We Are Not Okay
We have to make self-government work. The alternatives are unacceptable.
Violence and chaos make people seek order. Either we provide good order by championing the institutions we need to govern ourselves democratically, reasonably and compassionately, or we abandon our country to bad order (tyranny) and and even more chaos (anarchy). The Left is used to criticizing, but this moment in history requires leadership and vision.
Who Gets to Decide?
The problem with vigilantism is, “Who gets to decide?” If one person can play judge, jury and executioner for people like Brian Thompson or Charlie Kirk, then what about Melissa Horton and her husband, or perhaps Nancy Pelosi or Gabby Giffords? The United States has always fantasized about vigilante justice. Our superhero genre is all about having individuals step in and save us when the institutions of government fail. The problem is that we don’t have a Captain America in the real world. Having one person whose moral judgment is absolutely unassailable is fiction. Even in the movies, the bad guy is often someone who thinks that they are the one saving the world.
No single person should ever have absolute power, and no-one should ever feel driven to take the situation into their own hands. That is why we have democracy and societal institutions. We collectively decide what kind of society we want to live in. We choose to impose rules on ourselves to make our society safe and fair, but we get to choose the people who make those rules, and we are supposed to enforce them fairly and equally. Effective self-governance is good order. Having rules imposed on us and selectively enforced according to one person’s whim is bad order.
We have a Constitution. Our founders came together and set up a basic framework by which this nation would self-govern. They included things like due process and checks and balances, because they were very, very focused on preventing the abuse of power. We all need those institutions to work. The problem is that, for too long, we have allowed people who don’t want government to work to convince Americans that government itself is inherently bad. We have become accustomed to criticizing government when people use it to do wrong or don’t live up to our ideals. The problem is that if we’re not out there making the case for good government, nobody is.
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Bad Government and No Government
We are sliding sideways into a bad combination of tyranny and anarchy. We have tyranny: one guy who abuses the power of government to compel total obedience and do whatever pops into his sociopathic toddler mind, including turn the military on a significant portion of the American people. We also have anarchy: the de-facto legalization of corporate exploitation and global organized crime.
If you have enough money or influence and some part of our government is standing between you and exploiting, endangering or oppressing people, Trump will gladly get rid of it for you. But this did not start with Trump. The influence of money and lack of accountability for the rich and powerful go back a long way. Just ask the folks at JP Morgan who enabled Jeffrey Epstein for years.
Want no competition from cheaper renewable fuels? Trump will kill those for you. Participated in a global pedophile ring? Trump will threaten lawmakers to not release the files. Want to run digital Ponzi schemes that enable global crime while risking crashing the economy and collapsing the ecosystem? As long as Trump can make a few billion off it, you are good to go. Want to cheat on your taxes? Trump will gut the IRS for you. Want to force your religious views on other people? Go nuts. Ran a global dark web crime marketplace or attacked the US Capitol? Pardons for you. Invaded a neighboring country or trying to bomb an entire people off of their land? How can we help? Committed war crimes? Let me get the International Criminal Court off your back. Want to put on a mask and terrorize brown people? Here’s a signing bonus. Lost your pension because a private equity firm bought and bankrupted a company you have worked for your whole life? Tough shit. An immigrant who got caught with a joint 20 years ago? For you? Deportation to a third world prison.
We have liberty for corporations and global criminals, and tyranny for the rest of us. The problem with unfettered greed and total lack of accountability is that sooner or later, the pitchforks come out, only this is America so it might be rifles instead. If that sounds even the slightest bit good to you, remember the problem of “Who gets to decide?” Violence begets violence. Bad government and no government go hand in hand, spiraling into anarchy, vigilantism and even further crackdown, less freedom and more tyranny.
We don’t really have any choice. We must make the institutions of civil society work as well as humanly possible.
Opposition and criticism are no longer enough.
I have been “anti-establishment” my whole life, as have many of us on the Left, but perhaps our anger toward the “establishment” and our zeal for reform have always been two sides of the same coin. We may be angry that the systems that we have built to manage our society seem to serve, not to equalize us, but to give power to the exploiters, but our anger stems from a deeper belief that they should work on our behalf, that they should answer to us. We have to take back those systems and make them truly democratic and egalitarian.
We need to convince voters that we can do something other than oppose. We have to convince voters that good government is not just a viable option but the only option, and that we are the people with the vision and the capability and the guts to make it happen. We can’t do that just by attacking Trump and criticizing each other.
