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To Look or Not to Look
We need to understand the enemy coming for us, and we also need to cultivate that which makes us who we are.
If we don’t listen to what the authoritarians are saying on an hourly basis, we’ll lack specific information about the next move they’re planning to make to hurt us, and we can’t protect ourselves from it.
But if we do listen to what the authoritarians are saying on an hourly basis, we run the risk of letting them command our attention on their terms.
We’re being firehosed, and we want to know which way the hose is pointing and what it’s spraying, but we don’t want to cooperate in letting ourselves get sprayed in the face.
Meanwhile, if we shrug off the assault and briefly stop paying attention so we’re unaware of the latest detail, someone playing the “skeptic” will ask: “How can you be sure they’re planning to hurt you at all? Aren’t you being unfair to them? If you won’t listen to what they’re actually saying about you, why don’t you give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they mean well?”
That question is frustrating because, a decade into MAGA, we do know what the authoritarians are about, and we’re very sure it’s they who are unfair to us. We don’t have to read one thousand laws to make a correct assertion that…
