When safety is provided by a group with institutional power, can it really be safe?
It’s really been fucking me up that people are more threatened by individuals or groups who don’t control the police, military and government than they are of those who do. How do we contend with the oppressor lovers?
How are people disdainful of every single quote unquote minority except for the actual minority of lazy, wealthy, powerful, elite parasites who break the law, don’t pay taxes, and have never done an honest days work in their lives?
People in charge aren’t uniquely more trustworthy or unbiased than the rest of us. We are still at the whim of a stranger who almost certainly has way too much power over our lives. Where is the risk assessment coming from? What happened to independence, not wanting a king, standing our ground, having a million guns and free speech?
It’s like how Kwame Ture said:
“If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power.
Intolerant Left
I’m here to provide much needed representation for the intolerant left. For the bitches who weren’t empathetic and saw every other person in the world as equally a threat as the rest. The ones who weren’t smart or kind enough to understand that interactions on an individual level existed within the context of everything that came before, the ones who thought they just fell out of a coconut tree.
It’s absolutely sinful and wicked to think that some people are inherently violent, lazy, stupid, or docile based on a single trait shared by entire populations of people. This is true, of course. But humans are wicked, and sinful.
There is no performative allyship here. My deep, unrelenting mistrust of the rules and laws created by the few for the many wasn’t borne out of a virtuous place. It’s because I know it’s total bullshit, based on other, equally biased and self-interested individuals and the people who uphold the rules are not beholden to them.
It’s not for them, it’s for you
I have both been in the favor of an authority figure and the target of one’s disdain. It wasn’t a matter of how I behaved, either. I was the same way with both of them. Mostly because I didn’t know how to be any other way, or trust me, I definitely would have!
Accepting the premise that I deserve more rights because of a single made up characteristic that isn’t biologically, culturally or even ethnically accurate means that I deserve less rights than others because of an equally arbitrary distinction.
Obviously I don’t control how people react to me. I know this. I benefit from privileges whether or not I want to, BUT I refuse to be a schmuck who actually buys the fairy tale that their label of whiteness makes me deserving of those privileges.
It’s a deal with the devil. The price is too high: the enslavement of other human beings, using ruthless tactics and spreading disease in order to take over sovereign land, lying, cheating, taking other’s moral character as weakness and using it to take their land, destroying natural resources and worshiping false idols, all of that is too inhumane to debase myself for their shitty little crackerjack box prize.
The privilege to enforce their dominance for free without gaining freedom in a meaningful sense? No say in what is done in my name, no way to resist any corruption, no ability to fight them and enforce my values (autonomy, respect for the earth which is ancient and so much more technologically advanced than we are, consequences not punishment, interdependence, enjoying the water, expressing ourselves creatively and democratizing creativity). My prize is getting to feel like I’m important because daddy government or god said so? No thanks. I don’t care what they think because their shit sucks. This shit sucks.
Talk shit, get hit not Don’t talk shit, or I’ll snitch
I will be realistic about my actual virtues and shortcomings. I don’t want to be a useful sycophant.
If tomorrow I woke up and the propaganda switched to dehumanizing people who think Conflict is Not Abuse is brave and visionary, I wouldn’t all of a sudden be like “oh my god, justice is being served!” They aren’t my friends or my comrades but they don’t have access to nuclear weapons or the ability to enact martial law in my city so I can deal with them, thank you.
Do I fantasize about every entitled, self-pitying, loser transphobe or TERF being….? oh whatever use your imagination! Of course, but if they go to jail, or the government has a vendetta against them, that does not mean it’s for my protection. It is simply a coincidence that their scapegoat matches up with my pet prejudice.
Finally wrapping this up
Obviously none of this implies that if you’re not a billionaire, cop, wall street executive or politician you’re inherently safe. But moreso that I don’t trust a dangerous system to protect me from a dangerous individual. That doesn’t make sense. It’s all dangerous but not all of them are also directly involved in shaping the conditions we all have to survive under.
