Something white folks like me from "middle class" backgrounds really need to fucking deal with is that privilege isn't just the advantages that put us a little ahead or give us a little more comfort or space or whatever.
Privilege is also having the real ugliness of the "American way of life" hidden from us.
There is no justice here. Our prisons are full of the suffering underclasses that are impoverished, criminalized, & enslaved. Unhoused people are treated like vermin to exterminate.
Financially, my family was at the bottom of the white "middle class", barely able to uphold the image.
There were times my parents barely managed to afford food for all of us. We went through some tough times.
You know what my middle-class ass did not have to deal with, despite that? Being dehumanized as a target for state violence. We weren't always considered the "right" kind of people, but we were firmly in the group: "people the police still speak to with a small amount of 'respect'".
That's the kind of fucking privilege that keeps you docile & asleep.
It's a fucking police state out there already, motherfuckers. They were just hoping you wouldn't notice.
No matter how class conscious we might try to be, how forward-thinking, how interested in eliminating poverty, those of us starting from this point of privilege rarely fucking think about what the real fucking danger of poverty is: becoming an underclass with no way to appeal or escape your unjust treatment.
Every time I start to write like this, I start to worry about somehow "overstating" things or being "alarmist", but fuck no.
I have never been as clear or unequivocal about this as I should be, because the fictionalized "America" in my head still sometimes overwrites the actual United States I see with my eyes, hear reports & witness accounts from, & can look at the data about.
Some voice in my head still tells me it's hyperbolic to speak this way, but that's because I'm fucking propagandized.
A lot of us middle class folks first wake up to the idea that we are being exploited, & if we are empathetic & have some self-awareness, we will get from there to understanding that some people are *more exploited* than we are & we know that we should care about this.
So because we are empathetic & aware, we start demanding things that ought to help all of us, & especially lift up those most struggling.
It's a good start.
It's not a sufficient understanding of the true circumstances however.
Poverty isn't just "can't pay the bills."
Poverty is also "can do nothing about harassment by cops or the legal system."
Poverty is "everything you could do to help yourself or your community breaks some laws or regulations or is functionally impossible."
Poverty is "the State has extreme power over you, because you can't survive without the tiny pittance that is your disability check."
Poverty is "your kids have no future because the State keeps your schools bankrupt."
The reason we can't legislate ourselves out of this nightmare is that our laws exist to *create* this nightmare.
At some point I think we have to admit that what the system *does* is what it is intended to do.
Our "legal" system makes the poor—especially the racialized poor—slaves & prisoners. People often wait months, even years, in jail before they ever face trial, losing everything & being cut off from friends & family despite being convicted of no crime.
At what point is the injustice too much to bear?
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas?" Oh if only a single tortured child were enough for us to reject this defunct capitalist nightmare "utopia"!
How many children have to be torn from their parents because of petty crimes, unpaid fines, or simply FALSE ACCUSATIONS before it really disrupts our peace of mind?
How many years of human misery behind bars in torturous conditions are too many?
How many indigenous communities torn apart, harassed, abused, starved, & stolen from?
How many Black men (& Black folks of all genders & children) shot by cops?
How much is too much? What does it take to count as an oppressive police state? How many lives?
Does it matter the color of their skin or the background of their families? Does it matter how educated they are? Does it matter whether or not they are houseless?
No justice. No peace.
Maybe the biggest fucking privilege of all in this fucking country is the fucking privilege of never seeing your parents jailed because they are too poor to do anything about it.
It's never being selected as a target of police harassment.
It's living your fucking days in any way that could make you see the cops as anything other than violent oppressors who fucking stomp you & all your friends & loved ones under their feet.
That is fucking privilege.
My biggest fucking privilege is that I get to live my life in a way where—if I chose—I could spend most of my time pretending I am free.
I'm not. You're not. None of us are.
But some are allowed the illusion if we will just accept with docility the harm which other people experience & show our own deference by behaving as "good, decent people."
Fuck "middle class". Fuck "the American dream". Fuck "upward mobility."
It's not freedom until we tear down the prisons.
It's not freedom until everyone's children have food to eat.
It's not freedom until we stop fucking ripping apart indigenous families, Black families, families of color, poor families, HOUSELESS families...
