amemorablename

The US is a strange place to say the least of it and one that some people no doubt tire of hearing about. It has inflicted itself on the world to such a degree that it can't not be acknowledged and for all the wrong reasons. To live in it is perhaps stranger still. To be part and parcel to the vivid grayness of its character. It is simultaneously a place of light and color, and a place of shadows and darkness, and the two feed each other like a stage light in the darkness feeds the wandering image of the actor on the stage, who, in their bumbling bemusement, seems almost comically lost and yet is full of sinister intent; seems almost incomprehensibly full of spirit and yet stares at the shapes in the mirror; seems capable of greatness, of potential, and yet so often destroys.

The soul of the US, if it can be said to have a soul despite its pitiable wretchedness, is surely that of a traveling salesperson, an actor, a charlatan. From its first steps, it tells those taking their first steps in it, it fought for freedom, liberty, and other such heady concepts of existential decree that conjure an image of fortitute and virtue. In practice, its first steps murdered children. From there, it grows so bloody and vicious as to rise upon the world stage on the backs of a towering skyscraper of slaves, a power who can remake its own image with the sounds and smells of merry-go-rounds and cotton candy.

What freedom can be found in the US of A for the unmentionable huddled masses yearning to freely roam their own lands again? What freedom can be found for the slaves? What freedom can be found for the diaspora who are used as tools to sharpen the ever-hungry blades of empire?

Even for the so-called citizenry, the so-called "white", how free are they, really? What liberty is there in choosing which mask to put on today? Will it be a mask to hide a disability? A mask to hide political views? A mask to get hired or to try not to get fired? Or perhaps it will be one mask layered upon another mask, so that even if some people get through, there's no danger of others ever seeing the real you. The real you, for the colonizer, is a terrifying thing to behold.

When the dark shapes are chased away by the flood of light and the monster is made clear, it can't be denied any longer. This is how I was raised, this is what they call a society, and if I fight it, I may die, a lot more quickly than if I don't. But still, they don't care about me. I'm dead either way if there's no we involved.

So the guilt takes hold. The monster must be hidden away. Turn the lights off, put more makeup on, and never remove the mask. The mask is synonymous with safety. But god help them if they tell me to wear one, I have a right to do what I want! If there's one godforsaken thing I'll have in this world, it's that, when I have nothing else guaranteed.

The human right to be annoying. The human right to snarl and growl and sneer, as well as the human right to simper and smirk and joust. It's medieval, really, mid evil, the romanticized kind, not the kind where knights got PTSD and died. Romance layers over it all like frosting over charred bread. You can taste the ash in your mouth, but you try to hide it behind the sugar.

If you get heart trouble, that's a you problem. This nation wasn't built for suckers, though one of them is surely born a minute, according to it. It wasn't built for people who suck, though it drains everyone else dry that it can get its aging mouth on.

And in this morass, along comes a man who has the carnival air. He's bombastic, his hair is fair, and he's not afraid to say it how he wants to say it. A huckster if ever there was one, but an oddly honest one, and therein lies the pain. The light won't go off now. The switch is broken and every time you walk past the mirror, you can see the monster there. Only it's remarkably human. It has no slavering fangs or slashing claws; no hairy body or lashing tail. It has a disposition that is, at times, smiley and at others times, depressed. It dreams of a better world while creating a worse one. It accuses others of abusing while siphoning every resource it can for its own ends.

It is the United States state of mind. And may the world breathe again when it finally comes to an end.

Authors Note: I had intended to write this as more of an analysis of the "showmanship" characteristics of the US, but it started flowing as using showy language to make the point, so I rolled with it.

Hello, I'm the Significant Higher-Up Role and/or Communications Lead of a company. We make a product that you like a whole lot and we understand that. In fact, we use the product ourselves and that's why we care so much about what happens with it. Last week, we did an announcement about, and/or released, something you didn't want that didn't do the best job of deceiving you into accepting it as good news.

We hear you. We know how much you care about our product and we know how much that's worth in capital and profit for investors. When we set out to destroy something about the product that you liked in order to increase profits, we knew it was going to be controversial. Change is hard. When my son/nephew/puppy was growing up, they went through a lot of changes and I hope that you will feel more sympathy and connection toward me, and by translation, the company, as a result of me talking about something so relatable. Anyway, the point is, that change was hard, but it was necessary. Which is exactly like us trying to exploit your fanatical interest in, and dependency on, our product for our own selfish gain.

