“An absence of victory doesn’t always signify the presence of defeat, and powerlessness isn’t always indicative of abject weakness. Sometimes the rules of engagement are simply rigged for the victors, even when their strategists appear to be coloring within the lines of propriety.
“And sometimes mass acquiescence to the status quo is the very thing that perverts justice to serve platters of success to conquerors starved of failure. The hyperactive inaction of tolerance unwittingly enthrones intolerance, and its subjugation perpetuates a dynasty of corruption. And the losers are so accustomed to settling for subsistence that they’re losing too quietly to make a difference.
“Blame can infest anyone when enough filth is present to nourish guilt-fed parasites though – all the more so when these are transmitted by a social conviction in a court of opinion. So, ascribing it is only purposeful when done with the intent not merely to castigate but also to rehabilitate. For me, the intent behind identifying the load-bearing losers (myself included) who are propping up the palaces of winners is to recalibrate our attention and reveal the misdirection.
“We’re not as crushed as you might think we are; you’re just very good at believing it because no one ever says differently. Yes, we might be destined to lose certain fights because we’re not in the caste where all the winners are, and some things you really do just have to accept. But we can still pluck spores of success from the air over our vast fields of failure if the winners lose something too.
“We can still make a difference – even if only among ourselves – if we know that we declared our value to them by honoring ourselves with a spirited struggle instead of a cowering forfeit. They might come out ahead, but they won’t have done it effortlessly. They might emerge proudly, but they won’t have done it without knowing the pain, anger, fear, sorrow, shame, doubt and despair that we did too. And they might still be drunk off of their seeming immortality, but somewhere inside themselves they’ll feel less godlike knowing we weren’t too afraid of them to lose loudly.”
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The speech “Lose Loudly” is from a screenplay I’m writing. Unpublished work. All rights reserved.
Kat Hearons 