You need a world without context

Every day I get online, and every day I’m inundated with context-less arguments. My jobs require sifting through dozens of articles and hundreds of tweets every day. And I know that the quality of our public discussion has been suffering for some time, but every day I come across discourse after discourse, dialogue after dialogue where conservsatives are demanding one simple thing of us: don’t ask for context.

We’re told that massive media companies are failing simply because they couldn’t hack it, just don’t ask about how private equity swooped in to suck out profits and sell them for parts. We’re told that Hamas is entirely to blame for Israel’s genocide in Gaza – just don’t ask about the history of Palestine before October 7th, 2023. We’re told that the actions of Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik, who directs millions of people to target school districts, are somehow disconnected from the bomb threats that follow. Just don’t ask about why the timing aligns again and again and again. Over and over we’re asked to believe that actions happen in vacuums. An entire world-view relies on this approach.

Photo by Brian Wertheim on Unsplash

You must believe that cause is not connected to effect. The conservative approach to policing and crime is to tell you that giving more resources to poorer communities won’t solve crime. They say we need police because crime is inevitable. They never have an answer for why communities where everyone has their needs met have less crime. Any honest answer to that question might get you thinking that funding communities is the way to go, or that these conservatives seem to think certain groups of people are just more violent and criminal. You might even start to think they’re racist. If you start to demand too much context for their weak points, you might accidentally tear the whole argument apart. So what you really need is to stop thinking so much – you need a world without context.

Now if you were to look at the conservative arguments against unions, you might start getting a little confused again. They warn you about union dues, which for me are about 1.5% of my pay. But then you mention how unions are winning double-digit raises for workers right now, and they start to clam up. Or a conservative will tell you how schools are failing, but then you ask them about funding education or paying teachers more, and they start squirming. They need you to live in a world without context.

Schools and education, and the immensely weak and harmful arguments that the right makes about them, are maybe the most important example of all. Because if kids don’t get a decent education it becomes harder for them to make good arguments. Analysis and context and debate aren’t just skills that emerge out of a vacuum, nothing does. These skills are learned, taught, developed. Unless they’re not. If kids don’t get a good humanities education, we collectively risk entering a negative feedback loop. We risk a society where learning is devalued, and therefore one where it’s easier for the rich and powerful to enact a deeply regressive agenda. We’re most likely already further down that path than I care to admit to myself.

What the right wants, more than anything, is docile workers. Despite the way current conservative leaders want you to think they’re different from their predecessors (and they do have their differences, like the desire for all-out authoritarianism) a whole lot of fundamental similarities remain. Among the most important is that they see themselves as fundamentally superior to others. This means racism, sexism, and all manner of supremacist beliefs. One that is not sufficiently discussed, because of an aversion to the very topic of class among the owners of mass media, is the classism which has run through the conservative movement from its inception to the current day. The leaders of the right embrace the idea that they should be the decision makers, while the working class should be the brutes who work for them and have no input in how we are governed. No amount of fake populism or rabid nationalism can hide that truth.

The right is trying, of course, to hide it. They constantly attempt to rebrand as the party of working people, before blocking any and all legislation that would actually help the working class. Nothing makes their disdain for the commoners as clear as their relentless attack on public education. Instead of funding schools Republicans across the country, and some Democrats, are backing charter schools and vouchers, defunding public education while simultaneously rolling back child labor laws. In the last year, five red states have paired a push for school vouchers with attempts to roll back child labor protections. One of those states, Indiana, is considering a law that lets kids as young as 14 be put to work on farms instead of going to school.

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

The child labor push, the defunding of education, and the push for charter schools are both about short-term profits and a long-term vision for the country and the world. Capitalists want students to become workers, workers whose number one skill and priority is compliance. In their vision we are not meant to be full people who ask questions, look for context, or seek fuller lives. From the classroom to the factory we are meant to be cogs on an assembly line. And, as the recent Associated Press investigation on prison labor revealed, the ruling class has no qualms about resorting to slavery if necessary. Over 800,000 Americans are already de facto slaves in the forced labor system that incarcerated workers are fed into.

Pushing back against this tide, which can feel overwhelming, has more components than I can name here. I try to talk about the tools we can use as often as possible, and I’ve included some links at the end of this piece, but I always want to be talking more about learning, and the ways we can build habits and practices that push our knowledge no matter our age, level of education, or place in life. In a world where we’re told to live without context, to think without context, to simply accept what we’re told, we need to push back by learning and challenging and asking questions. And, ultimately, we need to push to be real radicals in this world. I mean radical as Angel Davis meant it: “grasping things at the root.” We have to go down to the root and brush aside the excuses and arguments that try to stop us from getting there. We need real answers; the problems of our world demand real solutions. And that means getting down to the systems and the causes of what ails us. In this world, nothing less will do.

Some earlier pieces with helpful resources that might be useful here:

1. On the skill of being radical

2. How to keep learning as an adult

3. Moving from "The Personal is Political" to Systemic Change

4. Some of the tools we can use to build change

5. Earthseed, a framework you might find helpful