There is something essential and fundamental about this movement that the media and pundits have either misunderstood or failed to grasp.

This isn't about George Floyd's killers being brought to justice. That's the surface-level thing. It's about sweeping substantial reform.

1/
It's not enough to just charge George Floyd's killers for his murder. That should go without saying, it should happen without protest.

We have to address systemic prejudice that caused his murder and so many other murders. We have to completely change the way power works.

2/
It's not just about body cams and reformed training. It's about revisiting institutionalized racism and white supremacy that inspires these killings and the brutality we're witnessing.

It's about changing a system that values wealth and profit over human lives.

3/
You may have noticed a media shift now that all the officers who murdered George Floyd have been charged. As if it might bring this thing to an end. They've backed off reporting on the action in the streets, the brutality cops are dishing out.

It's a misrepresentation.

4/
People are tired of a machine that doesn't work and relies on brutality, murder, and intimidation to maintain power.

We have to find something human and real and fair or else this country will fail. It's a failing state, period, and needs reform.

5/
It isn't a coincidence that this is happening during a pandemic and economic crisis that exposed the powerful in this country are willing to feed us into the jaws of a generational plague in order to keep their unstable, inhuman economy from exploding.

6/
The mask this nation wears, the myth that it's dedicated to liberty and equality is evaporating. We're watching a fascist president and a fascist president argue for mass killings in the streets.

The true nature of these people is being revealed. It doesn't stop with charges

7/
Charging George Floyd's murderers is the first step in a long, long, LONG line of steps that are needed to get this country pulled up from its swandive into the abyss.

This is not a tidy narrative. It isn't a feel-good story. It's a movement against massive inequalities.

8/
It isn't enough to have sheriffs and cops take a knee or hug protestors. It isn't enough to pay lip-service to the need to rip white supremacy up by its roots.

There is an exhausting amount of work needing done to fix centuries' worth of damage and cruelty.

9/
Symbols and storylines are fine. They give context and pathos. But this is a messy situation borne from a messy and unpleasant history.

It's not as simple as whether cops are charged. The entire system needs reexamined. Our laws. Our economy. Our politics. Our society.

10/10

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More from @JYSexton

Feb 18
It’s absolutely incredible how corporate news works. The Democratic Party isn’t struggling because “leftist ideas” are dominating.

It’s struggling because it isn’t addressing material conditions, leaving the GOP to dominate the narrative and using straw men as villains.
The Squad, or whatever we want to call them, doesn’t have power. “Leftist” policies have no home or sway, it’s the perceived power the Right uses for its own purposes.

Meanwhile, centrists continue to push centrist pro-market, neoliberal politics as a solution.
The Republican Party fights a weaponized version of the Democratic Party, one in which leftists control the levers of power. Meanwhile, Leftists are marginalized and powerless.

It’s a wrestling match, a complete illusion, but it benefits the agenda of corporate news.
Read 8 tweets
Feb 16
We're stuck between an imaginary past used by authoritarians to protect white supremacy and an imaginary future peddled by corporations and the wealthy to enrich themselves.

If we're going to get out of this crisis, we'll need to escape both.

1/

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/the-war-over…
So much time is spent on the spectacle of Donald Trump that we often miss the larger movements at play in this current moment.

We're caught in a mythological America that was spun to further wealth and power, and we have to move beyond it.

2/
The future that is being presented to us by corporations is marketed as an escape from our problems and this crisis, but it's only a means of hiding it and profiting off the destruction.

The past peddled by white supremacists and this fake future are directly linked.

3/
Read 24 tweets
Feb 14
Putin’s authoritarianism has been accepted in the neoliberal global order because it doesn’t care about democracy or rights as long as labor is kept cheap and resources flowing.

But the fabled “peace” and “stability” of it is infinitely fragile. We’re watching it self-destruct.
Neoliberalism’s acceptance and even approval of illiberal authoritarianism, part of its original thrust, is going to be its undoing as there was always going to come a time where market forces demanded invasions and interruptions of the status quo.
Deep down, American neoliberals truly believed they were going to be able to dam up capitalism, control it and direct it forever, all while allowing and even encouraging illiberalism to grow. It was an absurd, self-destructive idea, and it was never going to last.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 9
Mitch McConnell breaking ranks to criticize January 6th and the censuring of Cheney and Kinzinger is a major story, but not because McConnell is principled.

There's a war in the GOP and an authoritarian, illiberal movement is taking control.

1/

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/a-party-tear…
Mitch McConnell represents a past generation of Republicans ensconced in neoliberalism.

What we are watching are the consequences of the GOP partnering with authoritarian powers to further their power and profit and a terrifying changing of the guards.

2/ Image
McConnell was correct that January 6th was a violent insurrection, but we also have to recognize that his actions and the actions of the GOP explicitly laid the foundations for this to happen.

Pretending this was a spontaneous phenomenon is simply delusional.

3/ Image
Read 28 tweets
Feb 2
Our democracy is under relentless attack and we are in a full-blown crisis.

But as attention continues to focus on Donald Trump, what gets lost is that extremely powerful and wealthy individuals are funding and orchestrating the entire thing.

1/

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/a-test-run-t…
Trump gets all the attention because he's a buffoon, a personality, and he is profitable for the media to focus on.

But Trump is a weapon, a battering ram for wealthy and powerful forces that have been systematically destroying democracy for ages.

2/
Trump is a spectacle and imbued with a singular talent for recklessness that exposed the fragility of our systems.

The powerful people who want to destroy democracy watched him and learned their efforts were coming into full fruition.

3/
Read 22 tweets
Jan 30
Notice that a lot of political discourse now is appealing to corporations to handle societal problems rather than government.

That’s by design. Neoliberalism dismantled government as a representation of public will, transferring power from mass politics to how we spend our money
When realizing neoliberalism turned government strictly into protectors of wealth and corporations into the arbiters of political will, it becomes more and more obvious why some companies pretend to be progressive.

It’s marketing. That’s all it is.
Right now, as Spotify loses value because it platforms Joe Rohan, Apple is gaining because it projects progressive values.

But Apple benefits from forced labor and gross exploitation around the world.

It’s only public relations. An appeal to political beliefs.
Read 5 tweets

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