Racism is not merely a failure to understand another person. It is a failure to understand yourself. The moment you need someone else's humanity to be smaller so yours can feel larger, you have already lost sight of what it means to be human.
There is a reason you know which bathroom trans people use and do not know how much your congressman is paid by the defense industry.
There is a reason you know the details of every celebrity political opinion and do not know the name of the private equity firm that bought your local hospital and eliminated the ICU.
There is a reason the news cycle moves fast enough that no story, no policy, no exposure, no documented crime by powerful people, ever stays in focus long enough for organized political response to form around it.
The information environment is not chaotic.
It is precisely calibrated.
Calibrated to maximize engagement, which means maximizing outrage, which means finding the fights that produce the most heat and the least structural threat to the people who own the platforms, the channels, and the politicians discussing them.
You are not being informed.
You are being managed.
The distinction matters.
I hate how I’m not even in my 30’s yet and it feels like the world is falling apart around us with potential life paths for myself and my friends being snuffed out and our hobbies slowly degrading all in the name of “progress” and more money for old men
it's just so good. to name explicitly the capacity for the state's totalizing violence via police lynching as an expression of imperialism is just so perfect.
“Hey want to build a wooden horse to infiltrate Troy and raze it to the ground?”
“Okay sure”
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…
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“AAAAAAAAAAAA NO I KILLED A BUNCH OF PEOPLE HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN WOE IS ME I AM BECOME CHUCK THE SNEEDER OF FEED”
This the shit that’s gets me so juiced about this planet but also pisses me off bc there’s a group of shit ass people taking this away from me and future generations for money
Paradise by Toni Morrison kinda cracked my brain open. Felt like reading a historical (maybe mythological) text that was undoing itself as you read it.
We don’t talk enough about how exclusion is traumatic. Either by intentional exclusion or just from the fact that they don’t bother enough to even think about you. Disabled people are excluded by default and I can’t tell you how traumatizing it is to have that be the norm.
@thereal__jaime@BenjaminPDixon The Democratic Party is apparently satisfied being seen as completely useless cowards by the left and literal terrorists by the right. They sit there being the chosen pariahs letting the media flail them forever, and don’t think that could possibly have immeasurable consequences.
i love declining cookies. i love telling TSA agents i do not consent to having my photo taken. i love pretending i have any agency over the countless tiny ways i am surveilled every single moment of every single day
I FEEL LIKE THE AMERICANS ARE SEVERELY UNDERREACTING TO THE FACT THAT EVERYTHING IN THE US FROM POLITICS TO FOOD HAVE BEEN POISONED BY THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION 🙄