Reframe Your Inbox (Righteous Fights Edition)

Happy International Women’s Day. Here are five things for the week:

FIRST THING

I published the fourth article in my “Radical Rethink” series on Medium: The Scam of False Choices Has Radically Narrowed America’s Understanding of What Is Possible. An excerpt:

The scam, to be clear, isn’t capitalism. The scam isn’t the idea that governments can’t print money endlessly or spend with reckless abandon. […] The scam is the finger-wagging and lecturing itself. The scam is the patronizing rhetoric about trade-offs and tough choices. The scam is the “austerity refrain.” The scam is the broad acceptance of the idea that America can’t strengthen unemployment insurance or expand access to health care or make housing more accessible or invest in scientific research or make public education more equitable because we can’t afford it. The scam is the zero-sum thinking that says we have to choose between taking care of the economy and taking care of other people. The scam is accepting the false trade-offs that narrow the concept of the possible to the small sliver of action that also serves short-term profits and political fortunes. […]

In the United States, the public policy goals that are considered radical are considered radical only because we have accepted a radically shrunken notion of what is possible. The choices made every day by every one of us — where to allocate our time, money, attention, and effort — are just that: choices. The same is true for companies. The same is true for communities. And the same is true for nations. America’s political and economic systems are as entrenched as they are not because they have to be, but because we have allowed economic doctrine, political ideology, and financial self-interest to convince us that we don’t have any other choice. That we can’t do better than this. That this is just the way things have to be. […]

We don’t have to choose between fighting childhood poverty, expanding affordable housing, building a thriving economy, and achieving any number of other public policy goals. We can do them all, if we choose. To get there, we don’t have to blow up the entire system. But we do have to blow up the stories that sustain the system. The stories that rationalize why the successful succeeded and why the unsuccessful came up short. The stories that provide convenient cover for why the system works for some but not for others. The stories that define “radical” as anything that might make the comfortable a little less comfortable. The stories that make us susceptible to the scam of false choices.

SECOND THING

“Choose to fight only righteous fights.”

Whether or not she was your candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s departure from the Democratic primary is a loss for the party and the country. Her commitment to attacking the structural issues plaguing our politics and our economy, and her calls to reform capitalism and democracy so they work a little more like they’re supposed to, were refreshing, compelling, and inspiring.

In an interview after she exited the race, Warren told the Boston Globe, “I have an even clearer sense now of the world we could build.” The Democratic party and our democratic process are stronger for having had a candidate who showed clearly both how deeply the system is broken and how we might begin to repair it. (As for that never-ending question of electability… my friend Charlotte sent me an illustration from artist Jackie Ann Ruiz that says it all: “She's electable if you *!@?$! vote for her!”)

A few Warren-related links for further reading:

“Choose to fight only righteous fights,” Warren urged her campaign staff on Thursday. In our collective life and in our individual lives, what righteous fights can we pour more of ourselves into? And what can we let go to make more space for the fights that matter?

THIRD THING

Last week I mentioned maintaining an after-I-finish-my-book reading list. Jia Tolentino’s excellent essay collection, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, was also on that list. One of the things I really appreciate about Tolentino’s writing is her ability to capture the suspicions and hunches and subconscious anxieties about the present moment that many of us feel but struggle to articulate. In the book’s opening essay, “The I in the Internet,” she writes:

To try to write online… is to operate on a set of assumptions that are already dubious when limited to writers and even more questionable when turned into a categorical imperative for everyone on the internet: the assumption that speech has an impact, that it’s something like action; the assumption that it’s fine or helpful or even ideal to be constantly writing down what you think. […]

The internet can feel like an astonishingly direct line to reality—click if you want something and it’ll show up at your door two hours later; a series of tweets goes viral after a tragedy and soon there’s a nationwide high school walkout—but it can also feel like a shunt diverting our energy away from action, leaving the real-world sphere to the people who already control it, keeping us busy figuring out the precisely correct way of explaining our lives. […]

In the absence of time to physically and politically engage with our community the way many of us want to, the internet provides a cheap substitute: it gives us brief moments of pleasure and connection, tied up in the opportunity to constantly listen and speak. Under these circumstances, opinion stops being a first step toward something and starts seeming like an end in itself.

What’s the value of all of this online writing and publishing I’ve been doing over the past few years? Shouldn’t I be using the time I spend on it instead to raise money, canvass voters, make phone calls, or knock on doors for causes or candidates I believe in? I explore these questions a bit in Reframe the Day, but I haven’t found any good answers yet.

FOURTH THING

“Your power is in your brand and your knowledge and being able to express that to different people. It’s important to remember we have a lot more power [after redundancy] now than we did 30 years ago.” Listen to award-winning strategic workplace mental health expert Amy McKeown on She Rebel Radio: Finding Significance after Redundancy.

FIFTH THING

“I’m cool with that!”

Thanks for reading.

—Adam