So much vital and important information is hidden behind paywalls. This culture of greed not only ensures a commodification of ideas but also intentionally obscures subversive notions from being widely available.

You have to have the resources or credentials.
Not only do writers and thinkers go their entire lives without necessary support, but the marketization also ensures a narrow breadth of ideas that are acceptable to the continuation of the power system.

To get in, you have to be part of that system and less likely to disturb it
In terms of something like a professorship, where you gain access to that information, your career depends largely on writing to others of the professorial class, largely cutting off populations who don’t have the expertise or even time to begin grappling with the ideas.
It’s so tragic that these books and articles and studies are kept away from people. It’s by design, obviously, to perpetuate power dynamics, but the natural and tragic result is sclerotic structures that fail to change. It’s a suicidal cycle and we’re living in the repercussions.
I have a lot of meetings with “thought leaders” who think it’s a miracle I came from an impoverished family and treat them like they must be morons. The tragedy is that my family and people like them are plenty smart and could contribute to all of this. The classism is astounding
I’m able to do what I do, write what I write, put together puzzle pieces because I have the luxury of time and space to sit behind a desk while my relatives break their backs in factories.

Gaining access to this information is revolutionary and we don’t realize that enough.
This current moment is about the stark realization for many white people that the meritocracy was a cruel joke used to uphold power structures.

Like America’s bridges, that notion is crumbling and the consequences are tragic.
As I just said elsewhere, this isn’t about newspapers. It’s about expert information, important voices, books, articles, reports, studies. To gain access means money, connections, institutional relationships and positions.

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More from @JYSexton

16 Dec
All right, we need to talk about the celebration and marketing of Kyle Rittenhouse by the GOP.

Market forces have corrupted our society, dismantled our politics, and have ensured that Right Wing violence and authoritarianism will only grow with time

1/

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/when-the-fre…
Since Rittenhouse's killings in Wisconsin and his acquittal, he has become one of the hottest celebrities in GOP circles.

Networks flock to him. Personalities fight over his attention. And all of this shows that the GOP is dangerous, but also exposes a massive problem.

2/ Image
The commodification and marketization of this tragedy is as disgusting as it is predictable. Vigilante justice, shooting people down in cold blood, is now not only acceptable in the GOP, but celebrated and rewarded.

It means money. It means celebrity. It means power.

3/ Image
Read 22 tweets
14 Dec
To understand Fox News and the modern Republican Party, you have to understand professional wrestling and the concepts of "kayfabe" and "shoot."

What Fox airs is kayfabe, or performance. Those texts from hosts to the White House on January 6th were "shoot" and behind the curtain
There's a whole range of people in the GOP and on the Right in this mess of a crisis. Some of them are true believers and ideologues looking to bring the system down ala Steve Bannon.

A lot of the others are either inbetween or just using it as a grift or to spur ratings.
This moment of GOP/Right Wing radicalism is bizarre and confusing because it's riddled through with layers of belief, conviction, actual ideology, and people looking to make a buck.

It's a constantly evolving thing. People move from one extreme to another.
Read 4 tweets
13 Dec
When liberal democracy gives way to oppressed people even having a glimmer of hope for change the Right reacts immediately by rejecting democracy, imagining new weaponized fictions like “original intent” and “natural rights,” and mobilizes extremists happy to commit violence.
This pattern has occurred time and time again, and if efforts to checkmate reform and progress through legal means fails the Right won’t hesitate to go outside the law or widen it as a defense, including legalizing widespread violence, discrimination, and intimidation.
The notion of democracy is only acceptable to the Right as long as it gifts them a mandate to shape society in their image. The moment the balance tips it becomes a dangerous weakness, an entry point for foreign and evil interests to destroy the country from within.
Read 5 tweets
10 Dec
There’s nothing like elite, mediocre columnists and public “intellectuals” pretending like conservatism was some kind of noble pursuit and completely covering up the racism, patriarchy, elitism, and wild-eyed conspiracy theories that have been a bedrock since the very start.
And every single one of these WASP-y elites cite Edmund Burke and a flowery philosophical tradition as antithetical to QAnon and the Big Lie while neglecting to talk about how Burke’s philosophy depended on a belief the French Revolution was a Jewish/Illuminati plot.
The truth is that conservatism as a philosophy is rife with conspiracy theories and authoritarianism because it is concerned with one thing: maintaining of power by a small group of white, male elites by peddling fear to keep control.

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/a-long-and-f…
Read 4 tweets
3 Dec
With continual and intentional obstruction and the total capturing of federal government by special interests, not to mention intractable political differences, it feels like a shift is happening that will throw more power to the states and more or less cleave us in two.
Already there is a marked difference in how people live in states based on political control and that difference is only going to grow as this shift picks up momentum and the federal keeps kicking responsibility back.

Red and Blue Americas would only grow further apart.
If Roe v Wade were overturned, and if state laws disenfranchising voters and overturning elections continue to go unchallenged, we’re going to see a disturbing amount of unadulterated oppression, continuing radicalization, and illiberal democracy on an unheralded level.
Read 6 tweets
2 Dec
With the corrupted Supreme Court flirting with ending Roe V. Wade, it's time to face facts.

The GOP has so thoroughly attacked liberal democracy in order to establish racist, sexist, aristocratic rule that it has shredded the notion of a shared society.

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/the-crisis-o…
The dismantling of liberal democracy and open society has been part of the GOP's playbook for forever. They've pitted us against one another, leveraged our differences, and radicalized their base all to prepare them to accept violence and oppression.

And it's working.
When we talk about this issue, about abortion, about this absolutely vile and repulsive Supreme Court using the law to oppress, we're also talking about the consequences of a years' long operation to systematically takeover politics and the judiciary.

That's where we are.
Read 5 tweets

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