A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Nov 5, 2022

SABOTAGE: INTRODUCTION

Lots of things are broken right now.
Most people want to see them fixed.
And yet ... they stay broken.

Why can’t we fix broken things?
I’d say it’s because the very act of repair has been sabotaged.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-introduction-954417?via=twitter-card&client=DesktopWeb&element=issue-card

Sabotage: Introduction

Hey, it's been a while. I took six weeks off. Maybe you noticed. Maybe you didn't. Maybe bananas.Hope you all had a good spring either way. You all look great!Me? I caught Covid. It was pretty mild but it still messed me up pretty well from a "being able to go for a daily run" standpoint. I think I'm back to normal now, for which I'm hugely thankful. It gave me a chance to reflect on how really awesome it is that our government and media appear to have decided that the answer to Covid is for ev…

Show threadA.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Nov 6, 2022

SABOTAGE 1 - THE COST

But what is meant by "broken" and "repair?"
What is meant by "sabotage?"

And what is repair's true cost?

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-1-the-cost-1248109

Sabotage: Part 1 - The Cost

Happy Independence Day! Tomorrow is a day when we ostensibly celebrate our nation's freedom from the institutional oppression of a government that had decided to abusively profit off of us without adequately representing us, a freedom we secured by rising up as a people and throwing the bastards out, by demolishing the hold their rules and governmental structure had over us, and writing new and better ones for ourselves—not by asking permission or respecting the rules and institutions that oppr…

Show threadA.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Nov 8, 2022

SABOTAGE 2 - THE BLAMELESS PEOPLE

Why can’t we fix broken things?

The act of repair itself has been sabotaged, by people whose primary goal is avoiding any cost of repair.

If you want to avoid any cost, you have to become blameless people.

Here’s how blamelessness works.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-2-the-blameless-people-1251112

Sabotage: Part 2 - The Blameless People

Where were we?Ah, right. We're talking about sabotage of repair.It's been a couple weeks. Let's recap.The idea is that a wide array of broken things in our society are not getting fixed, even though most of us want to fix them, because the process of repair has been sabotaged by people who don't want to pay the cost of repair when they could profit from the ongoing brokenness.There was an Introduction. Then came a Part 1.Predictably enough, this is Part 2.Good enough? Let's begin.Where to begin…

Show threadA.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Nov 9, 2022

SABOTAGE 3 - THE BIG QUESTION

The process of repair has been sabotaged, by “blameless” people, convinced of their own supremacy, whose primary goal is avoiding any cost of repair so they can profit off of the higher cost of brokenness.

Good to know … but what do we do now?

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-3-the-big-question-1294172

Sabotage: Part 3 - The Big Question

Let me tell you a story.Wikipedia informs me that Robert Moses was "an American public official who mainly worked in the New York metropolitan area," whose "decisions favoring highways over public transit helped create the modern suburbs of Long Island."He was never elected, Wikipedia also informs me. An interesting footnote.Moses built parkways which led, among other places, to Long Island beaches. He set the overpass bridges very low—too low, in fact, to accommodate public transport of the da…

Show threadA.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Nov 10, 2022

SABOTAGE 4 - FOUNDATIONAL LIES

If you are aligned against paying natural costs, the first thing to sabotage is awareness.

You sabotage awareness with ignorance—by deliberately refusing knowledge that is readily available.

You sabotage awareness by insisting on foundational lies.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-4-foundational-lies-1319378?via=twitter-card&client=DesktopWeb&element=issue-card

Sabotage: Part 4 - Foundational Lies

In 2016, the extremist right wing television propagandist Laura Ingraham stood at the podium of the Republican National Convention, electrifying the crowd for approximately 15 minutes. Her speech was about how it was time for people who already had disproportionate power to take power back. It was about re-establishing an expectation of respect from others on behalf of those who had demonstrated very little respect for others. It was a screed against bias in the media delivered by a major media…

Show threadA.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Nov 21, 2022

SABOTAGE 5 - NEUTRALITY AND WITNESS

And I have to ask myself: is what separates these people their beliefs?

*Are* all these beliefs divisive?

Do *both* people have beliefs that need changing?

Divided by … *beliefs?*

Is *that* the problem we’re trying to solve?

