Okay so there’s a sentiment going around that learning about the things you’re against is wrong. Don’t learn about business—corporations are evil. Ignore social issues—they’re just for losers who can’t make it on their own. But here’s the thing about that: if you don’t know how something is put together, then you can’t take it apart without causing damage.

When a building is taken down, it’s taken down by incredibly controlled explosions. It’s almost more an art than a science and it requires a deep understanding of physics, architecture, and that specific building as well as the surrounding area. Sure, you could throw a bunch of dynamite in the thing and set it off and take the building down, but which way will it fall? Will it hit another building? Will debris hit people below? These are things that you can’t know unless you understand what it is you’re trying to dismantle. And this applies to more than just taking down buildings: you cannot dismantle systems of oppression without understanding how they work—no matter what that system is. Not doing so can lead to many unintended consequences.

DOGE: Putting This on Blast

These days, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is probably the best example we’ve got of how this can go wrong. A coalition of spoon-in-mouth, rode on the coattails of generational wealth and their parents’ own success are running around the government trying to dismantle systems they probably didn’t hear about until that civics class they slept through at whatever Ivy league school their parents bought their way in to. And it’s just a mess. They’re running around firing people, removing funding from systems, and just generally breaking shit because none of them know how any of it works.

They have a little bit of experience running businesses (maybe) and the government is, fundamentally, not a business. Government programs are not made to be run for profit, they’re made to better the country. They don’t seem to understand this because they don’t seem to understand why a system that doesn’t profit would be beneficial, so they try and just kill it without trying to understand it, and it ends up hurting a lot of people.

Other Manifestations

Business on the Left

There are a lot of times people call for things on the left that just…don’t make sense, a lot of them having to do with business and finance. There are a lot of times where people fail to understand that net worth is not the same thing as “amount of money they can spend” and that can cause a lot of problems too. You can’t just liquidate Elon Musk’s assets that would wreak havoc on the market at large with a selloff of stock that large.

If you think “well I don’t invest so it doesn’t matter” then you’re just kinda wrong. We all know that there is a major focus on the stock market in a lot of things. It can affect interest rates, it can affect loans, it can affect retirement accounts, it can affect insurance, it could even take down universities. There’s a lot of crap that goes into it, but you have to understand the system to be able to see things like that.

In the Media

So here’s an example of how to do this right: Grand Admiral Thrawn from Star Wars. This man was one of the most skilled leaders in the Empire and was well known for being able to take down even the most resistant of systems. The way he was able to do this was that he took the time to understand the people he was trying to overthrow. He learned about the culture of the planets he was taking down, and it gave him an edge. Because he knew what he was dealing with he was able to find exploits and take them down. DOGE shows us what happens when you don’t do your homework.

Applying it to Real Life

All I have to say is this: Know thy enemy. Taking the time to understand where people are coming from isn’t you validating their ideas, it’s just giving you a better understanding of what you need to overcome to dismantle these systems. In order to stop gun violence, you need to understand why people want access to guns. In order to stop attacks on freedom of choice, you need to understand why people think it’s murder. There’s a logic to it, most people aren’t clinically insane. They have at least some sort of reason for believing the way they do. It could be a dumb reason, sure, but it’s a reason, and if you don’t understand what that reason is and why, then you’re going to have a much harder time of changing those beliefs and dismantling those systems.

Wrap Up

If you’ve got any thoughts feel free to reach out on Bluesky or Mastodon.