/lit/ - Literature

>>20903272
*blocks you're path*

>This is how big things can be easier than small things: the big things are useful, but hard. The small things are easy, but useless. Culture is downstream from power; power is a wide river, now as wide as the world. Perhaps it can be dammed. It cannot be partly dammed—no matter how many dumps you take in it.

>What is your small thing even supposed to mean? The political strangeness of this smallness cannot be overstated. Yesterday, you sent your son to school in the morning. You picked him up in the afternoon. You were confident that whatever they were doing to him there, it was at least reasonably consistent with your goals as a parent.

>Today, you learn that they are chemically castrating him with Lupron-flavored Jello. What is your response? To push for a new law against school-administered Lupron? Or any other chemical-castration drug? Or shall the legislature prohibit schools from gelding boys, or spaying girls, by any means—except for medical emergencies?

>The public debates. Hackles are raised. Elections are held. The law passes. And next month, your son is back on Lupron… it is a medical emergency, they explain…

>Such is democratic politics in the 2020s. All the victories of democracy over oligarchy are temporary and symbolic; they consume the energy invested in them, and release no energy back; their objective effect is to (a) dissipate this energy, and (b) promote their promoters. While predictable defeat is a grift by definition, it’s an unfortunate fact that even victory can be a grift.