In the spirit of transparency and community, we're going to do things a little differently than we announced before. Although we plan to do all of it the same as before, we've gone over things to try to make it sound more appealing to you. Sometimes we get communication wrong and have to fire our current PR firm, so that we can get a new one with better tactics for convincing you. That's on us. We don't expect to get it right every time and we appreciate your patience and understanding in dealing with our rugged, difficult humanity.

We want you to have the best experience; one where your wallets are free and flowing and your impulsivity is off the charts. And you can't get into that state of mind if you don't trust us. So, please trust us. We want the money. And we will work tirelessly to win your trust, no matter what it takes, no matter how many people we have to make work overtime on PR posts. Sure, we aren't going to divert from the path we're on, but that's because we're visionaries. So, do you want to be a part of our vision or do you want to keep your money?

We hope you will choose the path where you go broke spending money you can't afford. It's not like it's our social responsibility to look after you anyway. Now I'm going to go play with my dog Toto, which is named after the Wizard of Oz because I'm just like you! Haha, we are totally the same and share the same interests, even though my job is to get your money and I don't care about you.

This feels like a bit of an obscure question to ask, so I will try to explain the context somewhat. What I'm calling "Christian martyrdom thought" (CMT for brevity) relates to what Jones Manoel calls the "fetish for defeat" in revolutionary struggle and Christian culture.

The glorifying of David vs. Goliath, even if David loses terribly (perhaps all the more glorious in CMT if he does lose). The glorifying of sacrifice more generally, even if the sacrifice yields less material gains for a cause than steady work that is more sustainable and fair.

Then there is learned helplessness, which is the idea of, through conditioning, reaching a point where you essentially cease trying to change your circumstances because you believe that no matter what you do, it won't work and will be painful (or that is my rough understanding of it anyway).

So the question is, do these intersect and in what ways? Or are they completely separate?

I suppose the title is a tad clickbait in a way. It's not as though I'm out here making excuses for child predators or something. But in my time of analyzing the broader context of capitalism and its mechanisms, I have come to adopt something of a systems level view of unethical behavior, which I was surely not the originator of, but it makes a kind of sense to me in the broader scope of things. It goes something like: capitalism is full of layers of indirection, to the extent that lots of people end up participating indirectly in exploitative systems that they never would have agreed to be a part of consciously. Further, lots of people are pressured into continuing this participation, even if they become aware of it, due to being dependent on the system for their basic sustenance.

This is all well and good for some levels of indirection. Like it would be strange, I think, for me to feel guilty about buying many products because some part of the process may have been processed at a place that has unethical working conditions and poor labor rights. It's not something I have any control over and if I try to boycott, it may not even be noticed in the financial reporting of the related company as anything more than natural rise and fall of interest in the product.

But there is another side to this too, that the Epstein stuff I think has got me thinking more about and nagging at me. Which is about the architects of predation. The casualness of conspiracy in broad light, the mundanity of meetings about manipulation, and the normalizing of unethical behavior.

To use a less intense example than the Epstein stuff because it's something I have dealt with the nonsense of in one way or another in my life a lot, and perhaps is a bit less charged to talk about, consider the state of the video game industry. This is an industry where capital really took hold and quickly moved it toward maximum exploitation. Whether it's terrible working conditions or predatory monetization, it's a dumpster fire of unethical behavior.

But, in wielding the systems view of a kind, there are times I look at it and emphasize my criticism toward the system instead of the individual. The problem is the investor class, the problem is the management, the problem is the institution and the organization not the individual employees, etc. But this leaves out the architects of predation, doesn't it?

The investor class creates a pressure in a studio to create predatory monetization because the system of capitalism pressures the investors to always be growing their assets. For the studio to actually do this, they still have to go through a logistical process, whereupon they hire or train people who are willing to consciously design a system around manipulating people into acting against their own best interests for the selfish gain of the company. Discussions will be had, designs proposed, tested, and refined, and unethical behavior will be carried out in a rather mundane way.