I can’t help but notice that the commercial elides the truth, which is that the trans woman has not failed to understand the bigot’s essential humanity, but the bigot has rejected hers.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-5-neutrality-witness-1336047

Sabotage: Part 5 - Neutrality & Witness

So, to begin: We have a lot of problems. Perhaps you've noticed. A lot of things are broken, everything from our roads and bridges to our foundational assumptions about what society is and what it should do and how it should function and for whom it should function.We want to see these things fixed, most of us, and we agree on the solutions, mostly—by which I mean those solutions are massively popular when polled. And yet nothing gets fixed, and after 5 or 6 decades of trying incrementalism, it…

Show threadA.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Nov 23, 2022

SABOTAGE 6 - THE NATURAL HUMAN INSTINCT

The opposition to conviction is complacency—an active unwillingness to take a needed course. I think the reason there are so many different types of complacency—indifference, institutionalism, cynicism, optimism, false dichotomy, deflection, disassociation—is because complacency, by definition and as an aspirational goal, doesn’t give a shit. Any path will do for complacency, as long as it results in not giving a shit.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-6-the-natural-human-instinct-1365030

Sabotage: Part 6 - The Natural Human Instinct

This one is a hydra.Usually I start with a story. It's a good way to hook into whatever I want to discuss. But I find there are so many ways to get into the topic I'm considering today—so many stories, so many examples, so many aspects—it's difficult to pick one.I think I'll tell several.But first, let me just say this: when someone is hurt or in trouble, there is a natural human instinct to help. If something is broken, there is a natural human instinct to fix it. If something is wrong, there …

Show threadA.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Nov 24, 2022

SABOTAGE 7 - COMPROMISE AND HOPE

What the blameless society asks us to do is more than compromising on our method for achieving a solution, or to horse trade one goal for another toward a solution that we both agree upon. The demand is that we compromise on our conviction to seek any solutions at all.

Why are so many of us afraid to seek solutions?

Have you even noticed that we are?

We are, you know. We’re afraid to try. Afraid of failure, we abandon success.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-7-compromise-hope-1376829

Sabotage: Part 7 - Compromise & Hope

Let's recap, very briefly.Most of us want to see what is broken get fixed, and yet repair seems far from us, because the process of repair has been sabotaged.Our awareness of brokenness has been sabotaged by deliberate ignorance enabled by a morally empty neutrality.Our conviction to fix brokenness has been sabotaged by a multi-faceted complacency.OK. Good? Click those links at the top for more detail if you want it.°As I see it, every sabotage rests upon blameless supremacy, which refuses to p…

Show threadA.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Nov 25, 2022

SABOTAGE 8 - REASONABLE DOUBTS

We don’t say it out loud, but look to the benches and you’ll see who we are. The leaners are a gesture toward function, without providing the actual function.

Homeless people are a confession that we have decided to make growth of capital a higher priority than caring for the basic needs of people. Our leaning benches are a confession that we have decided to do without a functional city in order to be cruel to the people we’ve failed.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-8-reasonable-doubts-1387999

Sabotage: Part 8 - Reasonable Doubts

Let me start with the leaning benches.No wait. I want to start with a more personal story.Recently I sat for jury duty, and was called in the very first pool. The defendant happened to be Black. So did his defense attorney. So did the judge.So there you go about that.We were in a jury pool, and we received instruction, to wit: The purpose of a jury pool is to form a jury. The purpose of a jury is to hear evidence presented and then after deliberation return to the court with a finding of either…

Show threadA.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Nov 26, 2022

SABOTAGE 9 - EXONERATION AND CLARITY

Exoneration is what happens when the process of repair stagnates at confession. We are aware of the brokenness in our society; aware of injustice and abuse, caused by a belief in supremacy—that is, a belief that some people matter and others do not.

We agree that what is broken should be repaired, and we share a collective responsibility to join in the repair.

We even are willing to say so.

But we don’t progress from there.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-9-exoneration-and-clarity-1400322

Sabotage: Part 9 - Exoneration and Clarity

Let me begin with a hypothetical.Say there’s a knock at my door. I open it and a lawyer is there. He has good news for me. I had an uncle I’ve never met, a very wealthy man with no children. He just died. I’ve inherited $500,000. So has each of my brothers and sisters and all our cousins and second cousins.Congratulations to me! Congratulations to us!The money quite simply changes our lives. My mortgage is paid, my children’s college fund flush. I still have to work, but there’s savings. Stabil…

Show threadA.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆

SABOTAGE 10 - THE SUPREME PROBLEM

There is a massive problem in my country (which is the United States) that I’d like to bring to your attention, because I’ve been given to understand that this problem must be solved before anything else can be solved or even considered.
This makes it the supreme problem we face today.

