Editor, Times-Union:
The fires in California are an example of wokeism going up in flames. It was woke years ago to let dead wood collect in the forests to become fuel. It was woke to not excavate reservoirs to store water in California and even destroy dams that were storing water for both hydroelectric power and to meet water needs. It was woke to let water that could be used by farmers to go into the Pacific Ocean due to a smelt. It was woke to divert money from firefighting to go to caring for the homeless. It was woke not to pump ocean water into geothermal energy plants to generate electricity and desalanize the water to place in reservoirs. The cost for being woke is at least $20 billion and killed over two dozen people. If the governor of California wants money from Washington for rebuilding, Trump should demand the end of woke policies to allow more water to be available for the people, clear out dead wood from forests, and increase electric energy production. Instead of making California "Trump-proof" which hurts the people, Newsom should follow Trump's advice since it looks like he cares more about Californians than their governor does.
Movie making is showing how being woke is wrong. Most people want to be entertained and not preached to. If they were to make my book "The Madhouse Projects" into a movie, according to Oscar requirements, it wouldn't win an Oscar for best picture because the main character and his wife are a Christian man and a Christian woman. There would be no homosexual relationships shown. A Japanese woman who builds the best cars in the world would get the chance to do that because she is a genius and not a DEI hire. Christian values and not woke ones would overcome evil. The movie might earn over a billion dollars and bring about the development of billions of dollars worth of technology that would change the world. But since it would not be woke it would be deprived of awards even though tens of millions of movie-goers might love it around the world.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of predators were allowed to invade this nation due to the woke and scores of people died because they decided to invoke the death penalty against those innocent Americans. The woke protect criminals as if they hate Americans. It's long past time when people with common sense rose up against the woke and took society away from them before the woke can destroy it.
Rick Badman
Warsaw, via email