Like the casualness of the people in Epstein's emails, there is no reason to expect that these architects will be speaking in code and hiding in shame. The organization has explicitly asked them to do what they're doing and is even paying them for it, and the system offers no consequences for their actions, so why should they care? Those who are too held back by a sense of guilt or shame will be filtered out and replaced with those who aren't.

They can even give talks on predatory monetization and it doesn't get them in trouble: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4

But in spite of the mundanity and normalization of it, it doesn't make it any less predatory. Nor do the pressures of someone taking that role change the fact that the people who do take up the mantle will be changed by the experience (probably for the worse).

There is also something to be said for the role of those who pull the levers even if they are not themselves architects of predation. Someone has to deploy the design, someone has to approve it for release, someone has to announce it and market it. These are all people who could question what they are taking part in, the mundanity of the predation, and try to go another way. Try to find some other job. Try, even if it is not easy, to not be a part of it. Unlike the more passive participant in the dynamic of exploitation who at most is choosing whether to boycott something already deployed, the lever puller is a part of its promotion and deployment. If no one pulls the lever, it does not ship. If no one markets it, it does not get seen. These are vital parts of whether the predatory system gets carried out, whether it goes from concept to being fully realized.

These are the types I wonder if I am too forgiving of. If I am too quick to sympathize because they are part of the working class, too quick to say it is the organization failing people and not the individuals. But a theoretical system without people to carry it out only exists in theory. Surely those who help make predation real share some responsibility.

The understanding first came to me when I was deep in thought while listening to a podcast and playing an FPS PvP video game. The sun was beaming through the window, highlighting dust motes in the air. I'd always thought of light as a force of goodness in the world. Flashlights light up the darkness, sunlight chases away the night, and lightsabers cut through the evils of the Sith.

But in that moment, sitting in my room, the glare of the sun struck my monitor in the wrong way and I fell off a cliff in the game I was playing, plummeting to my death and messing up my K/D ratio. The timing of it was perfect. Right then, the podcaster was talking about a deal I could get on Goop Gabber Flashlights, the latest in glow-in-the-dark companion flashlights who talk to you in the darkness so that you will be terrified of them instead of potential monsters.

In that moment, I knew the real monster to be terrified of: The sun. It's revisionist. It was a word they'd been talking about in the podcast, about when somethings fails to hold up to its standards, and I knew it was applicable here. The sun was supposed to do the job of light, but instead it killed me in a video game. This was the beginning of my real education in geopolitics.

I grew up in a small town in Iowa, a gated community named after the state, located near Harvard. From my first steps, I knew I wanted to change the world. I wasn't sure how, but I knew I was destined to do it and nothing was going to get in my way. The first time my parents paid for expensive private education, it only affirmed the destiny that was building in my heart. I looked up to figures like White Science Man and Misquoted Political Statesman as great men, who had left their mark on the world. I saw in myself the potential to be one of them, to walk in their shoes, to go where no one had gone before. At least, not identically to how they had. Different enough that it would be distinctly great.

As I grew, I worked hard, getting all A's and paving my way for Harvard. I didn't have a lot of time for a social life, but neither did Quirky Inventor Who Isolated Himself either. Perhaps I'd be like him, staring at a wall for hours on end and musing about the nature of reality. I'd pass out and it would come to me a dream and I'd rush to a chalkboard, jotting it down, while an orchestra played my theme song in the background. I'd become a household name for it.

But I had to get through Harvard first. Getting in was hard. You might not know this, but a lot of people want to go to Harvard, at least five of them for sure, and I was among that number. I pored over ideas for a submission essay and toiled for hours at the tennis courts while I let the ideas come to me. In the morning, I would jot down every thought I had and then in the evening, I would try to combine them. I called my essay Day and Night, and it was back when I still believed in the sun.

My essay didn't get me in, but luckily, my parents had paid them off, so I got in anyway. Money talks, as they say, and my parents were loaded. Can greatness be bought? I think so. I did consider trying to trademark the word for a while, but never got around to trying. College, or university as the Britlans say, put me to the test. For the first time in my life, I became fully aware of how many fools are in the world. One of them was a spunky fellow calling himself a communist.

