THE SUPREME PROBLEM

Say your name is Joe.

You believe your name is Joe because that’s your name.

I insist your name is Jean because I believe I have the right to name you because of who I understand myself to be, and you do not have the right to name yourself because of who I understand you to be.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/juliusgoat/issues/sabotage-part-10-the-supreme-problem-1420742

Let’s say this plays out in a number of other beliefs I have about your identity. Again and again, you establish yourself on your own terms; again and again I refuse your self, in a way that makes it clear my ability to accept or refuse you is a core part of how I see myself.

Perhaps you’ve seen this scenario play out in thousands of different ways, and wondered: What IS that?

I’ll tell you what it is.
It’s supremacy.
It’s a belief that I am supreme.

I am demonstrating an extremely popular core belief—I'd call it the dominant default core belief of American conservatism—that there are people who matter, and I am one of those, and there are people who do not matter, and that you are one of those.

I am attempting to impose a reality founded on that belief, under which I am the one who gets to define you, and your right to exist is not a foregone conclusion but something that will be established and mediated by what I and other people who matter are comfortable allowing.

I’m establishing that my understanding of who you are is more important than your understanding of who you are--my license to permit you to exist.

I'm establishing my supremacy over you as a natural right.

I am wrong about all that. I actually believe a bunch of unsustainable lies about you and me and how society is supposed to work. "Unsustainable" because a society that believes that some people do not matter inevitably becomes a society optimized to destroy people, and a society optimized to destroy people will do that as long as there are people, and society is made up of people, so if you’re a person, you might want to oppose me.

Anyway: I’m wrong, and not only wrong, but wrong in ways that endanger everyone, including myself.

You have beliefs of your own in this scenario.
You believe I am a supremacist asshole.
It so happens you are correct.

"Supremacist" because I believe I have supremacy over you, and "asshole" because that is an asshole thing to believe.

Now, say I have more power behind me than just my own will. Let’s say the world is arranged in ways that force you to live in my lie instead of your truth.

This doesn't make me right. It means the world has arranged itself around unsustainable lies to accommodate my supremacy.

Say the legal and political apparatuses of our society also impose a reality under which I am the one who gets to decides the limits of your ability and your right to be.

Now I am not just a supremacist, but an oppressor.

I am an oppressor, because power agrees with me.

My view is accommodated over yours, even though my view is a lie, even though the accommodation hurts you and dismisses you and your identity.

But what I believe is still a lie. And I am still a supremacist asshole.

I oppose you, but it is not my opposition to you that makes me oppressive, but my empowered, accommodated supremacy.

If power agreed with you, for example, you would not be an oppressor, though you oppose me.

You would not be an oppressor, because your view is not a lie, and power accommodating your view would not hurt the person you oppose or dismiss them or their identity; it would merely prevent them from doing the same to you.

If you’ve been reading all along, this may all seem obvious and repetitive, but I believe it’s good to define your terms at the outset. And, in an age of empowered liars, I’ve found it can be instructive, even powerful, to repeat true things.

Thanks for your patience.

With that out of the way, there's a massive problem in the U.S. I’d like to bring to your attention, because I’ve been given to understand that this problem must be solved before anything else can be solved or even considered.

This makes it the supreme problem we face today.

Here is the supreme problem: conservatives have not been made perfectly comfortable yet, and that is something they find extremely oppressive.

They’re being oppressed. Listen to them; they’ll tell you.

They won’t STOP.