Where the Axe Is Buried

by Ray Nayler

Some oppressions are easy to see. It is easy to identify the malevolent dictator clinging to power for decades, bleeding his country of its resources, killing and imprisoning anyone who stands in his way, maintaining as much personal power as he can. He always wears a dollar-store mask of religion or patriotism, but nothing about him is really hidden. The question is not who he is—it is how to dislodge him. Other oppressions are more subtle, as countries succumb to increasing limits on personal choices and watch the value of their citizenship eroded by invasive algorithms, decreasing access to basic services, and by a raft of bland technocratic pseudo-efficiencies that habituate the population to massive income disparities, political gridlock, and a bleaker, more precarious, more limited future in which the “gig economy” is just another name for piecework, and economic survival demands monetizing every element of one’s life and identity.