I was tempted to strike him, but my mother had always taught me that you're supposed to shoot commies and I didn't have a gun, nor have any idea how to shoot one. What is a gun anyway? I think it is a metaphor for fire. That's why they say that you fire a gun. You never water a gun. Water is for putting things out and flooding them like in The Bible. Fire represents hell and suffering. Therefore, guns are hell on Earth. Except for water guns. They are more biblical.

Guy Whose Name I Can't Remember said, "The pen is mightier than the sword." I agree with him. Every time I write, I feel my pen cutting down the enemies of progress. In my case, in college, midterms. I wasn't a fan of them. Where was I? Oh yeah, so the communist guy. He said that Stalin was only 99% evil and the other 1% was good. This made no sense to me. Is water only 99% water and 1% other thing? Is an apple only 99% apple and 1% water? Are ducks made of geese? I tried to make sense of this, but the more I reflected on it, the more confused I became.

I went on to become an esteemed teacher at Harvard, teaching theoretical metaphysics of biofeedback mechanisms in horticultural spectres. I don't know what happened to the commie, but that was the last time I spoke to him. His comment stuck with me though, lingering in the background, waiting to become relevant.

That fateful day when the sun killed me in a video game, it came back. The sun as revisionist. What if Stalin was a revisionist too? It would fit with him being 99% evil and 1% good. Had he stuck to whatever it was he was trying to do exactly, he would have been 100% that. But he didn't. Just like how the sun didn't stick exactly to being the goodness of light.

This was a life-changing experience and it was when I knew my great man moment had come. I immediately quit my teaching job, much to the dismay of everyone in my life, and joined a mainstream news publication. They were relieved when they realized it was more lucrative this way. I started writing pieces on revisionism, starting out small. The sun might be too much for some people at once. First dirt, nobody likes dirt, so that one is revisionist. Then ants. Nobody likes them either. Gradually I worked my way toward the sun and when that was well received, I dug into Stalin.

It was a touchy subject. At first, they called me a communist for even invoking Stalin's name. I explained my thoughts on guns and they calmed down. I knew I had them in the palm of my hand then. Then I went into depth. I explained how although the majority of Stalin's actions had been pure evil and performed via demonic rituals as a test of the religiosity of all those involved, a small percentage of his actions had been because he was a revisionist.

I got an award for that one, from the Definitely Not Anti-Communists for Peace organization. This was the breakthrough. From there, I went on to criticize various heads of state who the west was angry with, using my same theory. Sometimes I even flirted with being a socialist. In interviews, I would talk of how society could improve if we did some things for people and laughed about it. The hosts always took it well, laughing along with me. Then we got back to serious matters of life and I leveraged my background in theoretical metaphysics of biofeedback mechanisms in horticultural spectres to inform my political analysis. A horticultural spectre is a lot like a politics. They both have commies under the bed. This was my magnum opus.

When I landed on that, I knew I had finally performed the work I was here to do. I retired early to my home in the gated community named after the state of Iowa and did volunteer work for an organization that trained geese in how to give bread crumbs to the homeless. I couldn't have done any of it without my gorgeous wife Martha and my two daughters and two sons, and I see the restraining order they have with me as a sign of how truly complex life can be.

When life gives you lemons, don't suppose they are just lemons. A small percentage of them might just be a revisionist in disguise.

So for some reason, I got thinking about Santa Claus and one of the (I think intentionally meant to be a comedic premise) criticisms that gets sent his way is the concept that there are all these elves making toys and whoops, they are slaves or work under exploitative conditions somehow, and Santa is actually a capitalist or at least acts like one. But this has a slight problem, which is that Santa's whole thing is giving out free stuff with no strings attached: no expectations of reciprocation, no hidden fees, nothing. You don't even have to believe in him, you just have to be on the nice list or whatever (he doesn't want to give gifts to war criminals I suppose).

Anyway, this way he operates in the stories is much more in line with communism than anything capitalist. Like when the Black Panther Party made a program for feeding schoolchildren: https://www.history.com/articles/free-school-breakfast-black-panther-party

It wouldn't make any sense for Santa to have slaves / exploited workers because he's not getting any financial/capital gain out of doing this. His whole thing is making stuff to give it away, nothing more, nothing less.