This is not fucking freedom. This is not "order". This is brutal fucking oppression.
I'm sorry, y'all, I wish this could change with votes & legislation, but until there is a clean slate, all we're doing is trying to tailor the oppression a little more neatly.
It is baked in. You just ignore it because it doesn't align with your image of your comfortable, "civilized", "decent", middle class world. That world doesn't exist, so you can't preserve it. It's a lie. You can't build a better society on a lie.
This is HARD for those of us who have lived decades, perhaps our whole lives, under the illusion of our good, decent, wholesome, middle class way of life.
Like I said, I know the truth of these things & yet I STILL try to censor myself sometimes. I still worry I exaggerate or overstate.
Why? Because the fiction is so comforting & convincing. Because it feels like the truth couldn't possibly be so horrible. I live here, don't I?
The United States is a monstrous State with a monstrous past.
I wish it were otherwise.
I wish that learning the history of this nation was not an exercise in imagining vast & horrible suffering.
That would be nice.
Yet here we are. Until we remake this place, the corpses around the foundations will only continue to accumulate.
There is no good & decent past. There is no stable present.
There is only the hope of a better future built on something other than broken bones & irrigated by something other than blood.
I've said it before: I'm not an accelerationist, because we've already arrived. Actually, we've always been here.
The elitist fascist ethno-state is here.
What are we going to fucking do about it?
Are we going to try to preserve some people's peace & comfort at the cost of the lives & freedom of others? Or are we ready to stop accepting "freedom" & "safety" that requires millions of others to suffer & die?
It is fucking uncomfortable. I bet it's really hard for those among us who have kids, who want them to have stable, comfortable lives. Of course you do! You love your kids.
What about the people whose children suffer abuse in foster care because they have been stolen from them by the State, kids who will never enjoy the stability & comfort that you wish for for your kids?
Are you willing to choose "incremental change" that will result in countless more victims just so that YOUR kids are fine?
If your kids sink into the fully-expendable underclass as its boundaries expand, will you be ready to make the world anew then? Are you waiting until you have lost everything first?
It's not accelerationist to tell you to stop dragging your feet because it's time to fucking pick your side already.
Whenever we talk about "incremental change" we are calculating how many of which people's lives are an acceptable sacrifice to avoid the risk of society-wide upheaval.
The strange thing is, no matter how many years we continue down that path, we never seem to get any closer to "too many". The count always goes up, but so too does the threshold.
If we're going to insist on enacting change "incrementally", we should at least reach a fixed number of how many is too many to keep tolerating: "this many imprisoned, this many killed, this many starving, this many frozen to death on the streets, this many raped," after which it is time to demand "justice now!"
That is...unless you actually think there is no limit which could justify certain other people losing their comfort & safety.
If the cost of change now is too high, then I expect to see you crunching the numbers & keeping track of the data to see if the calculus ever changes.
Otherwise, I would have to think you aren't concerned about people's lives in general, just the lives of the people you choose to count.
Surely there is such a thing as too much, right? Too much cruelty, too much exploitation, too much death to justify the continuation of systems of oppression until they can be "gradually reformed"?
That probably seems really crude, to suggest keeping a body count. Maybe you think "it's not as simple as that."
Ok, then how DO you make this decision? What is your cost-benefit analysis that leads you to say "it would be far worse to stop the oppression-machine from functioning. We must gradually make adjustments"?
What concerns are you weighing there, & most importantly, is there anything at all that would ever change your mind? Or is this one of your first principles?
If there isn't anything that would make you change your belief that incremental change is the only moral choice, how did you arrive at that belief? How do you know it's true? How will you know it is still true in the future?
If there *is* something that would change your mind, then do me a favor: pick that thing & stick to it. If that line is ever crossed, your incrementalism must be at an end, because the cost has now exceeded acceptable limits.
Whenever someone tells me too many people would get hurt if we tried to make big, immediate change, instead of trying to use the current system to slowly steer things, they list what they think the cost of change will be & who will get hurt.
I never see them weigh that against the other side of this: the people who suffer & die from things as they are.
I just want to put the moral calculus out in the open. If you make this argument, you must have determined what costs are acceptable. Tell us.
