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Reading this I had a realization. The "soft fear" is alive and well in the USA. A huge fear right now is slipping up in life and falling off the capitalist pro

Reading this I had a realization. The "soft fear" is alive and well in the USA. A huge fear right now is slipping up in life and falling off the capitalist progression. There is no safety net here, so if you screw up and end up homeless because you didn't work hard enough or save enough money, your chances of climbing out are almost nill. So rather than sending someone off to a Gulag or prison camp, the gulags are the ghettos patrolled by the police departments. Here, we say to ourselves, "We don't have gulags," but in the same breath, "if you are 'lazy' it is not our fault that you ended up in the projects." And then the system works to keep you there, from all sides. By disguising this oppression as a side-effect of "not working hard enough" or "not picking the right career" we can look away and say it is not our problem; yet we live in fear that if we lose our jobs we might end up in these hopeless places. And many will blame themselves because that is the narrative. Clever, and insidious: the prisons are all around us, just without walls and barbed wire.

luckylion 5y ago
> "We don't have gulags," but in the same breath, "if you are 'lazy' it is not our fault that you ended up in the projects." But that's like saying "we don't have torture, but if you don't help, you're not getting any cake". Yes, living in social housing isn't great because of your neighbors. But it's much better than being homeless. And it's much, much, much, much better than being in a labor camp. Nobody is stopping you from walking out of the projects. Guess how that works out in a Gulag when you say "thanks, I'd rather live in the forest".
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laurent92 5y ago
> By disguising this oppression as a side-effect of "not working hard enough" or "not picking the right career" we can look away and say it is not our problem Actually, this is the definition of ideology, and you are not identifying it. Ideology starts when they accept victims in pursuit of their goal. When you accept negative side-effect that would be considered offsetting whatever good you are trying to provide in any other ideology. - Capitalist ideology: We accept human victims as a side effect of meritocracy, whereas we wouldn’t accept human victims under Christian ideology, - Christianity: Caring for poor people; White supremacist ideology: Accepting that we do not care for migrants while we care about local people. - Feminist ideology: Accepting male victims, for example suicide or work, while rejecting non-life-threatening difficulties for women. (whereas under any other ideology, the two genders’ issues would be treated equally). - Communist ideology: Accepting to shoot up a head of state in the pursuit of the greater good for all other citizen.

luckylion 5y ago

> "We don't have gulags," but in the same breath, "if you are 'lazy' it is not our fault that you ended up in the projects." But that's like saying "we don't have torture, but if you don't help, you're not getting any cake". Yes, living in social housing isn't great because of your neighbors. But it's much better than being homeless. And it's much, much, much, much better than being in a labor camp. Nobody is stopping you from walking out of the projects. Guess how that works out in a Gulag when you say "thanks, I'd rather live in the forest".

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laurent92 5y ago

> By disguising this oppression as a side-effect of "not working hard enough" or "not picking the right career" we can look away and say it is not our problem Actually, this is the definition of ideology, and you are not identifying it. Ideology starts when they accept victims in pursuit of their goal. When you accept negative side-effect that would be considered offsetting whatever good you are trying to provide in any other ideology. - Capitalist ideology: We accept human victims as a side effect of meritocracy, whereas we wouldn’t accept human victims under Christian ideology, - Christianity: Caring for poor people; White supremacist ideology: Accepting that we do not care for migrants while we care about local people. - Feminist ideology: Accepting male victims, for example suicide or work, while rejecting non-life-threatening difficulties for women. (whereas under any other ideology, the two genders’ issues would be treated equally). - Communist ideology: Accepting to shoot up a head of state in the pursuit of the greater good for all other citizen.