We could maybe say that if Santa is a metaphor, it makes a bit more sense. He's a stand-in for free samples in an otherwise capitalist world and exists to lure you into buying more things and becoming more of a "consumer." But this is a bit of a stretch because in practice, Christmas tends to be people buying and giving each other gifts, not corporations giving out free samples.

So going back to the inner logic of it, I think Santa Claus makes the most sense as a communist and not only that, in order to meet the demands of creating presents for billions of people, a lot of automation is needed. In order to be able to get around the globe in time, faster than light travel is needed. This only makes sense if Santa and his elves are from a different planet, but are largely operating on a kind of prime directive style view of non-interference. We can figure, then, that Santa lives in the North Pole with his elves, who spend a bit of time operating some highly advanced automated tools and otherwise chill there most of the year, enjoying fully automated luxury gay space communism and occasionally popping in to remind people of the spirit of giving.

Disclaimer: This is a sillier post than a lot I write on here, please don't take it too seriously as analysis.

What makes for a "good" question? It may seem like a pointless question to ask. After all, "there are no stupid questions" can seem like a reasonable adage and I would personally support it insofar as encouraging people not to be shy of asking questions for fear of being looked down upon. We are all ignorant in various ways all of the time, so having a healthy question asking and answering culture is important.

But even if we were to agree there are no "stupid" questions, I think we can also agree there are degrees of dishonestly phrased questions. And as these are sometimes consciously weaponized in political discourse, it's important to have awareness of them.

Consider the following examples:

"What is known about John Doe's views on race?" <- This draws attention to the subject of John Doe and race, and although it could, depending on surrounding context and implications, draw suspicion to John Doe, it is more investigative in nature than anything else. It is not in itself leaning toward one conclusion or another. Outside of other context, it could be coming from a place of pure curiosity, of a desire to investigate suspicion, or other reasons, and it could be there is a presumption of positive views or negative views or anywhere in-between.

"Do you think John Doe hates black people?" <- Now we're getting much more explicit and pointed. This implies there is some reason out there to believe that John Doe hates black people. Maybe there is reason to suspect, but if there is, why is it being asked as a question and not as presenting evidence? Of course, there are contexts where phrasing like this might make more sense than others. If someone just said "John Doe is racist," this may make perfect sense as a followup question. The point here is not universal standards that apply to every situation, but to understand generally how the question format can be misused. This phrasing also narrows the window of Q&A. Where the previous one was more open-ended and could more readily be answered with "I don't know", this one is nudging you toward taking a stance on something you may know nothing about in a way that could help cement a narrative about a particular person.

"Why does John Doe hate black people?" <- Now something specific is already being presumed within the question. This kind of phrasing isn't always dishonest or misleading. Asking "why did it rain last night?" is a valid question if there is evidence that is rained last night. However, if this is out of context of evidence that John Doe is racist toward black people, it's not so much a question as it is a claim disguised as a question. Does John Doe hate black people? I think that would be important to establish before we try to answer why.

So with the above in mind, we can try to extrapolate some general concepts for asking honest questions and answering questions with awareness of how they can be warped:

• Try to include evidence for information that a question presumes, unless it is impractical or unnecessary (e.g. "why is this shirt that I'm pointing at purple" probably doesn't need explanation if the people involved are all sighted and can see that it's purple, but "why is this shirt made of particles from the planet Quoptarl" does).

• Consider the goal. Are you looking for information, genuinely, or are you looking for other people to validate something you already believe? If it's the 2nd one, you may be inclined to ask in a presumptive way rather than leaving things somewhat open-ended. In which case, you can state your take and see if people agree or not: "I think X" instead of "do you think X"?

• Answer questions on your own terms. Don't feel like you have to answer the exact question you have been asked.

• Keep in view the presence of narrative and bias. No question is neutral. This does not mean everybody is consciously trying to be biased all the time, but that every question has a focus of attention and as such, leaves out other things. It will also be influenced by a person's background/circumstances/worldview/etc. And even the language that they use! English is only one of many.

