Sarah Kendzior Quotes

When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatise those who let people die, not those who struggle to live.

The nightmares I had been fending off had come home in the form of the Trump administration: a white supremacist kleptocracy linked to a transnational crime syndicate, using digital media to manipulate reality and destroy privacy, led by a sociopathic nuke-fetishist, backed by apocalyptic fanatics preying on the weakest and most vulnerable as feckless and complicit officials fail to protect them.

The condemnation of digital media has two sides. There is a legitimate claim that digital media has given old viciousness new visibility. . .. Certain facets of social media - speed, anonymity, the ability to "dox" - have changed the nature of harassment, making it easier to accomplish and less likely to be redressed.

But are the mainstream media any different in their biases and cruelty? They do not appear to be. Mainstream media cruelty is actually more dangerous, for it incorporates language that, were it blogged by an unknown, would likely be written off as the irrelevant ramblings of a sociopath.

Instead, the prestige of old media gives bigoted ranting respectability. Even in the digital age, old media define and shape the culture, repositioning the lunatic fringe as the voice of reason.

The surest way to keep a problem from being solved is to deny that problem exists. Telling people not to complain is a way of keeping social issues from being addressed. It trivializes the grievances of the vulnerable, making the burdened feel like burdens. Telling people not to complain is an act of power, a way of asserting that one's position is more important than another one's pain. People who say "stop complaining" always have the right to stop listening. But those who complain have often been denied the right to speak.

The "tycoon or buffoon" strategy is meant to amuse the public, to make Americans believe he either is as successful as he claims to be - after all, The New York Times vouches for him! - or is such an obvious phony that he could not be capable of pulling off a massive criminal enterprise without repercussions.

It is easy, when people feel frightened and abandoned, for a demagogue to exploit those feelings of despair for political gain. It is easy for that demagogue to translate fear into fanaticism, to shift extremism into the mainstream and market it under the guise of populism. By the time buyer's remorse hits, a new and more brutal political culture has arisen. A gaslit nation becomes engulfed in flames.

Blame Stalin, the pundits cry, echoing the argument made every time something bad happens in the former Soviet Union. Blame Stalin, because we can pronounce that name.

Ability is discounted without credentials, but the ability to purchase credentials rests, more often than not, on family wealth.

Americans should not fear riots. They should fear apathy. They should fear acquiescence. They should not fear each other. But it is understandable, now, that they do.

Charity, as a supplement to justice, should be applauded. But charity as a substitute for justice is neither charity nor justice. It is cruelty. The