Their crude attempts to stamp out any dissent or intraparty discord negates a stark truth: liberal America’s pattern of electing corporate Democrats – rather than progressives – has been a big part of the problem that led to Trump and that continues to make America’s economic and political system a neo-feudal dystopia.
A thing about alleged serial fabulist and N.Y. State Senate candidate Julia Salazar and the bizarre cult of suffering that, the author contends, leads to such fabulism.
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When I applied to college in 2001, my mother suggested we look into my father’s Native American heritage — a vague family tale — to see if I could register for a tribe to gain an advantage. I didn’t. The family legend was so distant the very idea felt embarrassing. But, in my early twenties, I did let the people around me know that I went to a public high school, that I came from a middle-class family, that my mother dropped out of school, and that I helped pay for my college education. My “public school,” though, was a Magnet consistently ranked among the top 10 public schools in the country. My father was a college professor who made double the US median income. My mother finished her BA in night school. And by “helped,” I meant I made $200 a week to defray my parents’ expenses for my meals.
Maybe this is part of why Julia Salazar’s much-reported embellishments of her own background didn’t torpedo her campaign for State Senate in Brooklyn. Even articles reporting on her win last night led with the controversy over how she’s described her backstory: The New York Post condemned her personal story — a big part of her appeal — as “wildly exaggerated.” Salazar has said she immigrated from Colombia when she was, in fact, born in Florida; asserted a “working-class background” that her brother strongly denied, offering photos of the family’s four-bedroom riverfront house; said she went to work at 14 to “make ends meet,” which her mother contradicted; implied her mother hadn’t gone to college when her mother got a degree when Salazar was 8 years old; asserted a very confused timeline about her conversion to Judaism; and claimed Jewish ancestry nobody could verify.
There’s no interpretation of Salazar’s claims about her life that can escape the conclusion that she presented a selectively edited and lightly fabricated account of her personal history, and Rolling Stone seemed baffled to have to report last night that “the constituents of District 18 were apparently untroubled” by that. But I wonder if the supporters — certainly the young, mostly white, recent college graduates who flooded her victory party — didn’t recognize, at least subconsciously, that this kind of thing is just way more common than we’d like to admit.
I’m older now, and I don’t flog my “middle-class” cred so much anymore. Yet let’s be real here: We have a culture that lionizes survivors of challenging childhoods, that gobbles up memoirs of poverty and suffering, and that makes having endured harrowing circumstances seem almost necessary to speak with any moral authority. I suspect so many of us have been embellishers, especially when we were young, in the stakes to abjure privilege, to claim uniqueness in the form of obstacles, to show our guts and thorny individualism in rising above ordinary roots.
I think there’s a fair bit of credibility to the author’s thesis, and the entire time I was reading it, I kept thinking of this superb quote from “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, which I’m using as my signature on another board (I’d be using it here, too, if there were enough characters):
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The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
Asking Hindu-Americans if they would rather vote for a donkey or an elephant by comparing Ganesha, a religious figure, to a political party is highly inappropriate.
Think out of the box? Politicians only think in the boxes their donors specify.
And I see someone commented on the giving and sharing:
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They’re not known for their cultural sensitivity. Honestly though, my favorite part is the giving and sharing, as if republicans weren’t the party of “I’ve got mine and fuck you..”
I doubt this pop-historical piece stands up to much detailed scrutiny, but it serves to remind us that Trump is not the author of America's misfortunes. The entire GOP and its 1% backers are.
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... it's just an idea
Last edited by mickthinks; 10-06-2018 at 01:35 PM.
I think it's becoming clear that establishment politicians have no more far less credibility or integrity than pop stars. More voter registration seems good.
I mean, I'm not one of those "both parties are the same" asshats, but both Democratic politicians and voters could learn something from Swift's statement, I feel. She didn't mince words in the slightest.
Of course, to anyone paying attention, this wasn't the remotest bit of a surprise. She'd already donated extensively to LGBT charities and RAINN, supported Kesha in her fight against the horrible abuse she'd been subjected to, and took a man who'd groped her to court. There was literally zero chance she was ever voting Republican. I'm glad she's explicitly spoken out now, though.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
I think it's becoming clear that establishment politicians have no more far less credibility or integrity than pop stars. More voter registration seems good.
At one of the first doors I knocked, I met young man named Jordan. He said, "Are you really going around to make sure everyone in my neighborhood can vote?" I said yes. He grabbed his coat and said, "I'm coming with you to help." This was his first, but not last, canvass. pic.twitter.com/C765b8uHfI
More shameless racism & patriarchy: •Georgia’s Governor has purged 500K voters—mostly Black—from the voter roles •Why? B/c Georgia is set to elect @staceyabrams as America’s first Black woman Governor •If you cant win w/o cheating—drop out of the racepic.twitter.com/CII5MlAf8H