The Architecture of Complicity
The betrayal of self and everyone else
One man doesn’t betray a nation. A system does. People who want a better world do, in the name of ignorance they aren’t aware will kill everyone.
The Republican Party had every opportunity to stop this. They had impeachment — twice. They had the 25th Amendment. They had the simple option of telling the truth. They chose power instead. Every time. Without exception.
Fox News built the stage. Social media and its evil algorithms of profiteering handed out the tickets. Billionaires learned that rage drives engagement, and engagement drives revenue, and revenue is the only god any of these platforms actually worship. Ask Bezos or Musk or any of the several hundred others.
The courts that should have held the line got stacked. The Congress that should have checked the power rolled over. The institutions that were built to prevent exactly this kind of thing turned out to be made of paper.
And the rest of us? We watched. We complained. We argued about it at Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year's then went back to our lives. The greatest civic failure in modern American history, and most of us treated it like a television show. ‘Reality TV’ is also toxic and life-ending.
Complicity isn’t always active. Sometimes it’s just not looking up from your phone. That’s why I am preparing a life of duplicity and evasion.
What This Costs
I’m not writing this to change your mind. If you’ve read this far and you’re still convinced this is just liberal hysteria, nothing I say will move you. That’s fine. That’s your right. That’s you signing the death warrants of every human being you ever gave as shit about.
What Trump represents — what he has always represented — is the idea that power is its own justification. That the strong take what they want. That empathy is weakness. That cruelty is strength. That the only thing that matters is winning, and winning means someone else has to lose.
That’s not a political philosophy. That’s a pathology. And we handed it the nuclear codes. Look up the dark triad. Read a few scientific studies.
The damage isn’t theoretical. It’s measured in children who’ll never find their parents. In allies who’ll never trust us again and likely will become enemies. In a climate we can’t survive in. In millions of graves that didn’t have to be filled. In a democracy that may not survive the next test because we showed the world it couldn’t survive the last one. We are all better together. We hurt everyone when we hate another.
This is what betrayal looks like. Not a single act. A pattern. A permission structure. A slow, deliberate choice to put one man’s ego above the lives and futures of eight billion people.
And we let it happen.
That’s the part that should keep you up at night. That’s the part I have nightmares about.
Such a solid piece Pen -- a must read for anyone whose eyes aren't closed to reality. I could not agree with you more. Regardless of who wins the elections, the hatred and division just grow.
Your line - "we hurt everyone when we hate another" is why I wrote my recent book - "Morphing into a Better World." It's about taking at least small steps in the right direction.
We are watching a series called "Paradise". Apocalyptic fantasy. But there is a scene where a person who has been previously shallow and somewhat "clueless" begins to explain how EVERY empire has collapsed in the past. All of them. And they usually fall apart from within.
The next few months will determine the schedule for the collapse of the U.S.
One flaming asshole - demented psychopathic corrupt self dealing sundowning old piece of human detritus - has advanced the timeline. And we have let him.
It is not enough for us to march tomorrow. This economy must be shut down and the asshole should be handcuffed.
And isn't it amazing how effectively the asshole has shifted the conversation away from the Russia/Epstein/Trump story? Away from the Files that contain credible accusations of child rape? Is there a place below "mud"?