What strengthened me, for you was lethal.
At some point we each have to navigate the boundary between informed and overwhelmed; to accept that there is a difference between opinion and judgement.
I tend to err on the side of wanting to know things; I especially tend to want to know what people in or in close proximity to power think, so I can better understand what is happening now and what may happen later. This is both a professional requirement and a personal affect.
I am suspicious of anyone who makes the argument that it is better not to know; I am bemused by anyone who takes the position that all information is equally valuable and immediately and universally scrutable.
So I am reading my way through the 922 pages of the Project 25 polices, in their own words. I am listening to interviews which contain affirmations like “we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
There are no bloodless revolutions.
“No society can smash the social contract and be exempt from the consequences, and the consequences are chaos for everybody in the society.”
— James Baldwin, interview with Julius Lester, May 1984
Simplicity is comforting, but reality demands complication.
Attribution:
What strengthened me, for you was lethal. You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one, Inspiration of hatred with lyrical beauty; Blind force with accomplished shape.— from Dedication by Czeslaw Milosz