The more people judge and manipulate the powerless, the less they study, anticipate, and thwart the powerful.
I will say it again.
The more we condemn one another, the less we resist actual evil.
We once believed that power was found in most of life's banal contexts: at home, at work, in the church or classroom. But reality has changed. Tech and money have greatly expanded power's scale and consequence.1 Power, real power, is now a new species.
Exercising power today is spending billions of dollars to shape the world,2 ordering your army to destroy an entire culture,3 and flouting laws.4
Exercising power today is not posting for a few thousand people on social media.5 Nor is it renting out a few mortgaged apartments.6 Real power mints realities.7
It is not hyperbole to say that every time a poor person condemns another poor person for saying the wrong thing or thinking the wrong thought, a billionaire gets richer.8
We are limited creatures in a culture made to exhaust then tranquilize us. We, the poor and powerless, are fodder for the designs and aims of a few thousand people who wake up in very nice rooms. This is all obvious.
It takes time, energy, definition, coordination, and good luck to improve our lot. Since powerful people believe our self-improvement hurts or supersedes theirs, they sabotage our work. This is obvious, too.
But these obvious facts and relationships—the essential qualities of our global civilization—are very effectively obscured by the addiction-fueling, increasingly reactionary structure of the internet.9
We've got to stop this shit.
We have to return to Earth.
We must focus.
Powerful people have eliminated their weaknesses over time. Their investments are diversified. Their supply chains are robust. Their bets are hedged. They move often and call most nations their protectors. They put guns and gates between them and everything.
Worse still, the means and groups by which powerful people were once thwarted—strikes and unions; killings and militias; indictment and newspapers; good laws and mass movements—now seem outdated. In 2025, most probably are.
Shit looks grim.
But if we still want to improve our situation, what can we do?
We could run the old playbook (march, post, vote) then mourn our inevitable failures. And bless those doing this work; it is still better to grab a bucket than watch the world burn.
But we need to spend more time thinking, with urgency and care, about how best to understand, outwit, and make obsolete the losers who are remaking the world in their sad scared image.10
We need new trouble—and fast.
But new trouble can be simple.
Rather than wrest what we need from our empire's coffers, we could instead focus on doing all we can to outmode their cruel systems. Particularly when it comes to the real shit: shelter, food, water, medicine.
Imagine with me three hypothetical situations—each comprising a thought experiment of the purely speculative variety.
Intrepid researchers find and distribute drug formulations. Drugs are produced in decentralized community-run laboratories then distributed free (or at cost) to those in need.
Families learn and teach others in their neighborhoods how to help people in crises, and then that happens without anyone calling the cops.
The phrase "illicit DIY well" produces many search results, including links to instruction manuals and considerations both practical and legal.
Food for thought!
If we were to live in an age of dual power,11 we might have less free time. "Self-actualization", at least as it has recently been defined (as the process and outcome of following one's interests), might happen less often. But the habit of taking care of yourself and others greatly helps you believe in the goodness and meaning of your life and work. (Another obvious statement whose truth the internet obscures.) And, in an era in which this caretaking was much more widely practiced, many hands would make light work.
Building what we know we need seems better than targeting vindictive men with banks and armies at their hips. Luckily, it also sounds more fun.
This is yet another invitation to log off12 and organize. But keep it simple: spend an afternoon starting a patchwork community garden; scrape together a mutual aid fund for the elders on your block; help a friend escape a shitty relationship; stop using billionaire-aggrandizing websites;13 dream with others in public.
Small good works stand as proof that the future can be interesting, honest, and ours.
See: hydrogen bombs and billionaires.
See: Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and his 2024 Presidential election expenditures.
This historian has been patiently and rigorously documenting the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians.
Donald Trump is one of many American Presidents who have broken international and domestic laws.
Leftists shouldn’t dance around the fact that people weaponize social media to materially hurt others. Communication—shouting in the forum; spreading rumors among the patricians; muckraking—has always been an effective means to many ends, good or bad. One can hope that powerful people are targeted more often than not.
Regardless of its origin, this sentiment, motivated by an incredibly evil relationship to the world, is becoming truer by the day.
If we came to our senses, these companies would be earning negative millions of dollars.
See the Moskowitz essay above.
This is an excellent primer from the Black Socialists in America.