An efficient bureaucracy works to distract, intimidate, persecute, partially by turning the ‘poor and oppressed’ against each other.

How do we just stand by and let this happen? Why do we play so readily into the hands of power?

We each choose a set of rules to follow, often staking our identity to those rules and thus resistant to change, and we look down upon those who have chosen a different set of rules. All the while, the rich and powerful do what they will, most often under the cover of an efficient bureaucracy. The majority of our majority – the poor and the oppressed – pretend to be a part of the elite by denying our majority. We are taught to set ourselves apart and we are taught to follow arbitrary rules and we are taught to believe the layer we occupy is primary. This enforced stratification is a house of mirrors. This enforced stratification maintains status quo. This enforced stratification is imaginary. The reality for all intents and purposes, like it or not, is that the layer we occupy is completely interchangeable with every other layer in our majority. And again, while we expend all our time and energy jockeying for make-believe position, the rich and powerful continue to do what they will.

This powerful faction says, “do this and all your problems will be solved.” That powerfully faction says, “do that and all your problems will be solved.” And when problems are not solved, the layers of the majority who did this blame those who did that and the layers of the majority who did that blame those who did this and the powerful factions congratulate each other and pat themselves on the back and continue to do what they will. And we look at each other, not recognizing ourselves, throw our hands in the air, and continue to look at each other.

If, as a whole, we could look outward, as the majority what might we do? Instead, as we are, divided into brittle layers, we look inward and ask what can we do?

What can we do?

An individual is understandably stymied by this question. And a single brittle layer instinctively feels they cannot move past the local animosity to look outward toward the actual problem. To disengage from even a single battle front in order to seek and find and breach the walls of a seemingly invincible fortress far-far-away just doesn’t make sense knowing once you retreat from your position it will be overrun. And though in the grand scheme that battlefront defeat may mean little, at least it is immediate – here and now. And again, their fortress is invincible. So we decide it is better to latch on to a chosen piece of rhetoric fired from a rampart of the fortress and continue to urgently attack the opposing brittle layer, and the rich and powerful continue to do what they will.

Though our immediate enemy is us, and though I make a case that our actual enemy is the rich and powerful, we could depersonalize further by recognizing that the True enemy is the system. And if the majority – the poor and the oppressed – were somehow persuaded to deny and let go their vested interest in the here and now, and if the majority of the majority were somehow persuaded to deny and let go their vested interest in the rich and powerful, and if the rich and powerful were then somehow more easily persuaded to deny and let go their vested interest in their bureaucratic system, then the greater good would shift and grow accordingly.

Justification can easily be found in power and in bureaucracy.

Justification is not Justice.

As long as the rich and powerful continue to control the system, the bureaucracy, the narrative, they will continue to do what they will.

Justification is oppression.