Miranda Tedholm

… or healthcare? And so on. And yet these dilemmas are only a sign of the truer one of immiseration. The real dilemma that Americans live is this one. They can choose either to prey on one another, and prosper — or not prey on one another, and barely survive.

(Let me put that another way. A sense that our lives really count, matter, mean something greater than egotism, selfishness, greed, and self-absorption, that we were put here for better and truer things than merely being cogs in the grey, mindless capitalist machine, that there is something inviolable and inalienable in every one of us — these things have gone missing. We are crying out for purpose, belonging, meaning, significance these days — and that is one great reason that the fascists hold such a seductive appeal.)

…disappear, even if it’s a person, like me — unless we have the power to fully create or destroy it. Believing in capitalism at this point doesn’t mean it’s going to work any better. Believing in slavery, war, murder, and torture didn’t make them any more good or less bad. You see the problem, perhaps. The more that you define yourself by what you “believe in”, the less you will be able to suffer reality. Your suspicion of me as “unreal” is only really another way to say, “I can only believe that thing…