• Ask followup questions where needed. This goes both ways. You don't have to only ask one question at a time. If the format allows you to explain why you are asking your question and what about, you can absolutely do that. You can ask for more information from somebody who gives an answer. And on the flip side, you can ask a questioner for more information on where they are coming from. A question does not have to be responded to with an answer. Sometimes it can be responded to with another question! A classic example is in the Monty Python and the Holy Grail segment with the trickster-like person at the bridge of death. "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?" "What do you mean, african or european?" He flips it around on the questioner and in doing so, "defeats" the trickster.

Now I ask you: What did I fuck up on here? (This question presumes that I feel insecure about what I wrote in some way, and could be seeking validation or trying to pre-empt criticism by criticizing myself first. It could also be that I'm getting meta to make a further teaching point and need a nap.)

This excellent video on dialectical materialism got me thinking more about the pedagogy of practicing and learning it: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10142756

Which is a fancy way of saying, I thought, "What if school-like exercises for practicing the components of it to grapple with comprehension and retention of it?" After all, quantitative engagement with its component parts could lead to qualitative change in understanding. :)

In Mao's essay On Contradiction, he gives examples such as:

In mechanics: action and reaction. In physics: positive and negative electricity. In chemistry: the combination and dissociation of atoms. In social science: the class struggle. In war, offence and defence, advance and retreat, victory and defeat are all mutually contradictory phenomena. One cannot exist without the other. The two aspects are at once in conflict and in interdependence, and this constitutes the totality of a war, pushes its development forward and solves its problems.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

The idea is to expand on that with what you can think of.

What I wrote down so far:

hot and cold; growth and decay; strength and weakness; noisy and quiet; action and rest; theory and practice; imagination and sensation; wet and dry; beginning and end; the forest and the trees (e.g. big picture and the details, collective and individual); spiritual and secular; venerated and vulgarized.

So now I put it to you: What are some more examples of this?

Bonus question: What's an example of something that can occur when opposing forces collide?

P.S. Feel free to correct with a why, if you believe something shared is not an example of opposing forces. Just remember to think of it as for teaching and learning.

"The savage in man is never quite eradicated." - Henry David Thoreau

This is the primary fear that lurks in the mind of the colonizer, whose identity is constructed on a polarizing narrative of a world divided up into civil and savage, with themself on one side and the barbaric savage on the other.

It grips the west to this day, in communion not only with the more general Christian makeup as outlined in Jones Manoel's excellent essay (https://redsails.org/western-marxism-and-christianity/), but also more particularly in the characteristics of Catholicism and its symbolic vacillation between sin and confession, rooted in the irreversible mark of original sin.

Briefly (and roughly, I am not a Catholic scholar), for those less familiar with Catholic doctrine, the general idea is we are all born with "original sin" due to the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and baptism bypasses this in a way that allows us to be able to enter heaven. There are degrees of badness of sin, like venial and mortal sin. Venial sin is a minor offense. Mortal is more serious and requires more conscious intent. However, if you are truly sorry, you can confess and be forgiven for basically anything, insofar as the possibility of getting into heaven is concerned. You might have to do some penance in purgatory, but otherwise, you can get there.

The specifics of exact Catholic teaching are less important here than how the more generalized concepts of it get used in western colonial and imperial society.

Going back to original sin, colonialist history acts as a stand-in for it in the liberal mindset. Similar to how Catholicism does not seek to reconcile with its god over the behavior of ancestors once and for all, instead taking on a kind of perpetual responsibility for original sin by contact, liberalism does not seek to do reparations for colonialism, return power to the colonized, or otherwise undo the horrors its ancestors have inflicted. Instead, the focus is on confession.

But this would not be complete without taking into account the side of the conservative also, in particular in the dichotomous scheme of the US. The conservative acts the part of the sinner. The liberal the part of the one confessing to the priest. The conservative always has a justification, no matter how crass or crude they have to be, and they are often found among the most openly violent warhawks. The liberal, though their policy so often is similar to that of the conservative, does not tend to act the same. The liberal is sorrowful, mournful, and when necessary, ready to confess.

"Civil" and "savage", ideas which normally exist in contradiction and in fearfulness of corruption from the light, synthesize with confession to create redemption, the cleansing of sin, even if temporary. Like a real Catholic confessional, which might give you some Hail Mary prayers to say but does not delve into the details of your life and ask material changes of you, this confessional purification process is ideal because it demands no change of behavior. The colonizer continues on and its past crimes are washed away in the confessional.

