Our Achievements So Far
For all of the drama and deceit of politics, we haven’t completely botched this thing. We’ve made enormous strides on very nearly all fronts. Hard as it may be to believe that.
For much of human history, civilizations have altogether failed to concern themselves with the dispossessed and have proven merciless toward those who fail to conform.
The way our civilization has historically handled the mentally ill was, itself, more insane than anything you’ve ever seen a guy doing under a tarp near a highway overpass. People considered mentally unfit have been sent to labor camps, been subjects of thousands of medical experiments, and have generally been handled as less than human. And, what has constituted mental illness has historically included such maladies as unemployment and nostalgia.
The contemporary criticisms about doping kids with Ritalin are more than apt. But we used to put infants in clothing that prevented them from crawling. We sent boys into mines and chimneys until they were old enough to be sent to the factories. We rubbed arsenic on girls faces to make them pale. And, the Boy Scouts were founded as literal boy scouts, as in military reconnaissance.
Even by the account of those who are not political radicals, for the first fifty years of the twentieth century, the means which all governments found acceptable in the waging of war were nothing any decent person would like to admit were human. ( Sorry, that last sentence was written before October of 2023. We may be regressing. )Generally, though, we’ve really done a stellar job of limiting the number of death squads, killing fields, concentration camps, poison gas attacks, fire bombing campaigns, and general state-sponsored mayhem. It may not always seem like it. But if you stop to examine how frequently and broadly we murdered each other in recent centuries, for the last seventy years we’ve really been on our best behavior.
If you dip your toes into the historical examinations of Michelle Foucault you’ll quickly find that the way women used to be treated by the medical establishment was actually worse than they are treated now. That is not to say that this process is complete. Women are so historically underrepresented in medical studies and ergonomic analysis that the vast majority of pharmaceuticals, heavy equipment, hand tools, and even some electronics and musical instruments range from posing physical risk to causing known bodily harm. For the life of me, I have no idea why no one has ever pointed that out to Steven Crowder. It isn’t rocket science to understand why women are underrepresented in rocket science. When every little element of the environment in a highly competitive field is designed for the people who already occupy that field then the people who occupy that field will continue to do so — even for decades after explicit gatekeeping has ended. But! On our best days, on many fronts, we are doing away with explicit gatekeeping. It’s not nothing. It’s progress.
These things do take time.
Of course, when someone says that these things take time, the backlash always assumes that the commenter is urging those pressing for change to back off, wait, or settle for the status quo. I am saying no such thing. Work. Organize. Get tough. And, strategize. And, as we strategize, keep in mind that this is a marathon not a sprint.
And, take some time to look back at the wins.
Commonly, people talk about politics with the assumption that it is like a tug-o-war. If one side is gaining ground then the other side must be losing it. This is frequently not the case. In fact, most of the following victories discussed in this chapter are pretty well agreed upon by all parties as great strides. We don’t give enough attention to our agreements. They are also not small.
At the same time, you all know by now that I’m not going to drop any fluff pieces. When we look at our wins, one of the most important things to look for is evidence of bad trades. Essentially, when did we get what we wanted at too great a loss?
So, let’s examine the successes of the past for a bit — with a critical and compassionate eye.
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cheers.