Dispatches Mailbag: The Changing Discourse, Our Unconscious Society, Neo-Nazism, and More
I answer subscriber questions and get into the topics you want to talk about
About a month ago I did another installment of the Dispatches Mailbag and I’ve been getting a slew of questions since then. I love doing these things because in the course of writing these articles and doing these livestreams, there’s always a variety of things I don’t get to or ideas that I’ve been mulling over that need a little attention to tease out. This is another one of those. Readers have been asking about these topics - including the stoppage of SNAP benefits, the damage being done by AI and the fascists who champion it, and the general feeling of what it is to live in this moment - and I wanted to give it another go.
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Anonymous: I’m one of the 40 million plus Americans who relies on SNAP to feed my family. I know I shouldn’t have to say this, but I’m not on benefits because I’m lazy or because I did something “wrong.” It just isn’t possible to make ends meet in this country anymore. I’ve felt a lot of shame around it but I’ve healed and gotten past it. One thing I’ve noticed over the past month or so is that the stigma around SNAP and other programs is beginning to fade away. I find this to be encouraging and it’s one of the things I hold onto as things worsen.
Of course, this isn’t a question, but I wanted to include this message because it is heartening. The reader is correct in saying there’s no reason to feel shame around receiving assistance. And, no, we shouldn’t have to constantly include these statements about people being “lazy” or “doing something wrong” or “making a mistake.” That line of thought has punctuated our culture for a long time, going so far as to dominate a lot of liberal and neoliberal statements about social programs while Democratic politicians have worked to trim the rolls and usher in increasing austerity.
Let’s say it clearly: America’s capitalist system is rigged and has been perpetually made worse to benefit the wealthy, leading to a need for these programs to supplement an increasingly abusive system. Our wealthiest corporations rely on these programs to supplement their low wages and have used it, paradoxically, as a type of corporate welfare. Now, as the fascists continue to plunder our wealth, it isn’t a surprise that they’re also destroying the programs that sought to make the system work. They’re looking to collapse the system, enrich and empower themselves, and choose the winners and losers as a means of persuasion and manipulation.
I’ve also noticed the conversation around SNAP changing. I grew up impoverished and in impoverished circles. Back then, in the 1980’s and 90’s, the working class spent almost as much time, if not more, lamenting the “lazy people” on assistance as the wealthy who created the circumstances. This is an encapsulation of the confused class politics that has held us hostage our entire lives. That is shifting now. The obvious disparity between the wealth and oligarchical classes and the rest of us has caused that shift and the rise of the Far Right, which takes a leftist critique of capitalism and moves the anger from capitalists to vulnerable groups, is an expected reaction to this fact.
What we’re talking about isn’t SNAP. It’s class consciousness. And the rise of class consciousness is both a symptom of historical inequality and increasing capitalist contradictions and also one of the most hopeful things we could ever see. This is why I keep telling people that things are going to get worse before they get better, but I still believe they can get better. Seeing this for what it is - a class war - instead of falling, time and time again, for the manufactured culture war battles that are designed by the wealth class to mystify politics and stave off class consciousness, is the first step in changing things.