It's possible some of this will become a moot point sooner than we might expect.
Supply chains are breaking down, the federal government is surely fucking bankrupt, & it looks like the "old order" is going to fucking fall apart without that much help from us.
In this situation we will be forced to come up with alternatives. How do you get members of your community life-saving care when you can't easily get their medications? How do you feed your people? How do we meet each other's needs?
There are logistical problems as well as moral ones.
The question is not "do we care?" but "what are we willing to do? What solutions can we imagine? What obstacles will we have to overcome?"
The fucking problem that comes in is that as long as the old State has some power, it is going to intervene to prevent us from caring for each other. The government might end programs that feed people, but it will still try to stop us from feeding each other.
I'm going pretty hard today, but the reason I am is that this is one of those instances where *I* am definitely one of the people I am speaking to.
I feel like *I* keep getting mixed up & confused on this particular point. I feel like I keep going back to the same ways of looking that erase certain people's lives & suffering so that others will escape. I feel like there is a fantasy about "the way things are" that keeps manifesting in my mind, no matter how many times I try to dispel it.
If you are white & "middle-class-ish" as I am, you are in terrible danger of mischaracterizing the entire situation & weighting some people's lives & comfort more heavily than others.
People die in prison without medical care all the time. Pregnant people give birth while in handcuffs. They don't have access to their medications. They receive injuries that go untreated.
Is that an acceptable cost for not disrupting the access the rest of us have to such things? Is there an acceptable cost?
We must do our best to create real systems of care. Survival is resistance.
My advice is not to stop caring whether some people have access to healthcare simply because others don't, but my belief is that it is urgent that WE learn how to address the needs of our communities. They will always go unaddressed by those with systemic power.
What access we are granted to the things we need is limited & gated. It is for some & not for others. It keeps us dependent on preserving existing inequality because any attempt at change will be costly.
They build this cost in on purpose. Disruption costs lives because we are not allowed our own alternatives. We are not allowed to take actions to care for each other if they violate private property laws, for instance. We are held down & kept sick & impoverished & not allowed to seek remedy.
The thing that has me fired up today is really my own myopia.
I think most of us who are relatively comfortable simply do not comprehend the scale of oppression we are already dealing with. I do not think we speak realistically about it. Not even me. Certainly not me.
I don't think we are telling ourselves the truth. Even if you can see that everything is on fire, that doesn't mean you're not wearing rose-tinted glasses.
I am still living a lie.
I am still mentally investing in the fiction that things are mostly alright.
I am still counting hypothetical costs over real, current costs.
I am still enjoying the privilege of a "peaceful" life, where I am "graciously" allowed access to the simple necessities of survival that are withheld from others, that are taken from others by force.
Ladies, gentlemen, & other beings: there are people our society deems "non-people" & they are being exterminated.
As a queer, disabled woman I am well aware of my own marginalization. I am aware that I am very close to being designated a "non-person" too, but I have NOT experienced the dehumanization I have been speaking of in this thread.
Perhaps someday I will.
But for now...I am coming from a place of comforts I don't even recognize as comforts, because they ought not to be "comforts" at all, but basic rights.
This thread is light on "action items", because to be honest, my main "action" here is: keep looking, keep paying attention, don't let noise & distraction make you lose sight of the nightmare of oppression you are living in. That's what I'm trying to do.
Possible solutions & strategies abound. I don't necessarily have any I am focused on right at this moment, because I am looking at myself & the world & asking why I feel about it how I do & why I allow myself to be soothed & comforted.
This is my reckoning with the fact that while I choose not to be a "white liberal", that is how I have been situated in life.
I have been given a false view of the situation. I cannot see—without effort—the extent of the suffering already going on.
I am still removed from it. I still have a certain type of comfort & so do most of the people I know.
This "comfort" is no sin, no moral failing, but it does make us susceptible to the lies of the oppressors as they minimize & disguise the blood & death on which the Empire is built.
We struggle to see with clarity, because we are still tucked away & sheltered from the worst of it.
I'm starting to get the idea that the reason the Jesus character in the Gospels always told rich people to sell everything they have & follow him is that without surrendering the things which shelter you from oppression, you will always be at risk of downplaying it, because you will not experience what others do, not really.
