LaVar Hosting Jeopardy July 26-30 Stan Account 👁

I think this is interesting bc I think a lot of socialist/leftist activists have the same issue as a lot of black folks in terms of thinking that the coordinating mechanism is some kind of conscious conspiracy, when in reality the coordinating mechanism is ideology.

Even among the high-level people, almost none of them do evil things because they want people to suffer (Stephen Miller, sure, Steve Bannon, perhaps, Donald Trump, to some extent).

But most of them do the things they do because they have an ideology that allows them to justify it to themselves.

What does this have to do with all the Deray critique? The Deray critique presumes that the people who operate the levers of American power share the leftists’ critique of capital and empire.

Assumes that they are thinking “oh, this person’s embrace of Vanity Fair parties and hanging out with rich people is part means ultimately he supports the system.”

No! They aren’t interested in the system! Their ideology upholds the system for them. That frees their CONSCIOUS minds not to worry so much about the system and more about not ceding a single inch to their ideological opponents.

And yes, the way America is set up right now—even if they operate within the same system, without a critique of that system—Deray is a major ideological opponent of a lot of America’s powers-that-be.

No one is conscious of the system until it is threatened. Til then, they’re worried about change within the system. They really ain’t worried about y’all trying to change the system altogether (maybe some old-school hard-line anti-communists but in general not so much)

And they ain’t worried about y’all bc y’all don’t have very much power or influence! But Deray has a little power and a fair amount of influence and can help build for change within our existing economic and political system... so they’re worried about him.