permission structure

27 Dec 2025 - 30 Dec 2025

@@html: <blockquote class="bluesky-embed" data-bluesky-uri="at://did:plc:bzy5rjjduvvkxno5xe3evl3f/app.bsky.feed.post/3maojxb7t2s2r" data-bluesky-cid="bafyreiez3hez3l4umr2grgrmudoe5542ieh463kyjfutwmooost3a7522y" data-bluesky-embed-color-mode="system"><p lang="en">Honestly I chose the wrong pull quote for the post. The right one is: “by making bigotry explicit, Trump and his closest imitators create a permission structure for people to be their worst selves.”<br><br><a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bzy5rjjduvvkxno5xe3evl3f/post/3maojxb7t2s2r?ref_src=embed">[image or embed]</a></p>— David M. Perry (<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bzy5rjjduvvkxno5xe3evl3f?ref_src=embed">@lollardfish.bsky.social</a>) <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bzy5rjjduvvkxno5xe3evl3f/post/3maojxb7t2s2r?ref_src=embed">December 23, 2025 at 11:59 AM</a></blockquote><script async src="https://embed.bsky.app/static/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script>@@

OK granted it is not a totally empty term. It seems to mean, social arrangements that give a group of people an excuse (or permission) to do something that they were formally blocked from doing, by morality or tradition or whatever. eg, Trumpism is a permission structure for a lot of ugly racism. The racism was already there, but mostly unacceptable to express; the permission structure offered both permission a social milieu (the "structure") in which it could be expressed and developed.

OTOH some on the right blame the left for creating a permission structure of violence, by labeling the right with nasty terms like "fascist"

The good: social rules are malleable, and people change them. The sixties counterculture was basically a giant set of new permission structures. Whole Earth Catalog as an explicit acknowledgement and encouragement of this.

The bad: Trumpism. It's even worse than we think; he has utterly destroyed some barriers, the bad guys now have permission structures to do bad shit. That change is not going to disappear with Trump, either.

Points out (annoyingly but accurately) that we aren't really very free; we don't just do what we want, we do what we want within the bounds of socially-constructured permissions. Even the bold who break these barriers end up creating new permission structures for others and themselves, assuming they want their boldness to have an effect beyond the narrow bounds of private life.