The Reframe

Well, I'm back. Hi!

Or, if you didn't notice I was gone: Hi!

I feel it's time for a statement of purpose for this season we find ourselves in, or maybe a shift in focus. A reframe, you might say. How long will it last? As long as it does.

It's a fairly sad time for this country of mine (or of ours depending on where you live), and so I'm pretty sad. I'm talking about the United States, which is a country, and is in the process of abandoning its admittedly flawed democracy in favor of rule by the worst people imaginable, a bunch of socially stunted, intellectually incurious, narcissistic, malicious, greedy, venal, corrupt, cruel, bigoted, and incompetent bullies. For a while they were the thing that is coming, but now, despite the efforts of people far sharper and braver than me, they are the thing that is here. And some reading this may have already thought "they were always here," and yes for sure, I hear you, but maybe we'll get to that instinctive reaction by and by.

When they were the thing that was coming, I spent a lot of time talking about and writing about them. Maybe I'll do that still. It's hard to avoid doing so. The worst people imaginable and their cultish followers sure try to arrange our public life (and increasingly our private life) so we have to think about them all the time, and praise them uncritically or obey them fearfully, two reactions that they appear to enjoy equally, to the extent that they seem to experience them as the same thing. But now that they're the thing that is here, I think I might want to change my focus, if only for a little bit, if only for a little while. Maybe we'll springboard off of one atrocity or another if it has illustrative value to do so, but for the next while what I want to focus on is who we are (using we very loosely and very collectively) and the aspects of who we are that we ought to safeguard, and the aspects of who we are that we might want, or need, to change.

What the worst people in the world and their cultish supporters are is inescapably clear: They are humans opposed to human progress and human thriving, and you can tell this in the way they are deliberately demolishing everything of generative sustaining value in our society, in the way they are sabotaging every institution and structure that guarantees human thriving and protects human life, and in their reflexive violent opposition to any fine principal decent people hold dear—and even to decency itself and the concept of humanity itself. I could list each outrage and atrocity, but they're like raindrops in a monsoon at this point; either you acknowledge the downpour and seek to patch your shelter or you aren't to be trusted.

And some reading this may have already thought "us and them? don't you see?—they are us, too," and yes for sure, I hear you, but maybe we'll get to that instinctive reactions by and by.

Anyway: Who we are. What we ought to safeguard. What we might want to change.

Let's talk about it.

Who are we?

We're human beings, is who we are. It's important to remember that, because the worst people in the world want us to forget it, and to believe the lie that we are objects to be owned and used for their utility, or to be discarded and destroyed for their lack of utility. But we know better; we've accessed the deep truths that we aren't machines, or parts of a machine, that our lives are valuable in and of themselves, that our existence is a miraculous wonder, not something to debate over or to earn. We are the universe experiencing itself. We are infinitesimally brief and tiny spot of awareness in a vast and enduring field of unawareness. We are each unique and irreplaceable works of living art carrying unsurpassable worth. We don't need to earn the right to exist, and we are each ourselves, and we are all us.

We're a family, is what we are. It's important to remember that—the relational aspect of us, the basic familial unity of human experience—because the worst people in the world want us to forget it, and to believe their lies instead: that we are unrelated individuals separated by borders and by ability and by wealth; to believe that those failing to earn life must have committed a crime that can only be redeemed by making horrible things happen to them; and to believe that horrible things that happen to somebody else are not a problem, because they haven't yet happened to you. But we know better, because we are attuned to the deep truths: that anything that happens to anyone in your family may as well be happening to you, and probably eventually will, especially if you live in a world that has found comfort in the brutalization and murder of their siblings and cousins; that every human being is in our family, that everyone is our sibling, our cousin.

