Suffering is partial, shortsighted, and self-absorbed. We shouldn’t have a politics that expects different. Oppression is not a prep school. - ThreadSky

olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social • 3 days ago

Suffering is partial, shortsighted, and self-absorbed. We shouldn’t have a politics that expects different. Oppression is not a prep school.

Reposted from David Roberts

People want to think that trauma -- being fired from their job, losing medicaid, whatever -- will "force people to face reality," but that's not how people work. When people face trauma they turn to voices they trust to tell them who's doing it, and why, and what it means.

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sailorsdelight.bsky.social•2 days ago

Oppression shows you have stake, but this is often treated like objectivity, which is the opposite of the case.

It’s good to listen to and provide relief to the oppressed, but a perverse result of this tendency is that it rewards a culture of victimhood.

ohterrysogross.bsky.social•2 days ago

We don’t reward a culture of victimhood. Hierarchy enforces entitlement, which necessitates oppression. Entitlement causes ppl to invert cause and effect. By design, we “fail” to hold harm accountable, expect victims to just forget the whole thing to uphold the hierarchical system.

sailorsdelight.bsky.social•2 days ago

On the left we absolutely do. Identity politics contains the formulation, “As a [insert oppressed minority/victim]….” which often results in that person then Bogarting the mic.

Empathy is good & the oppressed need champions, but I don’t think a plurality of Americans want to wallow in it.

ohterrysogross.bsky.social•2 days ago

Is reparations wallowing? Is land back wallowing? Or is it just accountability.

What you’re pointing to here is how identify politics can be co-opted. It’s the politics of deference which leans lib. Doesn’t point to a culture of victimhood, points to an absence of material analysis.

ohterrysogross.bsky.social•2 days ago

I don’t think Americans want to “wallow” either & that’s exactly the problem. They want to just move on (like i said) & we 100% cannot do that. We have to reckon w the history & make ppl whole again. Return what was stolen to truly fix what is fucked up.

sailorsdelight.bsky.social•2 days ago

No reparations will happen-at least not in an explicitly racial formulation. The impossibility of this should be clear now that we are in the throws of a DEI backlash. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m saying it will never have majority support.

D’s mistake was not recognizing class war > culture war.

summerofmoops.bsky.social•3 days ago

times of strife, historically famous for producing political harmony

asitisnow.bsky.social•3 days ago

Some people live as though they are already dead. [They are] consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses.
― Thich Nhat Hanh

smdoles.bsky.social•3 days ago

I'm always remembering the Bonnie Prince Billy line "Something bad happens and a lot of people go bad themselves, that's how awful it is."

jjoque.bsky.social•3 days ago

I can't remember where I came across it but years and years ago I read someone say something along the lines of "Auschwitz wasn't a school; there is no lesson--just horror." Not at all the same as losing one's job but I still think about that a lot.

commiedharma.bsky.social•3 days ago

the idea that there was no moral lesson from the shoah was very common in post ww 2 European and Jewish thought. it was a central axiom of what historian Dominick LaCapra called ‘the sacralization of the holocaust.’

commiedharma.bsky.social•3 days ago

it was deeply linked to the more problematic claim that that the shoah was a unique event, which is still used to justify zionist exceptionalism.

jjoque.bsky.social•3 days ago

No; this is not what I am talking about. The point is not that there is no moral lesson of the Shoah (there is), but that it is not the case that one might learn something automatically about humanity or tolerance or how to live afterward as a result of surviving a camp or being oppressed.

phillyinsomniac.bsky.social•3 days ago

yeah, not at all comparable causes but a rejection of the idea that there's something inherently ennobling or redemptive about suffering

jjoque.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yeah exactly

hegemom.bsky.social•3 days ago

It was in The Reader; “it wasn’t therapy.”

katyabramson.bsky.social•2 days ago

"oppression is not a prep school" (!) need on sign

raltieri.bsky.social•3 days ago

Great point. Hasn’t been historically and almost certainly won’t be now, especially in our deeply corroded and degraded media environment. It’s up to all of us who get it to help folks connect the dots. Would be helpful if the Dems, ya know, did politics…but I digress.

raltieri.bsky.social•3 days ago

Btw who cares what I think but I read Elite Capture and really appreciated it. Thanks for your insight!

tabulanongrata.bsky.social•1 day ago

Even if it was true that trauma is instructive, it is 100% morally wrong to inflict it, or want to see it inflicted on almost anyone.
Whether it would change minds or not is irrevelant. Suffering is just bad, and who is doing the suffering doesn't matter.
Except Nazis. Fuck them. Make them suffer.

lifelivedwildly.bsky.social•3 days ago

People who are afraid and panicking make wild ass decisions. Mostly through listening to the people who seem confident and offer the fastest solution. Huh, I wonder who they’ll turn to when shit hits the fan?

gmacdonell.bsky.social•3 days ago

I think you make a fair point.

But it lets a lot of people off too easily. Bigots who will get screwed by Trump are not just oppressed. They were born on second base, globally, and they own what they do.

At least if agency has any meaning at all, which I realize is an open question.

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