Introduction
The problem with constructing a critique of the USA as a whole entity is that there truly are millions of moving parts and even more contradictions. For a lot of bad shit that
happens to good and innocent people, there are good and innocent people who are living close to the USA-dream they were told they would get if they worked hard and
paid their taxes on time. Sound critiques of the USA often crumble because of these one-off stories and economic flukes (like winning the lottery) that ultimately minimize the
real oppression, citizens and undocumented citizens alike, face for simply expressing who they are to being rejected when asking for bodily autonomy when it comes to
reproduction.
I hope that I have constructed a way to talk about what needs to change without all the unnecessary side conversations, mostly whataboutisms, that typically derail
discourse and drives it to an ego-debate.
First of all, we need the white community of the USA to stop the white community’s society-sustaining obsession with debating and debate.
Debate drives violence.
We can find many instances where debate led to
political violence, in nearly every year, if not every decade, within the history of this country, the USA. Political violence, let’s all agree, is the product of extreme division.
Debate fuels this extreme division.
Within this project, the extreme divisions we need to challenge are something we all contribute to in some way, shape or form. We have to identify those ways that are
specific to us as individuals within our family, our community, our workplace, our economic practices, our consumer habits and interrogate all of them to see if they
contribute to the oppressive harm and further marginalizing of people, animals, the earth and how much and then decide if are are willing to change our habits.
It is my hope that we can cultivate the capacity to support meaningful progress that ultimately ends up with people getting their basic needs met as a societal standard.
Right now, the USA refuses to ensure every citizen get their basic needs met.
Right now, the USA refuses to ensure medical care for all.
Right now, the USA refuses to ensure a living wage for 40 hours/week of work.
Right now, the USA incarcerates the most humans on earth.
Right now, we must risk our comfort, to whatever degree that suits us, to ensure people who are silenced by systems in our society that forces poverty on them have a clear avenue to speak for themselves and give us the chance to support them.
From the inside out, we can bring change about.
This will bring about the necessary practice of self-love and, if many people choose to adopt the same mindset, the collection of practices will produce a society that priortizes meeting basic needs of citizens and others through the practice of love.
A colletive practice of love will produce a soceity that is not a war society.