Thread by @JuliusGoat

Before redemption comes reparation.
Before reparation, repentance.
Before repentance, confession.
Before confession, acknowledgement.
Before acknowledgement, awareness.

People benefitting from a wrong will do anything to prevent this sequence. So they attack each step—as we see.

America is a country best understood using dynamics of abuse and enablement.

What abusers want are the gifts of redemption without the cost of reparation.

What enablers want is the refuge of comfortable lies, which insulate them from the inconvenience of caring.

As we see.

Knowledge of a wrong carries a moral imperative to acknowledge it.

Acknowledgement carries one to confess it.

Confession, to repent of it.

Repentance, to repair it.

And so, among people who presently benefit from wrong, there grows a powerful desire not to know.

As we see.

For those who wish to benefit from wrong, yet consider themselves blameless, it is imperative to create systems that impart benefit of wrong while hiding the knowledge of wrong.

The system does the work without telling. In fact it's essential it doesn't tell.

As we see.

But for us to keep blameless, the system must be perfect. The best ever created. Exceptional.

A perfect system is, by definition, incapable of improvement.

Therefore, suggested improvement of the system is seen as an attack on the system.

As we see.

And so more and more effort and energy, time and resources, are expended on defending the perfection of the system from the attack of improvement.

And so the concept of improvement becomes the enemy. Even maintenance of the system becomes the enemy.

As we see.

Improvement and maintenance, after all, involve repair. And reparation always carries a cost.

And blameless people, believing themselves already perfect and redeemed, greatly resent the idea of paying any cost. They expect only to receive.

As we see.

And so our perfect system, unimprovable and unmaintainable, is never improved, and never maintained.

And if the system delivers wrong to many, then the fault (so say the blameless people) must be with the many. Because the system is perfect. Exceptional. The best.

As we see.

And there might be some who become aware of how shockingly unjust the unimproved system is, awake to truths previously unknown.

Blameless people attack this awareness, knowing that awareness leads to acknowledgement.

They turn the idea of awakening into a slur.

As we see.

But some, newly aware, may attempt to acknowledge this truth. They might create codifications of theories and vocabularies to discuss it, to understand how our perfect system might be improved.

Blameless people attack acknowledgement, knowing it leads to confession.

As we see.

Still, some, having acknowledged, might start to confess: to change vocabulary, use pronouns, put up yard signs, make occasionally awkward signifiers point toward improvements to our perfect system.

Blameless people attack confession, knowing it leads to repentance.

As we see.

Even so, some, seeing confession, might begin to repent: actually change their behaviors, modify what they are willing to accept, change spending, lifestyle, beliefs.

Blameless people furiously attack repentance, knowing it leads to the cost of reparation.

As we see.

Even so, some, beginning the long road of repentance, might try to begin to repair our perfect system.

Blameless people will go to war over reparation, knowing it will cost them more than money. It will cost their blamelessness.

As we see.

In time, the blameless people will expend all their energy, all their time, all their effort, all their money, fighting to defend their own perfection.

To never awake.
Never know things already known.
Never improve, which admits imperfection.
Never apologize, which admits blame.

In time, they'll repudiate even the systems they once claimed to love, as the idea of their perfected blamelessness becomes more and more abstracted and recursive.

They'll ally with enemies.
Speak in contradiction.
Harm themselves.

Anything to avoid the cost of improvement.

And what will we do, the rest of us, against these Blameless Ones?

What can we do, but move deeper into awareness, and acknowledge what we find, and confess our involvement, and repent of benefits wrongly received, and work to repair?

What can we do, but refuse blamelessness?

Blamelessness will never improve—it cannot.
It will never apologize.
It will refuse knowledge.
It will hate justice.
It will fall into disrepair.
It will fail.

It's unsustainable.

Unsustainable systems, by definition, don't sustain.

As we see.

The Blameless People Of America

As with groups, so with individuals.

The problem with a blameless system is, it can't be improved. The problem with being a blameless person is that you can never be at fault.

Just as a blameless system must be defended, so each blameless person must defend their blamelessness.

Remember, our country is best understood using dynamics of abuse and enablement.

Anyone who knows an abusive person knows an abusive person’s life consists of blame management.

Anyone who’s been an enabler knows the enabler’s life consists of ignoring observable things.

The problem for blameless people is an observable truth: our system is not perfect.

If the system is not perfect, then it can be improved, which would lead to the sequence of moral imperatives —awareness, acknowledgement, confession—blameless people defend against at all costs.

The blameless person’s solution is a familiar one for anyone who knows abusive people: blame management: they establish they have no connection to any system with imperfections.

The imperfections are entirely the fault of Them.

Them, who?

All of Them.

A blameless person actually understands that people inherit value from systems.

They simply split one system into two—whereby they inherit all good value from the perfect system to which they belong, while allowing Them to inherit bad value from the imperfect system.

The observable imperfect system is the fault of others, within which the blameless person demands to be an unattached individual and nothing else.

The unobservable perfect system becomes the blameless person’s heritage and inheritance.

So we see: they understand systems.

The perfect system's heritage must be defended at all times from all observable truth or historical account. It's perfection must be sacrosanct dogma. Its creators must be untouchable and blameless gods.

The imperfect system's imperfections may be used as a cudgel against Them.

A blameless person simultaneously belongs to a perfect system and to no system at all.

A blameless person insists on inheriting wealth, never responsibility.

A blameless person must always defend perfection.

To always defend means always feeling attacked.

As we see.

Being a blameless person is psychologically distressing. Every challenge to blamelessness—awareness, acknowledgement, confession, repentance—are attacks to be defeated.

A blameless person is constantly on the defense.

Which makes them extremely defensive.

As we see.

Let me name this moment: Blameless people aren't reacting to a new truth. They're simply reacting to an old observable truth, recently restated in new language.

There isn't a perfect system and an imperfect one. There is only one system.

A massive attack on the perfect system.

What's being said isn't that white America is irredeemably bad.

What's being stated is an old observable truth, which is that white America has proved unwilling to do the work of redemption.

The reaction to this truth suggests it is an ongoing unwillingness.

It's important to remember that our primary goal should not be changing individual minds but changing systems, and the work of redemption—beginning with awareness and ending with reparation—is how systems are changed.

The system is the context within with individual minds exist.

It's also important to remember: we're dealing with dynamics of abuse and enablement.

Abusers thrive upon permission.
Enablers thrive upon comfort.

The work of redemption—beginning with awareness, ending with reparation—reallocates permission and comfort. Which changes things.

It's also important to remember: we all exist within the context of this abusive system.

It's not a question of whether we partake of this system. It's what our context is, and how we align ourselves with or against.

It's understanding: I, too, am one of the blameless people.

Blamelessness is accessible to me on many levels, and not to others. Because the system operates automatically, in many ways, I can't extricate myself from assumed blamelessness of our "perfect" system.

But I can choose to be aware of it, if I am willing to listen.

I can't extricate myself from benefitting from a system that harms others. Does that make me irredeemable?

I'll answer the question with a question: am I willing to do the uncomfortable work of redemption?

Am I willing to know and acknowledge?
Am I willing to repent and repair?

There's only one individual mind you can truly convince, and that's your own. So, do.

For true change, abusers must receive opposition; enablers, discomfort.

The work of redemption achieves this. So those who would benefit from wrong will always attack that work.

As we see.