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đŸȘ” The Threshold

Officials' dismissive responses convert residents' fear into sustained oppositional anger.

Properties2
tagsja-picks, causal_relationships, singleton, xref, category/causal-relationships
aliases@cole_ground_2001, loc. 482, @adorno_culture_1991, loc. 285

3 min read

Officials’ dismissive responses convert residents’ fear into sustained oppositional anger.

Evidence

Part of this radicalization comes from the fact that the struggle has made many participants skeptical of their government. For some, the process was slow and triggered by small events—noticing a lie by a government ofïŹcial, for example. Eduardo Montoya ïŹrst realized that government ofïŹcials were lying to the people of Buttonwillow when, in a meeting of the LAC, a State environmental ofïŹcial claimed to have never heard of a notorious toxic waste dump at Casmalia in nearby Santa Barbara County that had been closed down by the State because it was leaking and causing serious health consequences to the community. “It was impossible for a high-ranking EPA ofïŹcial not to know where Casmalia was,” says Montoya. This realization, compounded by other, similar events, made Montoya a skeptic. “More than anything, I was disillusioned. Because I really believed that the United States government was different than the Mexican government,” says Montoya. “The only difference is that, in Mexico they do what they do outside of the law. And in the U.S. they want to make the laws legitimate what they do. In other words, they want to make things appear legal.” — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 482 (#expands, via linked claim)

Repressive intolerance toward a thought not immediately accompanied by instructions for action is founded in fear. Unmanipulated thought and the position that allows nothing to be deduced from this thought must be feared because that which cannot be admitted is perfectly clear: this thought is right. An aged bourgeois mechanism with which the men of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century were very familiar displays itself anew but unchanged: suffering caused by a negative condition - in this case by obstructed reality - turns into anger toward the person who expresses it. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 285 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Plain responsiveness to residents’ questions might have preempted the entire opposition movement.; Noticing official lies radicalized EJ activists into government skepticism; Perceived official lies radicalized residents into distrusting their government. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental
, 482 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

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