Only general statements can indict a whole system rather than its local instances

Evidence

Such translation changes significantly the meaning of the actual proposition. The untranslated statement formulates a general condition in its generality (“wages are too low”). It goes beyond the particular condition in the particular factory and beyond the worker’s particular situation. In this generality, and only in this generality, the statement expresses a sweeping indictment which takes the particular case as a manifestation of a universal state of affairs, and insinuates that the latter might not be changed by the improvement of the former. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 437

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The counterintuitive payoff: vagueness is politically true, concreteness is politically false. Precision of reference is what defuses systemic critique — turning each complaint into a fixable instance is how the whole is protected. This inverts the ordinary valorization of specificity in good writing and analysis.
• XREF: Direcly relevant to the reader’s attention/consumption bridge: the same operation happens when systemic critique of digital platforms is defused by token fixes to individual features.