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.
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Show me how someone talks about unhoused people, & I'll tell you whether they actually care about liberation or not.
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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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?
(The answer, my friend)
I guess it depends on who you ask. It's been too many/much for me for over 2 decades now, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
On the other hand, there are people who apparently still think this is all fine
, and I do not understand them. -
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.
@artemis so much this that if were to boost it over a trillion times, it wouldn’t even begin to reach the emphasis I wish to express the need for this right here.
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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.
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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.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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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.
@artemis [mumbles something about building a new society by starting with those willing to reject the myths of the old]
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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?
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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?
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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?
@artemis and your child isn't even getting a stable comfortable life anyway
- Erin
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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.
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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.
How many more centuries of the exploitation of the poor are we willing to endure, in the hopes that someday we will perhaps free their great, great grandchildren (should they even survive) by means of "incremental change"?
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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?
@artemis@dice.camp (Your kids will not be fine)
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How many more centuries of the exploitation of the poor are we willing to endure, in the hopes that someday we will perhaps free their great, great grandchildren (should they even survive) by means of "incremental change"?
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.
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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.
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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.
@artemis@dice.camp I don't know how it's used generally, but to me "accelerationism" isn't making changes for the better fast. It's making changes for the worse faster in hopes it makes things better somehow.
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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.
None of us are free while one of us is chained, none of us are free... -
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"?