We are a natural system, is what we are. It's important to remember that—the systemic aspect of us, the collective reality—because the worst people in the world want us to forget it and to believe their lies instead: to believe that the wealth they stole comes from them as an original source of thriving rather than from the generative sustain human collective from which they stole it; that the society we live in is not an inherited system that includes a responsibility to maintain or improve it; to believe that improvement itself is impossible and the malicious and brutal aspects of that inheritance are immutable and immovable facts. But we know better, because we are attuned to the deep truths: that improvement has happened before and therefore can happen again; that even though the brutal supremacist instinct was present from the very start, it has retreated before and can be made to retreat again; that a system is what it does, so a system built to eat human beings will never stop eating as long as humans remain to devour; and that a system that ensures that humans thrive will not stop expanding to provision for the needs of humans until no human need remains.

Human beings. Art. Family. A natural system. That's what we are.

I think that's worth safeguarding.

What might we want to change?

Another quick interruption to scroll quickly past before you continue the essay.

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There was an opinion piece that came out in the New York Times the other day, from their editorial board. Now, the New York Times is a newspaper and a website, both of which are methods for distributing the vital human art of journalism, and journalism is a way of informing people about what the hell is going on in as objective a way as possible, with a focus on sources and evidence and verification. That's the idea anyway.

The New York Times does a lot of journalism, but people are very frustrated with them in recent years, because, to the minds of more and more of us, they increasingly don't inform people about what the hell is going on. The worst people in the world and their cultish supporters are as opposed to objective reality as they are to any other good and useful thing, and so they are very frustrated with the New York Times for all of the times that it actually does report on what the hell is going on, which it actually does pretty often, so I suppose it must be said the New York Times has often earned the antipathy of the worst people in the world and their cultish supporters. And the opinion piece I'm referring to did take as its subject the inherent dangers of letting the worst people in the world run the largest economy and military on the planet and destroy the oldest democracy in the world, however flawed it might be, and these are objective and verifiable truths.

But the New York Times has made the rest of us very frustrated, too, because it has a seemingly unperishable instinct to extend unlimited goodwill and benefit of the doubt to the worst people in the world and their cultish supporters, no matter how much the sources and evidence objectively demand that there is no longer any reason to extend goodwill or benefit of the doubt. In so doing, they demonstrate an unwillingness to report on objective and verifiable truths: that these are people who lie about their good intentions to everyone, even themselves, even as they simultaneously boast about their bad intentions; and that these are people whose outcomes almost always align not with the good intentions they claim—freedom and safety and unity and peace and prosperity and so forth—but rather with the bad intentions about which they simultaneously boast—sabotage and destruction and brutality and oppression and corruption and bigoted supremacist domination, all of which very methodically and strategically and deliberately demolish precisely the good things they claim to be acting to preserve. So it must be said that the New York Times has often earned the antipathy of the rest of us. And the opinion piece I'm referring to did spend an awful lot of time extending the benefit of the doubt to the worst people in the world and their cultish followers: pointing out that they do claim to have good intentions and to seek good outcomes, establishing their legitimacy, stressing their popularity, and presenting their claimed intent and desired good outcomes as uncritically true, even though there is absolutely no objective reason to believe they are true, and there exists a vast sea of objective reasons to believe that they are false.

"You gotta hand it to them," as the saying goes—ignoring the fact that when you hand it to the worst people in the world and their cultlike followers, all they do is take it. This is why, when it comes to very similar worst people in the world from the recent past, like for example Nazis, the famous saying that ends "gotta hand it to them" is prefaced with the phrase "Under no circumstances do you."

And if I look at the New York Times front page today the top story proclaims that the president of Harvard both (laudably) opposes the criminal president/dictator's illegal attempt to revoke Harvard's tax exempt status for the crimes of diversity and equity and inclusion, but it also takes pains to point out that the president of Harvard and the white supremacist president/dictator of the United States, both have similar goals, in that they seek to combat antisemitism, which perhaps the president of Harvard does, but which the white supremacist president/dictator of the United States, who defines "antisemitism" as "criticism of the state of Israel" (a blatantly antisemitic framing), manifestly does not.