Pollsters have argued that attacking Trump works better than “defending institutions,” but they don’t take into account that our public debate is saturated with fifty years of attacks on government. Allowing those attacks to go unchallenged is what has made Trump’s attacks on government possible. Rather than consigning ourselves to failure, we need to use the next six months to make the case for the institutions of effective, democratic government, so that by the midterm elections, voters are eager to vote for the candidates who best embody those ideals.
The best argument against what we are against, is to make the case for what we are for.
Is this really the beginning of the “age of political violence”? That’s not the world I want to live in. If that means I have to fight for the institutions of civilized society, so be it. I will fight for the Constitution. I will fight for the rule of law, for equality and fairness. I will fight for judicial warrants, and due process, and police accountability. I will fight for the vigorous prosecution of white collar crime and wage theft. I will fight to expose and imprison pedophiles. I will fight the mechanisms that criminals use to evade accountability, like cryptocurrency. I will fight for accountability for those who crash the economy, taking people’s hopes, dreams, homes and retirements with it. I will fight for economic fairness: for rewarding non-bullshit jobs that you can support a family on, plentiful housing and healthcare that everyone can afford, and for real security in retirement. I will fight for public education and public transportation. I will fight for freedom of thought, expression, worship and association, and for a free and independent press. I will fight for free and fair elections that accurately reflect the will of the people. I will fight for safe neighborhoods, for safe food, water and air, for unlimited clean energy and a stable climate. I will fight for federal, state and local governments and the civil servants that efficiently keep our country running: keep us safe, provide public benefits and services and invest in our future, so that we all don’t have to worry about it and can go about living our lives. I will fight for NATO and the International Criminal Court and against war crimes. I will fight for humanitarian aid and public health. I will fight for the rights to safety and self-determination for the people of Gaza, Israel, Ukraine and everywhere else.
Talking about what we are for gives me the strength to continue the fight, and will give voters something to rally behind. We must frame our criticism of Trump and others in this context of a better vision of what could be if the institutions of our society worked the way they should work, as an expression of our collective choices about the kind of society we want to live in.
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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Contact me at antonia@antoniascatton.com or (202) 922-6647
Another grand slam. My topic this week was similar. I loved your last section and would have stuck with the argument metaphor for consistency, as our choices are between a caring society and a cruel society. Here’s how I encourage saying it.
The best argument against what we are against is to make the case for what we are for: promoting our duty to care.
I am committed to teaching about empathy and the duty to care for one another’s human rights and freedoms. Join me to make this the age of political care! Let’s frame and reframe the institutions of civilized society around empathy and our duty to care. I will argue for the Constitution because I care. I will argue for the rule of law, for equality, and fairness because I care. I will argue for judicial warrants, due process, and police accountability because I care. I will argue for the vigorous prosecution of white collar crime and wage theft because I care. I will argue to expose and imprison pedophiles because I care. I will argue the mechanisms that criminals use to evade accountability, like cryptocurrency, because I care. I will argue for accountability for those who crash the economy, taking people’s hopes, dreams, homes, and retirements with it, because I care. I will argue for economic fairness: for rewarding non-bullshit jobs that you can support a family on, plentiful housing and healthcare that everyone can afford, and for real security in retirement because I care. I will argue for public education and public transportation. I will argue for freedom of thought, expression, worship, and association, and for a free and independent press because I care. I will argue for free and fair elections that accurately reflect the will of the people because I care. I will argue for safe neighborhoods, for safe food, water, and air, for unlimited clean energy, and a stable climate because I care. I will argue for federal, state, and local governments and the civil servants that efficiently keep our country running: keep us safe, provide public benefits and services, and invest in our future, so that we all don’t have to worry about it and can go about living our lives because I care. I will argue for NATO and the International Criminal Court and against war crimes because I care. I will argue for humanitarian aid and public health because I care. I will argue for the rights to safety and self-determination for the people of Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, and everywhere else because I care.
Talking about what we are for and how we care gives me the strength to continue to argue, and will provide voters with something to rally behind to achieve our 3.5% solution. Our choice is between a caring society and a cruel society. We must frame our criticism of Trump and others in this context of a caring vision of what could be if the institutions of our society worked the way they should work, as an expression of our collective choices to build a caring society.
This is really important. In so much civil justice work we speak to what we want to end, but not enough about what we want to build. We have to create the vision of what can be in order to bring people with us.