I'm not advocating for vows of poverty, but it sure does make some sense: as long as there is comfort, we can avoid confronting the worst truths.
If today's words are a little harsher than sometimes, it's in part because "yours truly" is saying the things that she needs to hear herself.
The true extent of violence & oppression in this country, the true cost, is not compatible with how I see the world around me.
So one of the steps I've got to take as I learn what it means to resist oppression is to make myself look with open eyes, & believe & understand the things I see. We all do.
@artemis I read Octavia Butler's "The Parable of the Sower" in 2023, a few months before it's set. That was quite a trip, but my first reaction was "well at least things aren't actually *that* bad." But I had the humility to check that thought...
Things being that bad is a person-relative condition, and in fact things *are* that bad right now, just not for as many people as I Butler's imagination. There are people living in the US right now who are experiencing conditions exactly equivalent to those Butler's characters face, and for them, it really is that bad. As I read dystopian fiction I now ask myself this question: for whom are things already this bad right now?
And as you're pointing out: the number 1 should be the limit of acceptability here.
Personally I also fail this test of action, at least. I've got things like kids that drive me away from more dangerous actions (and leave me with very little bandwidth even for safer stuff), yet almost anything to drive short-term meaningful change starts to fall into the dangerous category. So I polemicize online and hope that contributing some imagination & dialogue is at least a little bit helpful...
I'm definitely not an advocate against radical/insurrectionary/whatever change, but neither am I pushing it forward, and all my actual efforts (meager as they are) fall firmly into the incremental category.
I console (and perhaps dangerously pacify) myself by imagining that some incremental changes are clearly necessary alongside immediate revolution. I don't mean working within current political systems, but instead long-term cultural work like children's books, folk songs, or even videogames. A sustainable non-hierarchical social fabric is going to need participants who can imagine and enact its existence, and that's going to require a lot of currently-nonexistent culture.
@artemis
When the General Strikes start, I will feed and care for people.
@artemis this thread is great and I have boosted it.
One thing that's coming up for me, tho, is... I'm starting to think the dichotomy between "revolutionary" and "incrementalist" is a false one.
Like, I could be accused of being an incrementalist because I believe in voting as a solution.
You may raise an eyebrow and say "but voting hasn't worked so far, has it?" And yeah. Left-wing votes are cancelled out by right-wing ones, and further swamped by a big mass of shrugging centrists. Left-wing parties fall to entryist career politicians beholden to corporate interests, and judges and upper chambers stand in the way of progressive changes.
So. Armed revolution then. But that needs an overwhelming buy-in from the populace. (That or military support, but that's a coup, and those tend not to go great.) So we need a massive consciousness raising effort to get people on-side...
But... then... maybe we could try the whole voting thing at that point? 🤷♀️ Get proper leftists primaried, then vote then in.
Then if you get a clear majority of leftist politicians in power, the line between "incremental change" and "revolution" becomes blurry. Tax rates can be raised overnight. UBI implemented. Utilities socialised. Police forces defunded. Upper chambers reformed. Prisons shut down. Why go gradual if you don't have to?
...at the threat of which upheaval maybe the system does rebel against the will of the people. And maybe some shots will need fired then. Just to confirm that, yes, we're fuckin serious.
It's like. Voting is, always has been, the implicit threat of force. The provable demonstration of superior numbers at the ballot rather than battlefield.
Whether the force is actual or implied, consciousness-raising is the first step. Arguing over whether voting will or will not work feels premature at this stage. Maybe we try it and have backup options too.
@artemis I can generalize this to "my ignorance is an excuse to not change my mind", aka "I don't have time to research this properly, so I'm going to let my feelings decide".
How do you even talk to someone who thinks that's acceptable. >.<
@artemis Your formula is incomplete if you don't count in the fact that after upheaval has to be built something that at least works better. Unfortunately, the end result is whoever wins the power struggle and you just hope it's someone reasonable.
I think Popper did a good job of arguing for democratic reform rather than revolutionary destruction in Open Society.
It would seem the situation is rather thrust upon us though. The upheaval has occurred. The new system is trying to take root.
Artemis
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