As we await (please) the indictment of Orange Man Walking, he and his rabid, victimized forces are busy raving about abuses of power by an Evil Deep State of WOKE trains, banks, schools, D.A's, gay/ black/ radical left miscreants who "HAVE STOLLEN (sic) OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND WITH IT, THE HEART OF OUR OUR (sic) COUNTRY." But to defeat nefarious wokeness, they first must define it. Their latest effort: "So woke is...umm...sort of...like...the idea of..." SAD!

With a truck circling Mar-A-Golf quoting smirky Tucker's "I hate him passionately," new legal losses daily arriving, and new scathing hashtags gaily trending - #TrumpCrimeFamily and #GuiltyAsFuck - Trump and his "mayonnaise legions" continue to double down on the notion that any attack on him is an attack on our already crumbling Republic, never mind his lifetime of sordid grifts and crimes whose reckoning is long past due. In ceaseless, panicked posts, he's been painting a floridly dystopian portrait of a fictional nation "NOW THIRD WORLD & DYING, AMERICAN PATRIOTS ARE BEING ARRESTED & HELD IN CAPTIVITY LIKE ANIMALS, WHILE CRIMINALS & LEFTIST THUGS ARE ALLOWED TO ROAM THE STREETS, KILLING & BURNING WITH NO RETRIBUTION, MILLIONS ARE FLOODING THROUGH OUR OPEN BOARDERS (sic), MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS. CRIME & INFLATION ARE DESTROYING OUR VERY WAY OF LIFE." Worst, here he is, the eternal victim and "FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA," set upon by D.A. Alvin Bragg, a woke "Soros Racist in Reverse," and America must "PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!" he's being asked to play by the same rulebook as the rest of us, also please send money.

In his latest (literally) dark diatribe, the "fluorescent tangerine imbecile" went all Pol Pot, declaiming that if/when elected he'll form a "Truth & Reconciliation Commission to expose the hoaxes" of the Deep State"; he'll also prosecute government leakers and move 100,000 government jobs out of DC to "places filled with patriots who love America." His sycophants in power, victims just like him, have duly echoed his grievances: Talk of an indictment for what is in fact a gazillion crimes and misdemeanors is "unAmerican," "an outrageous abuse of power," sheer political vengeance that "follows the lead of Socialist dictators." Oversight head James Comer babbles that Bragg is "grossly overstepping his authority by two levels of government" and the House is coming for him. Rand Paul says Bragg should be "put in jail," and what obstruction of justice? Andy Biggs warns, “If they can come for Trump, they will come for you." On the MAGA forum "The Donald," frantic fans are promising "Civil War 2.0," complete with a "Patriot Moat" around Mar-A-Lago. But with Jan. 6 trials and convictions ongoing - and Trump's absence from that event and its consequences often bitterly noted - the response is a tad muted. From Ali Alexander, a key organizer of rallies to overturn the election, "Now I'm retired. I'll pray for him though!"

The GOP's desperate focus on the villainous Bragg, a "woke" Democrat they equate with being "weak on crime," is part of an overarching War on Woke that's become the incoherent cornerstone of all their political machinations - their pot/kettle House hearings on government's "weaponization," their multiple state laws to control books, kids, women in a life-or-death Culture War, their racist efforts to protect innocents from slavery-recognizing Woke Mobs - "Woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy" - and their hopes to win elections through ugly, divisive, repeated use of a dog-whistle that means, "This is really about smearing black, gay and other marginalized people who live the inequity we don't want to acknowledge, but if I said that I'd be called a bigot." The rhetoric is everywhere. Ron Woke-ity-Woke DeSantis, its loudest purveyor, calls his state "the place where woke goes to die," daily pushes fascist legislation to prove it, and warns if he loses his war against "the woke mind-virus" and a vast segment of our population, "We're going to be living under an oppressive woke-ocracy." Pompeo rants about "the poisonous lie of equity wokeness and identity politics," Pence about "a pernicious woke agenda designed to control the American people," Trump about "woke tyranny." During March Madness, the Heritage Foundation can even steer you safely to the most un-woke teams.

