Meanings

I like to think of myself as a man of words. It’s mostly an old fashioned idea. These days everyone communicates with video or podcasts. And I doubt any of my little 300 word blog posts will ever go viral. But I like words and the imagination required to make them real. Although, if they were shorter, they might have a better chance because, perhaps being pithy counts more than I think. Anyway, I have a few thoughts on some words in current usage.

Woke. It appears these days mostly to be a pejorative term. I believe the Joint Chief of Staff, who was fired the other day, was accused of being woke. But being a simple man, and thinking the opposite of woke is asleep, why would anyone prefer someone in a leadership position to be asleep? It’s probably shorthand for something, and I’m still looking for someone to gin up a new definition for me. Although, I’ll probably have to wait for the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Another word that struck me funny the other day is gulf. Sometimes, it’s a big body of water. Like Gulf of Mexico. Other times, it means a void and big emptiness. As in the phrase, the gulf between us is just too big. So when I saw it juxtaposed with the word America other day I thought it might describe how some people feel about my country leaving the Paris Climate Accords or threatening to leave NATO. There’s a gulf where America used to be in the world order, the one that came about at the end of the second World War. The one we helped design and build.