{"id":69629,"date":"2025-01-22T17:37:55","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T22:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=69629"},"modified":"2025-01-22T17:37:55","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T22:37:55","slug":"complaint-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2025\/01\/22\/complaint-department\/","title":{"rendered":"Complaint department"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

First, the big news here: January 30 \u2014 one week from tomorrow. That\u2019s our new surgery day.<\/p>\n

\"\"I don\u2019t know if the four days of phone calls from my daughters and I made any difference, but the newfound urgency from Penn Medicine\u00a0 is a huge change. The procedure my wife has needed for more than three years now is categorized by The Health Care System, Inc. as \u201celective\u201d surgery, so every time it\u2019s been canceled she\u2019s been sent back to the back of the line, with everything intolerably pushed back three or four or six more months.<\/p>\n

The as-soon-as-possible rescheduling here shows that they\u2019re finally<\/em> understanding that every day of delay puts her health \u2014 and life \u2014 at greater risk, and forces her to endure severe\u00a0 pain that is not necessary.<\/p>\n

I like to think my many phone calls helped them understand this, but who knows? The Health Care System, Inc. is opaque and inscrutable, far beyond the powerless reach of patients and other mere mortals. Maybe those phone calls made all the difference. Maybe they meant nothing at all. Either way, it was what we could do, so we did it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s sometimes how it works. When something is the only thing left that you can do, you do it \u2014 not because you know it will \u201cwork,\u201d or because you\u2019re sure it will change everything, or anything, but because it is the only thing left that you can do.<\/p>\n

A lot of \u2014 waves hands generally at everything<\/em> \u2014 our context right now is similar to this. We seem powerless. We are literally out of power, with every branch of the government and the oligarchy in the hands of MAGA majorities. They are in control of the White House, and of the House, and the Senate, and the Supreme Court. And whatever is not in their political control seems to be in their financial control, in the hands of the billionaires whose incomprehensible money power puts them beyond the reach of both the law and market forces.<\/p>\n

We are not in control. They are. They are in control of \u2014 and therefore responsible<\/em> for \u2014 everything.<\/p>\n

So what we can do now is make them own that. Every outcome, every unfairness is their responsibility. Every problem is their responsibility. Every problem is their<\/em> problem.<\/p>\n

And, as you may have noticed, there are a lot<\/em> of problems. Part of our job, for now, is pointing that out. Repeatedly and endlessly. They\u2019re in charge. They own this. So what are they going to do about it?<\/p>\n

This is not something they\u2019re equipped to handle. MAGA is the party of grievance, not of solutions or of competence. And their focus has been almost entirely on imagined<\/em> grievances \u2014 \u201cthey\u2019re eating the dogs! they\u2019re eating the cats!\u201d etc. That only serves them when: A) they\u2019re out of power and not seen as responsible for addressing grievances, and B) they\u2019re able to keep the focus entirely on those imaginary grievances and not on any of the myriad legitimate grievances that everyone has because (again waves hands, generally, at everything)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So we need to keep the focus on legitimate problems. That\u2019s the argument made here by Jonathan Last<\/a> and here by Jason Linkins<\/a> and here by Tom Sullivan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Linkins writes:<\/p>\n

Liberals need to get into the business of identifying the problems that real Americans face (which honestly, is something they could stand to relearn how to do) and more forcefully blame Trump for those problems\u2019 continued existence. They need to raise a hue and cry over everything under the sun that\u2019s broken, dysfunctional, or trending in the wrong direction; pile line items on Trump\u2019s to-do list, wake him up early and keep him up late. Every day, get in front of cable news cameras and reporters\u2019 notepads with a new problem for Trump to solve and fresh complaints about the work not done.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He\u2019s addressing Professional Democrats there, but the same thing applies, I think, to those of us whose lives do not involve the possibility of \u201cgetting in front of cable news cameras.\u201d Complain about real problems. All of them. Remind everyone that things don\u2019t have to be broken, and burdensome, and enshittified, top-to-bottom, every day. Talk about this to everyone we know and everyone we meet.<\/p>\n

Because we are not Professional Democrats, it doesn\u2019t require any special outreach for us \u201cto get into the business of identifying the problems that real Americans face.\u201d We are, in fact, those real Americans and we do, in fact, face those problems ourselves, day in and day out.<\/p>\n

Unlike my phone calls to Penn Medicine, the hope of this complaining is not that Trump will be persuaded to tackle this massive \u201cto-do list\u201d of actual problems. I have no expectation that he or the MAGA majorities in Congress has the desire or the capacity to face real problems in any real way. This is not the parable of the persistent widow and the unjust judge because these folks will never listen to widows and orphans and aliens and the poor.<\/p>\n

But by listing and repeating these complaints \u2014 by holding those now responsible for everything responsible for real problems and not just for their imaginary ones \u2014 we can remind the majority of our neighbors that focusing on those real problems matters more to them than fantasizing about all the distracting imaginary ones. Nobody actually struggling to pay student loans, or to afford housing, or wrestling with the inhumanity of The Health Care System, Inc., is going to be able to convince themselves that their lives would be made easier if the United States invaded Greenland.<\/p>\n

The point of this complaining, in other words, is to persuade others to turn against the party of imaginary grievances and to focus, instead, on real problems and the real solutions that could improve their lives and the lives of their neighbors. This approach has the added benefit of creating an agenda for those Professional Democrats, should they ever regain power, and the force of a mandate to hold them accountable for addressing those real problems when it again becomes their job to do so.<\/p>\n

Anyway, January 30. Next Thursday. We live in hope.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you have real problems and all you can do is complain about them, then complain about them. A lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":69046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-class-warfare"],"yoast_head":"\nComplaint department<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When you have real problems and all you can do is complain about them, then complain about them. 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