In the most ludicrous manifestation of Woke lunacy, the right chose to blame excessive wokeness for last month's collapse of Silicon Valley Bank - did tellers wear Black Banks Matter t-shirts? - because we all know the gilded halls of capitalist finance have long been rife with radical, probably gay Trotskyites and it definitely had nothing to do with a 2018 banking deregulation law signed by Trump and lobbied for by bank president Gary Becker - a white man like the vast majority of Wall Street executives, investment bankers and other overlords of financial power. Still, an inane deluge charged the bank failed because they acknowledged diversity issues. Fox' Jesse Watters: "This stupid bank (is) a woke Biden bank...They were holding seminars (on) National Pride Month." James Comer: "We see it now coming out they were one of the most woke banks." DeSantis: "They were so concerned with DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) and all kinds of stuff (that) diverted from them focusing on their core mission." Wall Street Journal op-ed: "They had 1 Black, 1 LGBTQ+ and 2 Veterans on the board...The company may have been distracted by diversity demands." The crazed conclusion: "This is cultural and economic Marxism, there is no other way of putting it. This is where we are - this long march of Socialism through our institutions."

"Long march of Socialism?" Try long distortion of language to co-opt and re-purpose terms - "elite," "freedom," "pro-life," "Critical Race Theory" - to obscure their own bigotry. The right's attempt to lay the burden of a bank's failure, an innate, common, often cruel hazard of capitalism, on marginalized people follows a historically familiar playbook for faux populists famously perfected by the Nazis: Blame the powerless, who are secretly powerful. In their conflation of efforts to render society kinder, fairer and more empathetic with perfidy, writes Aaron Rupar, they prove the GOP remains "the party of hate," intent on maintaining white patriarchal rule at any cost. Evidence of GOP efforts to "cancel" black, brown, poor, gay, trans etc home rule is overwhelming, from ID laws to redistricting to MAGA-izing school boards to literally erasing policies they don't like in Dem cities of color. The House voted to undo the D.C. City Council's re-write of its own criminal laws. State officials in Texas just announced they're taking over Houston's school system - 62% Latino, 22% Black, 8th largest in the country - to fight “woke education.” A new "Jim Crow bill” will take some judicial and police power from black-majority Jackson, Miss. city officials and give it to GOP state legislators in a move Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba blasts as “plantation politics.” Etc etc.

Still, words do matter. Before the right twisted it into a weapon to bludgeon Legos with disabilities and The Little Mermaid, “woke” had an actual meaning. It originated as Black vernacular for “alert to racial discrimination”; to “stay woke” was to be "aware of the deceptions and tactics used to enforce racism.” Today, a majority of Americans can muster the brain-power to define woke as being "informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices," which for us is kinda the same as being informed, educated on, and aware of living on Planet Earth. For the right, woke has become "MAGA-ese for non-white," but they're caught in a pesky Catch-22: Because even they know they're not supposed to say that out loud, they struggle mightily to define what it is they hate. On Fox, it's murky: "It could be a feeling, it could be a sense." (Twitter: "It could be a land shark, a trans werewolf, a smell, whatever scares you.") It's Pence on Trump: "Nobody is above the law, but nobody is beneath the law either." It's the guy asked by The Good Liars what CRT is: "I dunno, but it definitely shouldn't be taught in schools." It's right-wing sage Bethany Mandel, author of a book about woke indoctrination, asked what woke is: " So, umm..." It's Trump, asked to request a prayer on a Pastors For Trump National Prayer Call, coming up blank, then claiming "the radical left" broke the phone connection. God works in mysterious ways. We hope She's working on an indictment next.

Propaganda 101: Ron DeSantis gets (hires?) unknowing kids of color to support his fascist agenda for the cameras.Getty Image