Inez Petersen uses the term woke saying we shouldn’t vote that way for a particular candidate in her recent letter (“Don’t vote ‘woke’ in school district race”, published July 19).

It is unfortunate the way people can twist words around to mean something entirely different than their original intent.

It’s clear to me that being “woke” means being aware of social issues and injustices, at least that is the definition that I found when I looked it up in several different dictionaries on line. But it seems that the people who want to make getting an education farther than the fifth grade and becoming aware of the problems still facing our society regarding racial inequality and a women’s right to make decisions regarding her own body are somehow bad things and should be discouraged at every opportunity.

It is very troubling to me that we as a country are so deeply divided, both politically and socially, there are over seventy million people in this country who want to be governed by an autocratic egomaniac who wants to be president for life and consolidate all of the power of the federal government into his office. He and his staff have made it abundantly clear as per the op-ed from the New York Times, reprinted in the Seattle Times and referred to in my recent letter to the editor (“Trump wants to increase presidential power for his own ends”, published July 26) that that is their plan if elected again in 2024.

Make no mistake, our democratic republic is in serious jeopardy when we have this many people willing to be governed by a person like Trump. Just sayin’.

Larry Benson

Enumclaw