That is the real source of my speechlessness in this unreal period: a feeling of near violent rupture between the world of words and the world beyond them. In recent years, left social movements have won huge victories in transforming the way we talk about all kinds of issues—billionaires and oligarchic rule, climate breakdown, white supremacy, prison abolition, gender identity, Palestinian rights, sexual violence—and I have to believe that those changes represent real victories, that they matter. And yet, on almost every front, tangible ground is being lost. Changing the discourse did not prevent the world’s ten richest men from doubling their collective fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion in the first two years of the pandemic; it did not stop police forces from increasing their budgets while teachers have to pay for basic supplies out of pocket; it did not prevent fossil fuel companies from collecting more billions in subsidies and new permits; it did not prevent the Israeli police forces from attacking the funeral of the revered Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh after a bullet that was almost certainly fired by an Israeli soldier took her life.

SEED: The tension between linguistic progress and material regression could anchor an essay on the limits of discourse politics.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 495