Oppressors

Obliviousness + Class Prejudice = ...

As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. Isaiah 3:12, KJV

On the national curse of silly and disconnected people and their silly and disconnected worldviews.

On the street there’s an adage: “real recognize real.” People who’ve been through obstacles, who’ve learned who they are and what they’re about-who are authentic-can intuit one another very quickly. The same is true for the inverse. Real recognize fake.

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You

You went to a nice, suburban high school-maybe private maybe public, but the kind of place where most of the students are trying to sign up for AP classes and fights are rare and most of the black students have parents who are dentists and researchers. You participated in extracurriculars, went to a tier-2 school (after writing an admission essay about the systemic barriers people like you have faced) and then you chilled for a few years: dating, weed, music, schoolwork, travel. You formed most of your opinions and assumptions about the world during this childish period. Sure, you had classes and maybe participated in a student organization and began working an internship after 2 years… but let’s be honest: you barely did 20 hours of real book work per week. It’s possible that you’ve never done any real work in your entire life. You graduate and walk into a professional job. You live in a city. You begin looking into grad school and consider marrying your partner. After all, between the two of you you’re making nearly $200,000 per year (how sweet it will be if Biden can get your student loans forgiven, or at least lessened!) and, despite your proclamations about heteronormativity and the patriarchal implications of monogamy, getting married is the sensible thing to do. It’s what you always kind of knew you would do, once you’d gotten past your radical early 20’s. You take 3-4 vacations per year. You have a therapist. After having your child (the only one you’ll have) you become fiercely interested in school quality in your area, and push for policies to restrict new residential building (protecting the property value of your house) and to preclude students from the poorer districts. You’re all for progressive values and everything but this is your home we’re talking about. This is your child.

Meanwhile you maintain a very popular and fixed set of beliefs: feminism is a good thing because it’s liberated women. The government should be very active in limiting emissions, to save our world. America is a racist country and DEI is necessary to rectify the horrible inequities you’ve read about. Kids with different gender identities should be supported and affirmed, and the furor you hear about this issue is undoubtedly just conservative bigots, probably relying on some regressive Christian doctrine (you’re not exactly sure… you don’t really like to think about this topic, for some reason). Nonprofits and government research grants are very important components of society. Yes, they’ve essentially bought your house and sustained your family for years but they’re also helpful and good. Science is good-everyone knows that! Again, the people motivated to slash or reform these kinds of programs are probably bigots… or maybe they’re rich? Maybe they want lower taxes, so they can amass even more wealth? Everyone knows that this is basically the entire foundation of the Republican Party. How sad that they’ve tricked so many ignorant working-class people. This is how authoritarianism begins you know. It’s just like Nazi Germany. You feel deeply certain that you understand homelessness policy and educational theory and the criminal justice system and economics, despite only having a very vague sense of these issues when pressed. It’s obvious that you’re correct, after all. Basically everyone you know holds these attitudes, and your circle is the educated one. While you’d never say it explicitly (even to yourself) a college degree reflects worth and intelligence (and compassion) and wisdom.

But… where did you acquire this wisdom? You’ve never actually been in contact with poverty or crime or CPS or ICE or homelessness or racism or untreated mental illness in your entire life. Not only have you not… almost no one you know has either. Your entire class is comprised of people very much like you-similarly decent (but not brave), intelligent (but not brilliant or independent-minded), and nice (but not compassionate). Everyone you know is a good person. Okay, yes-they might have gotten it wrong about BLM a little bit… but everyone was so impassioned! It’s not something that needs to be dwelt on. It seems that maybe the experts were wrong (or just hasty?) about some COVID stuff but everything that was done was done for the sake of science and to save lives. You’ve seen the stories about immigrant crime and catastrophic social and fiscal consequences, but you focus on the xenophobia of the Republicans. That’s the issue (somehow)! (Chances are you don’t know much about the massive government censorship campaign during the Biden administration, or the cancelling of legions of professionals simply because they had integrity, or the epidemic of gender dysphoric kids and the brutal and lucrative medical practices they’ve been subjected to. The media cordon sanitaire is still useful for many things).

Other People’s Opinions

You feel sure your opinions are correct because they’re the opinions of other people you know. EVERYONE believes this stuff, and so you find it a little strange that you might now be in the minority. Of course, none of those people you know are brilliant and even if they were, they are too cowardly to ever speak up in a risky way about an important issue. Their opinions (your opinions) mirror the institutional priorities of the bureaucracy because they are the bureaucracy’s opinions-not those of a bunch of experts. Each one of the ‘experts’ zealously tries to stay in the middle of the herd after all, giving the illusion of consensus. Mistakes have been made, sure, but you console yourself with this: we all have good intentions. Of course we’re not doing great evil. We’re good people!

Institutional Incentives

You might be. Your goodness isn’t the issue. The issue is that you know very little about the world. You were raised in a bubble and never left, and your views have been assembled by a vast Blob (colleges, research agencies, nonprofits, professionals-all with their own aligned financial incentives) and transmitted to you with the sheen of expertise and benevolence. Let’s look at the record: public education, COVID lockdowns, bail reform, Biden’s competence, climate “disaster”, urban crime and bail reform, the migrant crisis. On each of these issues your Blob proved incorrect. What has your worldview proven to be correct about, in the final analysis? Honestly?

You will learn that the Blob is not trying to be correct. It is not trying to improve society or eliminate mental illness or imbue urban schools with excellence. If you work in these bureaucracies, you’ll understand this intuitively, for these kinds of goals are never stated. The Blob is trying to amass power and protect funding streams and prerogatives, and to eliminate enemies.

And you are helping it.

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