To avoid responsibility, the confession is done by intermediaries; people who may have had proximity to the "sin", but who are not the most directly responsible for it. And so you get bizarre contradictions like when Joe Biden apologized to the indigenous of Turtle Island for past systemic boarding school abuses of indigenous children, even as his administration was funding a genocide elsewhere.

You can find examples of this inclination in media and even in mundane real life contexts. For example, the infamous character Darth Vader in Star Wars, whose crimes are prolific and horrifying, but who is redeemed when he chooses to save his son and turn against his cartoonishly evil leader. Luke (his son's) belief in the possibility and importance of his redemption reflects and validates this Catholic mindset that no matter how great the sin, it is still possible to make it to heaven. Never mind that Luke nearly martyrs himself pointlessly in order to accomplish this. Surely it is the redemption of "evil" that is of paramount importance, not the liberation of the masses! (So the colonizer's mindset implies and why wouldn't it, when it is of such great importance to the colonizer to wash away their sins rather than give up an ounce of ground they have stolen through war and slaughter.) Or in the more mundane context, almost amusingly so, when a person on the internet might start a comment with an insult and then end it with "have a nice day." As if they have washed away the "impure" intent they started out with by ending it on a more polite note.

For the colonizer's image of self-civility to hold, they have to justify it somehow. They can't justify it through how they behave when they exercise power because the majority of that is genocidal. So they turn to the process of purification, cleansing, and forgiveness. This reflects rather well the phenomenon of liberals who are "against every war but the current one." The current one is still in the grip of the conservative side's wave of overt war mongering. It is only after it is concluded, when the liberals are cleaning up and confessing, that the greater public is allowed to feel bad about it; and at that point, it is somewhat necessary that they do, in order to go through the aforementioned synthesis to create redemption.

What this redemption brings about is nothing substantive in material reality. It's an abstract notion of redemption, centering around metaphysical notions of darkness and light, corruption and valor, and the overcoming of temptation. Were the colonizer judged in its totality, it would be considered a great abuser of the confessional, one who is never actually sorry in the right places and who does the same thing again anyway. But totality is brushed away in favor of whatever is the current, both in the meaning of current events and the wave-like current of inertia.

"What cannot be properly justified right now can be forgiven later" might be a fitting adage for how this colonial and imperial structure operates.

The "savage" conservatives relentlessly pursue power and domination, and the "civil" liberals shy away from power and fear its "corrupting" influence. Through this, they can act in tandem, whether literally as one party handing over power to another, or more figuratively in media representation and language, sinning their way across the world and then moseying their way down to the closest confessional to wash it away.

"It doesn't matter what or who you are, it matters how you play."

This is a quote, likely doing some paraphrasing, from a movie about Jackie Robinson. I had not set out to watch the movie, but saw bits of it in passing from someone else watching it and my brain went spinning off on analysis of it.

I could take it as just a feel good story, a man who faces prejudice and discrimination and overcomes. But that quote lodged into my brain, along with other bits on the screen. I don't know exactly how the story went in real life, but this isn't about that exact story anyway.

It's about the broader methodology at work here and the way in which capital uses reform efforts to its advantage and then largely defangs them.

The quote exemplifies the practice well, if we do a little bit of reading between the lines: "It doesn't matter what or who you are if you can make more profit for us."

The choice of language and focus implies not an intention toward the abolishment of systemically racist practices, but the allowing of exceptions on a case by case basis, based on "merit" (which in the capitalist case, is defined as "you contribute to growing our money/power base").

This kind of idea, that you can transcend the box marginalization has put you in by helping the capitalist out, got stretched to its limits with figures like OJ Simpson and Bill Cosby. Star performers, make lots of money for the capitalist with a healthy cut for themselves, and also deal in some of the worst accusations that can be levied at a person. I am being vague because I see no gain in this context going into it in detail and being potentially triggering or needlessly graphic, and the details of it aren't that important to the point anyway. The point is incidents like these put to test the idea of, "It doesn't matter what or who you are, it matters how you play."

