Civil War (the movie) is a blunt object

Apr 24, 2024

I understand the revolutionary impulse. American Democracy is built upon a rotten foundation of white supremacy. Reform efforts are hard, and slow, and always incomplete. The idea that we ought to defend and hold up a fundamentally unjust system — that we should support a social hierarchy that violently oppresses vulnerable populations — is barely-defensible in the abstract.

And yet, if we were to tear the existing social order down to the studs, that would also mean grappling with well-armed white supremacists, who have their own plans for who and how the law ought to protect and bind.

I remain anchored in reformist politics, convinced that we need somehow to manage to improve an unjust political system while also strengthening the institutions of civil society. And the reason is because of my conviction that a breakdown of the social order would be much worse, and its impacts would be delivered most forcefully to the people who are already routinely scapegoated and attacked.

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