Wow! Whoever thought President-elect Donald Trump’s category-5 hurricane bluster was really a month-long Phoenix heatwave of hot air got that wrong. When he said he would blow “woke” down, it wasn’t braggadocio. He meant it.

“Woke” is a big descriptor. It is derision aimed at how some people foolishly work at politeness. It also covers the idea of “identity politics” representing the notion some individuals in this country, by birth and inheritance, have more or fewer rights and privileges than others. Woke is also the belief this nation has become too welcoming to too many unauthorized border-crossers. Woke got a national thumping in the last election.

Now that Trump has won, it’s an opportunity to develop the woke counter premise. “Broke” should be this new administration’s trope, as in “it is going for broke” on anti-woke. Broke has the advantage of containing the slang “Bro,” a salutation for the male side of the anti-woke cohort.

The broke trope is appropriate in this sense: Trump’s MAGAs can claim, “We broke you in half over our knees, little ladies.” It’s a retort to the idea some women, mostly over age 65, thought Vice President Kamala Harris would be the first woman president. These little ladies, heart-broken, are now left bereft in the belief they will die before a woman who is not Trump’s type will ever be elected president of the U.S.

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By election results, worries about American democracy broke under the weight of Americans’ worries about the economy, inflation and immigration. More broadly, according to many critics of Harris’ campaign, her effort broke down due to her failure to connect to the male side of the working class. The deep disdain of MAGA men of all identities for the fey domestic (in all senses) policies attached to Harris broke her pre-election joy. If her joy were a ceramic vase, it would be on the floor in thousands of broken shards, stomped on by MAGA men almost into powder.

Any help MAGA men got from the Biden administration was dismissed as too little, too late. The fury of lost jobs under previous administrations was unabated by Democrats and fueled by Trump. The newly elected president broke it down for MAGAs thus: “you were screwed and I’m the only one to fix it.” His straightforward contempt broke the back of all that Democratic campaign money, $1.5 billion spent on rock concerts and not on finding and motivating enough voters. The Democrats’ get-out-the-vote machine, much vaunted, is apparently broke, in all senses.

Men in Colorado broke with the Democratic Party. The day before the election, voter numbers by age and gender showed Democratic women were outvoting active Democratic men voters by 100,000 ballots. That’s a lot of male raspberries to the state’s Democratic Party. This undervoting occurred without the large anti-Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) ad campaigns that swamped battleground states.

Men apparently didn’t need to be persuaded too many Democratic policies left them feeling meh. Colorado’s women, many of them working mothers, apparently do believe the state’s policies help them. It may be impossible, at least in the short term, for government programs to successfully address the differing needs of women and men at the same time to make both genders satisfied government is doing a good job.

We’ll find out under the Trump administration how well super-masculine initiatives perform for the nation. Trump’s cabinet picks affecting climate change, the governor of North Dakota for the Department of Interior and an oil-and-gas executive from Colorado for Secretary of Energy, will tell us a lot. In case you missed the contemptuous dig, these two appointments of White men stand in stark contrast to President Joe Biden’s selection for Secretary of the Department of Interior: a female native American — a double DEI appointment.

Trump’s selection for Homeland Security Secretary is also a finger in the eye to woke Democrats. Apparently to prove her tough-guy MAGA bona fides, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem announced in her autobiography she shot her dog because it annoyed her and a goat because it smelled. These are not faux facts, as in Haitians having dogs for dinner, because she didn’t eat them. But her story is a warning to immigrants about to be rounded-up by the new administration for deportation to some broke place they hiked thousands of miles to get away from. Is that image too dark? Let’s lighten up!

Trump’s appointments to head the Justice and Defense Departments have been accused of sexual misconduct, to describe their actions with maximum politesse. That’s some wild bro broke.

Our federal government bureaucracy is a place where woke has had an impact. With Trump’s best broke bro Elon Musk in charge of breaking the bureaucracy down, woke DEI hiring will end. Musk can take care of policies he finds noxious using his own anti-woke firing methods — take out everyone and deal with the mess later.

About four years from now, Trump will finally be done. His legacy will be clear. The question is where will the nation stand: fixed or broke?

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.