So, according to Mayor Dave Bronson, the disagreements between Suzanne LaFrance, the citizen-elected Assembly, and himself over issues including the city budget and homelessness are “a conflict of worldviews that boil down to ‘woke-ism’ versus ‘normal.’ " Well, according to the Collins English Dictionary, “wokeism” is used by those “who think that people who are very concerned with social and political unfairness are too extreme and have too much influence in society.” In British English, in which this term is meant to be derogatory, wokeism is “the behavior and attitudes of people who are sensitive to social and political injustice.”
This explains a lot about how Dave Bronson approaches our Anchorage societal and financial challenges. I guess the opposite leadership approach, what he describes as “normal,” can be summed up as “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
Finally, in using derogatory terms in his debate with Ms. LaFrance, Bronson clearly demonstrated the old saying as correct: “When a debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.”
I don’t know about being “too extreme and having too much influence in society,” but count me in for “wokeism” and Ms. LaFrance.
— Thomas R. Schmidt
Anchorage
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