The Appointment

Every generation decides, without knowing it is deciding, what it will permit.

Not in declarations. Not in the streets, though the streets are where the decision becomes visible. The decision happens earlier, in smaller rooms, when someone with more power than judgment says something plainly untrue and the people around him say nothing. That silence is the appointment. Everything after is administration.

Men have always wanted kings. Not because kings are effective — the record on that is not complicated — but because a king simplifies the question of who is responsible. When the harvest fails, you know where to look. There is something in the human appetite for authority that prefers a legible target to a distributed cause.

Women have always understood this differently. The woman who has managed a household, a family, a career, an aging parent, and the emotional labor of four other people simultaneously has not had the luxury of a single point of accountability. She knows the failure is structural before anyone else does, because she has been absorbing its cost.

This is what the current argument is actually about. Not the spectacle of it. Not the signs or the slogans, though the slogans are not wrong. It is about who has been trained to recognize concentrated power for what it is and who has been trained to find it reassuring.

The people who want a king will tell you they want order. They are not lying. They want the kind of order that does not require them to be responsible for maintaining it. Someone else at the top. Someone else to blame.

The people who don’t have time for kings already know what order actually costs.

— Lia​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​