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The Resistance: Know Your Enemy
It isn’t who you think it is.
Human beings have a bad habit of favoring the easier option. I learned this as a teacher, political organizer, and parent. I used to tell my students, activists, and children: the easy answer is almost always the wrong one.
This is especially true when thinking about our country’s most challenging issues. Life gets hard, and we naturally look around for someone easy to blame.
That usually leads us in the wrong direction.
A scapegoat then gets blamed for problems they didn’t cause, while the real sources stay safely hidden. It’s a trick as old as civilization: misdirect anger, and nothing has to change.
If we want a better world, or just a better understanding of what’s happening around us, we must get better at spotting scapegoats.
Some examples include…
Issue: Traffic Jams
Scapegoat: Other “idiot” drivers.
Enemy: Your city planners.
Look them up and give them an earful instead of the dude in front of you listening to a Marc Maron podcast. He’s not the one who chose cars over public transit.
The girl next to you who’s putting on her lipstick; she didn’t make poor…
