The language is shifting, but the goal remains unchanged. Readers familiar with Dr. Seuss’s classic The Cat in the Hat recall the twin chaos agents Thing 1 and Thing 2. “These Things are good Things,” the Cat reassures children whose mother has inexplicably left them under a fish’s supervision. “They are tame. Oh, so tame! / They have come here to play.”
The Things briefly feign innocence before revealing themselves as marauding imps who knock over nightstands and ruin linens. “I do not like the way that they play!” says the son of the house.
Now comes Woke 1 and Woke 2. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quoted an unnamed city councilman in a viral ABC interview: “Woke 1 was crazy.” The congresswoman sheepishly acknowledged Americans did not like the way Woke 1 played out while implicitly announcing that Woke 2—tame, oh so tame—will soon emerge.
For purposes of advertising, Woke 2 will attempt to keep its trans members less conspicuous than Woke 1 did, at least until national power is re-established.
A new version of wokeness is taking shape. Yet just as Thing 2 was fundamentally identical to Thing 1, Woke 2 will not differ in essence from Woke 1. Both are here to upend the furniture.
Wokeness, in all its forms, is grievance politics. Its core premise holds that an injustice lies at America’s heart and must be corrected to atone for historical misdeeds inflicted on innocents. What changes with Woke 2 is who those innocents are and how they’ve been wronged.
Woke 1 centered on black women as the most oppressed, thus most righteous. Kamala Harris referenced this in her vice presidential victory speech: “I’m thinking about her and the generations of women—black women.” She acknowledged other women but framed black women as the backbone of democracy.
This approach held rhetorical power until contradictions surfaced. Third-wave feminism, theorized by figures like Judith Butler, made it impossible not to prefix “trans-” to “woman.” The Woke 1 flag became a complicated progress Pride flag—gay rainbow with black and trans colors intruding from the left.
Further complications arose when Woke 1 faced electoral realities. The legacy of slavery did not affect most racial minorities Democrats sought to include, such as Nigerians or unvetted South and Central Americans crossing borders. Chinese, Japanese, and Indian Americans also fit awkwardly into narratives of Jim Crow-era oppression.
Woke 1’s contradictions intensified after Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), where Asian students claimed admissions officers favored black applicants, and Trump ’24 ads linking Kamala Harris to taxpayer-funded gender surgeries for federal prisoners.
Placing black women at the moral center created unworkable obligations toward illegal immigrants and queer felons. The coalition needed reshuffling. Thus Woke 2 redefines its ideal victim: the dispossessed Palestinian liberationist fighting Hamas against Israel.
This shift offers strategic advantages. First, it streamlines racial arguments. Instead of analogizing every U.S. racial group to Jim Crow victims, Woke 2 frames black America as one instance in a global fight for justice epitomized by the intifada.
In a 2023 Democratic Socialists of America panel, future New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared: “When the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.” He outlined Woke 2’s blueprint—drawing from Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961), not Judith Butler.
In a recent New Yorker interview with David Remnick, Democrat Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed argued that pro-Israel politicians divert funds meant for children to fund “a military that has done a genocide.” This reframing targets white or white-coded oppressors—read: Jewish—funneling money from America’s working poor.
Woke 2’s focus on foreign policy and economics, where public anger resides, deflects discredited LGBTQ+ extremism claims while maintaining its moral self-righteousness.
In practice, any woke administration will impose similar sexual priorities once elected. But for now, Woke 2 attempts to conceal trans members more effectively than Woke 1 did—until national power is re-established.
Replacing the progress Pride flag with the Palestinian flag distracts from queer excess while infusing socialist revolution with anti-white resentment. Whether voters embrace this strategy remains uncertain. Yet if successful, Americans will discover that both Woke 1 and Woke 2, like Thing 1 and Thing 2, only play nice until they turn over tables.