This is very frustrating, but I can't be frustrated with the New York Times alone, because if you asked the president of Harvard, he very likely would take pains to point out his many points of agreement with the worst people in the world and their claimed good intentions and outcomes. Even if he wouldn't, there is no end to people who, though they should know better, are lining up to "hand it to him," and, as they bend the knee to false claims of good intention and fake desires for good outcomes, they agree to inhabit the framing of the worst people in the world, forgetting that as long as you accept their frame, you'll never leave their picture.

This is what I'd like to think about when I think about us—all the ways we've accepted the framing of the worst people in the world, because we live in a natural humans system that has been unnaturally perverted by ancient lies, and we've inherited those framings, and taken on the lies without even realizing we've done so.

It's a natural human instinct to hand it to them. On one hand, it's just an expression of a desire to avoid strife. But also, I think, it's an expression of our belief in the deep truth that all humans are worthy of consideration and life, which they are. It's an expression of our belief in the deep truth that we are a human family to which everyone belongs, which we are. It's an expression of our understanding of the deep truth that the societal system in which we live is configurable, and will only foster humans thriving if that system is configured to let all humans thrive.

We're not going to survive if we don't make a system that cares for the needs even of people who hate and fear the concept of a system that cares for human need. We will need to hold to our solidarity.

At the same time, we have to understand that we are dealing with the worst people in the world and their cultish followers, who are not the worst people in the world because they are inhuman, but because they are humans who have rejected humanity in favor of inhuman lies. Who are not the worst people in the world because they don't understand good intentions and outcomes, but because with bad intent they have desired bad outcomes, and feint at goodness to hoodwink the rest of their siblings and cousins into handing it to them, so they can take it, and once they have it, they will unleash systemic machines that will devour everyone, even, eventually, themselves.

It's important to remember this, because we have no way of expressing human solidarity with the worst people in the world and their cultish followers without opposing them, resisting them, and defying them. And resistance is a mechanical thing; you don't create it by lubricating the gears. You find it not by seeking points of agreement on topics where you don't actually agree. You find it by establishing points of opposition and defiance to their true intentions—and creating actual resistance.

Again, it is human instinct to extend benefit of the doubt and seek points of agreement. It's human instinct to hand it to them. The people who seek only to take know this; it's why they tie good intention and good outcomes to their bad intents and outcomes, muddying the water, tempting us to believe that they are something other than the malicious actors that they insist, in word and deed, they actually are. It seems to me now that my slowly dawning awareness of supremacy and authoritarianism has been my realization of all the things we've believed, in the name of good intent and good outcome, that are actually aligned with the exact opposite, with corruption and supremacy and domination and oppression.

So I'm thinking about certain ways that we (this time by "we" I specifically me "I") have handed it to them, and what we need to believe instead. Maybe each of these will be its own essay. Maybe I'll mush some of them together. No doubt others will occur to me. We'll see; I'm still working this out. Anyway, here are some ideas that I will probably be goofing around with over the next couple months.

Society is made for humans, not humans for society.

We aren't made for efficiency.

Convenience costs everything.

Darkness can't do a thing about light.

There is no trolley problem.

There is a difference between better and worse.

Impossible is a lie.

Who we are is human.

What we need to defend is our humanity. The more we defend it, the more easily we will be able to see it. The more easily we can see it, the more easily we will be able to defend it.

So, we need change is our frame. The more we do so, the more we will be able to distinguish the difference between actual good intent and feigned good intent. Our frame isn't just an important part of the struggle we're in, it's the thing that makes a struggle possible. The worst people in the world and their cultish followers have won so much even though they create so much devastation and act with such incompetence because they have been successful at establishing the frame, and convincing far too many of us to accept that frame. We remain in their frame, so we never leave their picture. How could we succeed.

When somebody is attacking your siblings and cousins and you, you're either in a fight or you're witness to a massacre. So we know there is a fight to join, not because a fight is what we seek, but because we can see our siblings and cousins being massacred every day.

And you can't win a fight when you surrender the field.

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A.R. Moxon is the author of The Revisionaries, which is available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places, and the essay collection Very Fine People. You can get his books right here for example. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. Some folks trust to reason, others trust to might, he don't trust to nothing, but he know it come out right.