reading something and I'm just. like.
ok so here's the thing.
"is the united states a meritocracy" is the wrong question, though it's usually phrased as "the US isn't a meritocracy"
but like, it is one. That's clear from the results. The reality of what we live in.
The question you need to (philosophically) ask yourself and others is "Merit, measured by what metric?"
and from there the patterns emerge
that's not to say it's not primarily white supremacy and wealth in the end, but it's also broader than that -- you're ranked by how much you're willing to exploit everyone else. That's all success is in the current way of the country, measured on when you look at it, though of course it's measured via abstractions instead of the obvious ways.
The gender divide, ableism, racism and ethnic-group hate are about exploitation, and they're also about creating these constructs that further allow people to lend cover to the exploitation, via infighting between the various categories and the groups of people you tell them to hate, and your majority a the groups of people you tell them to hate.
It's so deep in the roots that people don't even notice it. They'll tell you the US isn't a meritocracy, the whole thing's rigged, etc. But it is. It really, really is. And that's the heart of the problem. It's subconscious even for a lot of the evil people. There's people who fail upward doing it who are completely oblivious to everything. But they go with what worked.
We've industrialized evil by creating what amounts to a conveyor belt of positive reinforcement by rewarding it.
As long as you aren't telling other people about it too much.