The capitalist method of getting lucrative people past racist gatekeepers while keeping systemic racism intact hit some limits. A method which normally works well alongside liberal mentalities about "be who you are, no matter who that is."

But it's easily observable that being "who you are" can range from being an inconvenience to others to being an actual terror. Capital and liberalism in their marriage of bullshit have no answer for this. They're not interested in policing society, but rather interested in profiting from it.

In order for this method of "reform" to function while leaving the rest of the system intact, the notion is not "you are valuable and deserve basic needs met no matter who you are," it's "you are valuable if you notably help the capitalist." This leaves most marginalized people remaining in a position of less than. As compared to a socialist project where things like racism can actually be tackled head on because the meaning of valuation of a person gets changed fundamentally when the project is based around meeting the needs of the people, no matter who they are, and because actually listening to the people means reform efforts can gain a foothold in governmental structures, not just in corporate slogans.

Another example of this kind of thing, we can see happening with sexism too. Among the most marginalized women are those in prostitution. Capital's answer is not to liberate them from coercion and from any economic incentive to turn to it for survival, but to push for formalizing it into another market; a market where prostitutes can have slightly better conditions than they would otherwise have, but capitalists also get a cut and the system is not fundamentally changed.

I don't feel like this is a "complete" take on the topic, but I wanted to get it out while it is on my mind.

I'm sure there are other examples in practice of the difference between real reform and profiting off of exceptions to the rule that don't fundamentally challenge racism/sexism/etc. Let me know what you know.

Was thinking about the distinctions of this and wondering...

Would it be accurate to say that the petite bourgeoisie are on the same ladder as the bourgeoisie? Or to put it in more English terms, would it to be accurate to say that small business owners are on the same ladder as Jeff Bezos? Just on a much lower rung?

Versus, in this analogy, the proletariat (or working class), are not on the ladder at all.

The idea being that the small business owner is in a less organized stage of development toward the same thing as the conglomerate (if this is happening under capitalist rule). Whereas the working class cannot organically develop in that direction (I suppose a few could through stocks, but that seems like on the level of winning the lottery).

Want to make sure I have my metaphors straight.

"Entitled" has gotta be one of the most abused words in the western English-speaking lexicon, up there with "free" and "freedom." Every time someone calls another person entitled simply because they request something to be different from how it is, or because they try to negotiate a better deal out of something, or like I don't know, don't want to live an awful life, it is truly angering. I despise the people who think that way and they are hypocrites on top of it. When something is an issue for them, then they suddenly think there's nothing wrong with wanting different, or even being intense about it, as it pertains to what they personally want. These sort of people are more annoying than sociopaths in a way because at least with a sociopath, you know they're going to be an anti-social asshole. With these people, they're aghast at any accusation of improper behavior and will gaslight the world into thinking they're a victim before they ever admit to the demeaning character of their own words for once in their bitter, jaded life.

Okay, I am being unfair, some of them will learn some of the time. But there is something about the commonality of it and the conviction behind it that makes it harder for me to be optimistic for western "society."

The world owes all of us a lot and we owe it a lot too, but like many things, it's not a universal principle of owing anyone and everyone or being owed by anyone and everyone. It's another relative thing. We owe a great debt to the toilers of the world, meaning the working class but also those who have built society even when they don't technically count as someone who does wage labor for a living (example: stay at home moms who are financially supported by a husband, or people who can't find work yet nevertheless add to families and friendships and community, and many other varying situations of contribution to human society and life). We don't owe shit to the exploitative classes, the forces of colonization and imperialism, and so on. And society as an institution owes us all humane treatment and a fair, humane share in resources. Without that, it's not much of a society.

Capitalism would like people to believe there's a generation of entitled people out there who want too much. Capitalism is the institutional version of the person described above, but without the possibility of learning because its interests are in contradiction with improving; aghast at any accusation of improper behavior and will gaslight the world into thinking they're a victim before they ever admit to the demeaning character of their own words (and actions).

Capitalism has taught people to be really persistent at putting down others for advocating for their needs and desires. Remember that it does that because it wants to exploit and it's easier to exploit when people are silent in their pain. So tell people, yeah, I'm actually owed a lot. I owe a lot too. How else do you think society is supposed to function?