Here’s an Orwell quote I’ve always loved: “The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.” Or a pandemic taking down those who refuse to believe in medicine. Or the impact of global warming on people who don’t believe in it (and unfortunately on those who do).
What brought it to mind recently was this meme on Bluesky:
The rich are, in other worlds, insulated from bumping against solid reality.
Remember the 2008 financial crash and housing bubble collapse? Lots of financial fraud, lots of bad decisions but almost nobody went to jail or even got prosecuted. Multiple firms got bailed out because they were too big to fail. When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, businesses that had put way, way more in their accounts than federal insurance covers were still reimbursed (for fear their employees and others would lose out). One tech investor — who’d previous argued that wiping out school debt only encouraged people to take on more debt they can’t afford — suddenly discovered it was vitally important to reimburse everyone because how could they have known having more in the bank than the government insures means the rest wasn’t insured? Yes, literally, he said that.
Or consider that meme I posted recently about AI
AI is crap. It provides bad answers to searches, makes up shit, doesn’t work well in multiple situations. Normally the result of putting out a crap product would be everyone losing their money. Because the techbros absolutely can’t stand that possibility — not only would they lose money but their genius visionary tech would be known to be crap — so they’re pushing and promoting and trying to turn it into the revolutionary tech they think it should be (for example Google paying money to a science website that depends on volunteer contributions to incorporate AI). They’re doing their best to pull strings and manipulate events to stave off the consequences of their bad judgment.
In short it’s Wilhoit’s Law: the system is supposed to protect the in-group and bind the out-group. And society has evolved to back that up. I’ve read multiple accounts of how corporate boards will sometimes give their CEO a spectacular bonus even if the company’s tanking — it’s not his fault! The market was bad, the economy was bad, we need to pay him more to turn things around! If they’re harassers or bullies, the glass floor protects them if they fail. The corrupt officials in the Felon’s corrupt administration deserve to be completely discredited; there’s a good chance they’ll have successful careers in politics or as university presidents or TV talking heads, no matter what crimes they’ve committed.
Step away from the rich and the same is true of white men. For all the endless whining from the right about how society doesn’t give white men a chance, church is too girly, college is too feminized, everything about society, until very recently, was built for men. The educational system was for boys, business was a world of men, churches were mostly male dominated … yet for some men, it still isn’t enough. Pete Hegseth has no qualms identifying women and POC medal of honor winners as DEI recipients; I’m sure he’d scream if anyone suggested a white man benefited from bias.
The idea that straight WASP men are entitled to all the good stuff — power, good jobs, a woman to clean for them, provide sex and care for their kids (as Anna Kendrick observed, men can say “I’d like kids someday” because they can imagine someone else will do most of the childcare) — is an intoxicating one. Part of the anger some men and whites are feeling now is that the idea is crashing up against reality: POC, gays, transpeople, women, they’re all equal. White men being on top is a choice, the cumulative result of multiple decisions, not some inevitable force of nature. Being the king is not something they automatically deserve.
For a lot of people that’s hard to take. How we get them to emerge from “inside of that machine” is one of the challenges we have to face in fixing the country. Otherwise when they crash into reality, they’re going to take all of us with them.
