9. FFS. Purity tests suck so hard.

So, of all the purity tests, the one grating on my last era nerve today is the CAPITALISM EVIL one.

The one that equates white supremacy with capitalism and equates profit with capital and equates commerce with profit.

Conflates, I mean. Even more than making false equivalencies, it’s the “LUMP IT ALL TOGETHAH, IT BAAAAAAD,” discourse that really grabs me by the temper and shakes hard.

Right now it’s “Don’t let the corporates rainbow-wash their reputations clean, they all hate the gays, all they ever do is betray and exploit us,” which, okay, yes fine so far, but when the conversation always swiftly segues into AlL cAPiTaliSM MUsT dIE, that’s where I ground out.

Because, see, I have studied too many -ories and -ologies to believe in the Holy Omnipotent Power Of Mutual Aid as a societal model. Because it’s been tried. Soooooooo many times, it’s been tried.

It fails every time, not due to malign outside influences or evil villains. Communal utopias have failed throughout history (documented in North America from the 1660’s to the 1960’s at the very least) for the same reason very time: people are complex and flawed, and cascade failures are more common the more complex a system becomes.