Things That Are True: An Incomplete List
The antidote to gaslighting is to say what's true. Please add your own.
This list at the end of my previous newsletter apparently needs a stand alone post. When people get too much power, they invent their own reality in which we are expendable, and the rest of us have to live with the consequences. For the sake of our sanity, we need to remind ourselves of what is true: what would still count as common sense in a non-gaslit world. Add your own statements that feel controversial, but would not be in a sane world.
To read the first part, click here:
Common Sense
A very incomplete list of things that are true
Going to war ought to require approval of Congress and significant consensus, both at home and abroad, as well as a good reason and a plan for success.
You should not target and kill civilians, especially children. Letting the A.I. do it for you is not an acceptable excuse.
Nobody should wage war in such a way that makes water inaccessible or air unsafe to breathe for millions of people.
U.S. military spending needs to be justified and accounted for.
The federal budget needs to be taken seriously: we need to consider the impact of spending decisions on real people, how spending in one area will weigh against spending in other areas, and where the revenue is going to come from.
People who run, use, fund, hide, protect or otherwise enable child se**al assault operations or other human trafficking operations should go to jail.
All power is granted by the people. It is limited and conditional and should not be abused for personal or political gain.
Neither government funding nor federal jobs should be allocated according to people’s political affiliations.
The law ought to apply the same way to everyone, rich or poor, in government or out. People tasked with enforcing the law must obey the law.
Everybody needs to obey the Constitution.
People should not be harassed, detained, surveilled, or shot for exercising their Constitutional rights.
Our government needs functional balance of power, and that means Congress must not cede authority to the President and we need to reform the Supreme Court.
Our economic system exists to serve the needs of people. It ought to operate such that everybody benefits from it.
Workers should be taking home a larger share of the wealth that they create.
Nobody working full-time should be unable to pay for things they need to survive like housing, health care and food.
We should prioritize the production of real-world goods and services for people over the creation of instruments for speculation and wealth extraction that accelerate inequality and put the entire economy at risk.
There should be limits to how much wealth a single person or entity can accumulate. If you have enough to escape accountability in the form of economic competition or the rule of law, you have too much.
People with excess wealth should not have more influence on policy or elections than people who do not have excess wealth.
No one person or company should own enough of the media to control significant portions of public opinion.
No one person should ever be in the position to deprive a country of satellite access or other critical technology, especially in times of war.
No company should be “too big to fail.”
We should not be forced to adopt new technology that may be dangerous to us as individuals and as a species.
We should not accelerate the adoption of new technology the purpose of which is to replace workers without seriously considering the consequences to workers.
The right of anybody to make a profit is less important than the need to prevent the destabilization of our climate to the extent that it poses a significant risk to human life.
We should be making money by preventing the further destabilization of our climate, instead of having to pay for the damage at an unfathomable and escalating cost in both money and lives.
Government is the tool a society uses to make and carry out group decisions. We ought to be able to use our government to carry out plain old common sense.
The whole public debate is operating within some kind of gaslighting bubble and the only way out is to call it like it is.
Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism!
In solidarity, always,
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