some concern for all Americans, not just the wealthy and privileged.

In short, we need to be less befuddled and more woke, aware of the real issues that direct our lives. Goofball slogans and $28.00 baseball caps won't do it. It's not too late to awaken to that fact.