#bootstrap theory

[odinsblog]

“Hard working, self made man” my Black ass. But we already knew this.

👉🏿 https://futurism.com/elon-musk-dad-emerald-mine

[sashafoxx]

Unpopular Opinion: There’s nothing wrong with “Bootstrap Theory” when it’s properly applied. And guess what? 99% of ppl are doing it wrong.

[jyasjwrose]

[woke-the-gator]

Ronald Reagan is now the Liberal role model

Probably because they have the same issues as everyone else: no food, no access to clean water, bad schools, environmental degradation and related health problems

[geekorner]

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei Episode 5 - The Weekly Strawmen Deconstruction

Mini-editorial, covering some points, one at a time. No episodic notes, but a bunch of editorial notes.

Full Title: The Weekly Strawmen Takedown and Thematic Dismantling of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei Or: Can’t the action come already?

Being Tatsuya is Suffering:

“My goal is energy generation, so I’m fine with being called out as inferior, which I am!” – Oh, what bullshit. No one in the world…

[odinsblog]

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as [race], education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Never mind structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job it’s because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you’re feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it’s your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.

(continue reading)

[odinsblog]

Paul Ryan once argued that “liberal government programs give people comfort, but not dignity.”

And to justify cutting Welfare and defunding food programs, Republicans disingenuously equate having the basic necessities needed to live — like food — to dignity. Following that logic, are we to believe that wealthy people somehow have more dignity than poor people, because they have more access to more resources like housing, food and clean drinking water? Do the mostly white residents of Bismarck North Dakota have more dignity than the Native Americans at Standing Rock? Do Donald Trump’s children somehow have more “dignity” than does Little Miss Flint? Because Trump’s children don’t need to depend on free lunch programs?

Wealth ≠ dignity.

Access to resources ≠ dignity.

People living in or born into poverty do not have less dignity. They have less wealth and less political power.

Providing free school lunches to children living in poverty doesn’t “give kids an empty soul” it simply feeds hungry children. Feeding a hungry child is not “giving them undue comfort” or making them lazy, it’s simply feeding a hungry child. How did feeding hungry children become a controversial act for “Christian” conservatives?

Intentionally starving children to teach them the “dignity” of hunger is inhumane.

Stop stigmatizing poverty. Stop equating poverty with a lack of dignity. Stop reinforcing the notion that poor people have no dignity just because they’re poor. There is no nobility in starvation, and there is no benevolence in allowing children or anyone else to go hungry when you possess the power to prevent it.

[odinsblog]

At the very same time that America refused to give the Negro any land, through an act of Congress, our government was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the mid-West, which meant it was willing to under girth its peasants from Europe with an economic floor. But not only did they give the land, they built land grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm. Not only that, they provided country agents to further their expertise in farming. Not only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farm. Not only that, today many of these people are getting millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm. And they are the very people telling the Black man that he outta lift himself up by his own bootstraps. And this is what we are faced with. Now this is the reality.

MLK: We are coming to get our check.

Government assistance suddenly became a bad thing...when Black people seek to use it. The white middle class was built on FHA loans that excluded people of color. Bootstrap theory, a cornerstone of conservative policy, is a racist, hypocritical trope.

[odinsblog]

AMERICA: hires fewer black people for jobs, and once hired pays black people less than white people, gives black people less job promotions, charges black people more for housing, rent and cars, charges black people higher loan interest rates, fires black employees first, hires black people last

AMERICA: I just don’t understand why black people can’t seem to get their act together

[odinsblog]

Imagine playing Monopoly with four people. One person is given all the property except Atlantic Ave. They are also given 95% of the bank. Everyone else is expected to succeed with what’s left but of course lose immediately. Because they’re “lazy”...😒

[odinsblog]

Number one, no other racial group has been a slave on American soil. It’s nice to say other people were down and they got up. They were not slaves on American soil. The other thing is that the Negro has had high visibility, and because of the prejudices existing in this country his color has been against him. It’s been against him and they’ve used this to keep him from moving up.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. answers the question: Other racial groups and immigrants have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, what’s holding back Black people in America?