This is an opinion column.

The far right finally stepped into its own woke pothole. Or a pile of poo.

I give ‘em credit. They’ve done a pretty dang good job of weaponizing a term coined by Black activists to denote being aware of inequities and injustices in our society, particularly as it relates to race. Now, they throw woke around as a reaction to anything they don’t like (see: CRT, trans youth, LBGTQ matters… hell, me!)

Something they can’t comprehend? It’s woke!

Something they don’t know—and don’t want to know the truth? It’s woke!

Global warming? Gun reform? Expand Medicaid so working-class Alabamians have access to quality healthcare? It’s all woke!

Woke is the far right’s sky is falling.

And they don’t know what they’re talking about. Absolutely and unequivocally clueless. (See: CRT, trans youth, LBGTQ matters… hell, me!)

Yet they freely toss the word out in their safe spaces. On the Fox News sets. In dark clubs engaging with their anti-woke own, their own equally uninformed who simply nod and agree.

Like lemmings with tiki torches.

If you haven’t seen the video of Bethany Mandel, a self-labeled conservative author, trying to define woke, let me entertain you. Appearing on The Hill’s Rising, host Briahna Joy Gray asked Mandel simply: “Would you mind defining woke because it’s come up a couple of times? I just want to make sure we’re on the same page.”

Caveat: I’ve never met Mandel, a wife, and mother. I’m sure she’s a fine, earnest person.

Caveat 2: I’ve never read any of her writing, including the book she went on CNN to promote: Stolen Youth: How Radicals are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation—which contains a whole anti-woke chapter. A whole chapter.

Caveat 3: Maybe Mandel was not used to being interviewed in a space not helmed by a questioner who merely agreed with the far right’s empty definition of woke and never asked what it actually means.

Caveats done, here’s Mandel’s response:

“So, I mean, woke is sort of the idea that, um, (pause) I … This is going to be one of those moments that goes viral. I mean, woke is something that’s very hard to define, and we’ve spent an entire chapter defining it. It is sort of the understanding that we need to return, totally reimagine, and re, re, redo society in order to create hierarchies of oppression. It’s hard to explain in a 15-second soundbite.”

It’s even better watching it. Here goes. I’ll wait:

Wow.

Let’s give Mandel some credit. She knew right away she was unprepared and soon to be viral fodder. Also, afterward, she seemed to handle the onslaught with at least a bit of humor.

She told Slate writer Aymann Ismail: “I had an idiotic flub. It was just a stupid moment. You know how you see something happening from outside of your body? Like ‘This is—why am I doing this? This is terrible!’ It was that. But on camera. My husband made this comparison. You know that GIF of the monkey sticking its finger up its butt and smelling it? Every day, there’s that person on the internet. And today it’s me.”

I admire the far right’s ability to flip a script, to take a word, saying, term, or idea and flip it—transform it into something else. Something else diametrically opposed to its truth.

Something their followers are too lazy to assess. Too lazy to ask: What does this actually mean?

Here’s how the Merriam-Webster dictionary—a source the far right is too lazy to Google or fearful of the actual truth it may reveal—defines woke:

Aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)

No matter which swing of the pendulum you embrace, please tell me what this simple, cogent definition has to do with, oh, a bank’s collapse, or anything the far right pouts or tantrums over.

Woke is the lazy, uninformed response among those who don’t have anything positive to add to a discussion or debate. Who don’t have an actual solution to a problem or a cogent counter to your point of view.

They’re the bullies who’d rather throw spit wads while sitting in the corner of the school cafeteria complaining about teachers but never go to class.

They’re Ron DeSantis, who blamed the momentous Silicon Valley bank collapse on its diversity initiatives.

Anyone outside of their own infected circle knows how ridiculous they sound. How wrecked by their own pothole they sound. How poo-stained they sound.

How unwoke they sound.

They’ve essentially diffused their own weapon.

Call me woke all you want.

I’m proud to be aware. I’m proud to be conscious. I’m proud to be thoughtful about areas of our society where we can do better, where we can become the more perfect, perfect union our founding four founders declared we should be.

I’ll take being woke any day—over those who must wake up to their ignorance.

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Roy S. Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and winner of the Edward R. Murrow prize for podcasts: “Unjustifiable,” co-hosted with John Archibald. His column appears in AL.com, as well as the Lede. Subscribe to his free weekly newsletter, The Barbershop, here. Reach him at [email protected], follow him at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj