The Witches Are Coming
There exists a multibillion-dollar Soft Power (Dream) Industry, which is in the business of crafting and selling powerful myths that lull us into various states of zombielike consumerism—swiping, subscribing, and submitting to its narrow vision of belonging.
Ruha Benjamin • Imagination: A Manifesto (A Norton Short)
And here’s the hard part. You can’t just decide fuck individualism, I’m blowing it up . You have to replace it with a better, more equitable story of who we are as a country and how we organize our society. Which, for a lot of people, would mean giving up a modicum of power. Liberal white people can loathe the effects of individualism and still ben... See more
The Dark Heart of Individualism
On the wings of market-friendly feminism, the idea that personal advancement is a subversive form of political progress has been accepted as gospel. The trickiest thing about this idea is that it is incomplete and insufficient without being entirely wrong.
Jia Tolentino • Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
With the public terrified and distracted, power-hungry players were able to move in and ram through policies that benefited corporate elites without debate or consent—not unlike the brutal methods deployed by torturers who use isolation and stress to soften up and break their prisoners.