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Before I launch off on a rant that few will read and fewer will read in good faith, I want to post this right up front because it is hilarious:
Mastodon issues 30-day ultimatum to Trump's social network over misuse of its code | TechCrunch
Former President Trump's new social network might be in hot water before it even launches. Mastodon, a free social media framework, alleges that Truthtechcrunch.com
Your impulse to play peacemaker is well-intended, but you're both-siding this.
Red tried to shoe polish Rusty's position into "Many black people have adapted to evolving social and economic realities and have achieved great success, so I'm not gonna make excuses for the ones that went the opposite way," then attempted to distort my response into, "painting folks as irredeemable racists." Attempting to establish an equivalence between this and what Rusty and I have actually said is to accept a biased, distorted framing.
You appear to have entirely missed my point in critiquing his substitution strategy by applying it to his own argument.
Similarly, who is “throwing up their hands” or faulting “morals” alone? To the extent that we cannot defeat that which we do not understand, it’s time to stop repeating the mistakes of those who have historically chosen to regard social inequality as primarily, if not exclusively, an economic problem and proponents of an unjust status quo as self-defeating, ignorant dupes who need only be reminded of the boot on their own neck to liberate those who could then assist them in vanquishing their mutual oppressor. Were that the right approach, it probably would’ve worked by now.
Most Americans simultaneously suffer and benefit from different sources of social inequality, which illustrates the interconnectedness of these issues, and a key component of their obduracy.
Careful, this certainly reads as though you think every other form of inequality is but a tendril of the Capitalist leviathan.
While we can agree that exploitation and the hoarding of resources are inherently immoral, I think you’re leaving something out in this analysis.
I need not reiterate my skepticism about cishet White men casting their primary experience with injustice as the “ur-inequality” from which all other injustices are descended.
Proponents of class primacy are hardly alone in their ability to formulate an argument as to the uniqueness of their focal point.
It is possible - though increasingly unlikely - to ascend from one social class to another. Unlike in other societies, though, America’s “one drop rule” seeks to preclude the possibility of transcending or improving one’s racial status, hence the comparison to caste. (And race is not the only difference that has been conceptualized as a natural hierarchy.) Purely from an historical standpoint, men were oppressing women long before they were practicing usury.
It’s one thing to analyze the unique qualities of each form of oppression. It’s quite another to rank them.
No one is denying the significance of class. Centering it serves less to unite than to exclude, by creating a hierarchy of hierarchies.
Your broader point, that no one designated as prey may safely coexist among predators, is not a predicament exclusive to economic class.
It is not that varying racial groups cannot amicably coexist, (though the categories as we know them were created as a boundary for moral/ethical consideration, to delineate between free and unfree, person and non-person, or person and property), it is that it is demonstrably unsafe to live among those who consider you and your kind subhuman. That is, if nothing else, a foundational theme of this continent’s history. There is no “true peace” or “true justice” in such a society - whatever its relative material parity.
So it is not entirely accurate to suggest that class, and only class, is the one difference that can only be cured through its eradication. There are ideological differences that are inherently incompatible with our mutual coexistence as well, and these, too, must be laid low.
While you would rightly reject the farcical notion that inequality persists because we are too vindictive towards the 1%, preventing them for marshaling their considerable resources to ensure our planetary survival (to whatever extent they still remain terrestrially attached) we must likewise dismiss - without compromise - the insulting premise that inequality persists because progressives are not nice enough to White people.
I don’t need tone policing on this issue.
Anger and skepticism in this situation are fully justified, and not a matter of “reverse prejudice.” To hold someone accountable is not to consider them intrinsically “irredeemable.” For whom if not White people does racism serve? Our systems of inequality exist for the sake their beneficiaries. They exist to define and justify subordinate classes. There is, thus, a collective responsibility - and culpability - among those who reap these bloody harvests, even among those who oppose their own unwelcome receipt.
The idea that we can just “buy them off” fundamentally misunderstands the value of these systems to their beneficiaries, and the appeal of the “counter-offer.” As has often been observed: to those accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
As we’ve seen time and time again, you cannot end racism by plying White people with the promise of jobs and infrastructure when White privilege is the nation’s longest running jobs and infrastructure program.
There are those who resent and reject the very premise and project of equality. Two generations ago, they decided that they’d rather close their public schools and fill their public pools than open them up to everyone.
THAT is what we’re up against.
As such, we cannot afford to 1) overstate the quality of life improvement conferred by the material benefits on offer or 2) underestimate the non-monetary value of status - which, not coincidentally, serves as one of the most common uses of wealth, as expressed even while meeting basic subsistence needs.
This is not just a material issue. It is social. It is psychological.
It must be treated as such.
Interesting article
Lots of data in there
It's "**** Joe Biden"what tf is 'let's go Brandon' and why is it trending?!