Here is the supreme problem: white conservatives have not been made perfectly comfortable yet, and that is something they find extremely oppressive.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-10-the-supreme-problem-1420742

Sabotage: Part 10 - The Supreme Problem

Say your name is Joe but I insist your name is Jean.Let's say you believe your name is Joe because that's your name.Let's say I insist your name is Jean because I believe I have the right to name you because of who I understand myself to be, and you do not have the right to name yourself because of who I understand you to be.Let's say this plays out in a number of other beliefs I have about your identity, and the way you choose to live. Again and again, you establish yourself on your own terms,…

Nov 27, 2022 at 1:56pmWeb
Show threadA.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Nov 28, 2022

SABOTAGE 11 - RECONCILIATION AND SOLIDARITY

It is when we offer supremacists appeasement that we truly treat them as unredeemable, by helping them stay far from any redeeming work. It is when we exonerate them before they have begun to repair what they've broken that we truly condemn them as inherently bad, because we take their alignment with badness as an immutable fact. Solidarity in opposition to supremacy is the only honest way to have solidarity with supremacists.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-11-reconciliation-and-solidarity-1431698

Sabotage: Part 11 - Reconciliation and Solidarity

It's been another week, and a whole lot has happened, and a whole lot has happened, and unfortunately a whole lot has happened.Paul Pelosi got attacked by a hammer-wielding maniac in his own home. It was an assassination attempt inspired by mainstream Republicans.Let's start there.Nancy Pelosi's attacker was chanting "where's Nancy," which is what the January 6 mob was chanting as they invaded the U.S. Capitol. In case you forgot, January 6, 2021 was the last time the Republican Party tried to …

Show threadA.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Nov 29, 2022

SABOTAGE 12 - THE FOUNDATIONAL WAR

Supremacy wars against repair, for brokenness; against sustainability, for unsustainability, against an attainable generative society, for an impossible individuality; against life, for death. It’s a war to be allowed to sink our shared boat, for the privilege of being last to drown.This is our Foundational War, which we have inherited, in which we don’t get to not participate; but we can decide how we want to fight, and on which side.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-12-the-foundational-war-1433372

Sabotage: Part 12 - The Foundational War

Welcome to all the new Twitter refugees. You may be used to me in 240 character bursts.It *ahem* goes a bit longer here.I should mention perhaps that you can now find me easily enough at @[email protected] if that’s something you want to do, where I’ll probably be doing something called (improbably enough) “tooting.” If that’s not something you want to do, it’s even easier.Perhaps the sight of an grotesque oligarch buying an ostensible public commons and demolishing it, by insisting th…

Show threadA.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Nov 30, 2022

SABOTAGE 13 - SURRENDER AND DEFIANCE

Surrender is what happens when we try to progress to repair without making it a higher priority than avoiding costs of repair.

So long as there are people willing to make that cost a fight, then the cost of repair will always mean a fight.

Surrender avoids the violence of opposing supremacist aggression, and in so doing makes the greater violence of supremist domination inevitable.

But every act of repair is a defiant act.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-13-surrender-and-defiance-1433374

Sabotage: Part 13 - Surrender and Defiance

Hi. It's the penultimate part of the series. (I think that means that it is the ultimate one, but it's written with a pen.)We've really been on a ride, huh?Let's go.A couple weeks back we here in the United States had an election. Maybe you heard about it.The Republican Party, who represent the interests of supremacists (wealth supremacists, Christian supremacists, white supremacists, male supremacists, and so forth—all of them committed as a foundational matter to and united as a strategic mat…

Show threadA.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Dec 1, 2022

SABOTAGE 14 - THE VINEYARD AND THE MOUNTAIN

Closing the series with my answer to those whose first priority, in a time of rising atrocity, is establishing a path for redemption.

You want redemption? Repair what is broken. Pay the cost of reparation.

You’ll make the path to redemption you claim to want by walking it yourself. If those who enact or support atrocities today want redemption, they can follow you.

If they don’t, they won’t.

And then we'll know.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-14-the-vineyard-and-the-mountain-1477924

Sabotage: Part 14 - The Vineyard And The Mountain

Good morning. The leader of the Republican Party and presumptive 2024 nominee is Donald Trump, believe it or not. This week he met with Nick Fuentes, who is a literal proud and open Nazi, for a strategy session.It was an accident, we're told. Trump didn't know who Fuentes was, which is odd since Fuentes was one of the Nazis who marched in the murderous "Unite the Right" Charlottesville demonstration five years ago—Nazis who Trump incidentally later defended as Very Fine People, though there are…