Meandering Muse

Artificial intelligence is a bit of a reverse Robin Hood situation.

It steals from us, the relative-to-a-billionaire poor, in order to give to the rich. It steals water, it steals jobs, it steals people’s likenesses, it steals art, music, literature, journalism, research from people for the purposes of making a ton of money for already-rich billionaires, and also enhances their finances by making it so they don’t have to pay human beings to work in order to make their money.

Well, some folks are starting to think that may not be the most fair arrangement in the world.

The Flamenco Dancer

That is exactly how prejudice evolves itself into something systemic. By changing the rules of who is allowed to be seen clearly. And this is where it becomes personal.

Most people reading this do not think of themselves as antisemitic. They would never use a slur. They would never straight out and openly deny someone’s humanity. But that is not how this shows up anymore. It shows up in smaller decisions we make as progressive and left leaders these days. In what we excuse. In what we scroll past. In which deaths feel complicated instead of tragic and unacceptable. In whether we instinctively see a person or a position when we hear the word “Zionist” or “anti-Zionist.”

You can oppose Israeli policy. You can reject Zionism. You can defend it. None of those positions require you to sort Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims into categories that determine whether they deserve empathy. If your framework depends on deciding which Jews are acceptable and which are not, or which civilians matter and which do not, then the issue is not that your politics are controversial. It is that your reasoning has already crossed a line that civil rights traditions were meant to prevent. The civil rights standard was never agreement. It was consistency. No collective guilt. No dehumanization. No conditional empathy.

We already know how to apply these principles. We are watching what happens when we fail to. The only question is whether we are willing to apply them when it challenges our own assumptions. Because if we cannot, then all we have really done is learn how to recognize injustice selectively.

And selective justice is not justice for all."

"Why, you chivalric fool -- as though the way one fell down mattered." -The Lion in Winter, Act II, Scene 6

Pedestrian traffic lights

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