Current Affairs22 Nov 2023

Banishing the "Bootstraps" Mythology from American Life (w/ Alissa Quart)

Alissa Quart is the executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and the author of the new book Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream. Her book looks at the cruelty of the myths of being "self-made" or "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps."

In the first part of her book, Quart examines the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Horatio Alger, Ayn Rand, and Laura Ingalls Wilder (one of Quart's chapters is called "Little House of Propaganda") to show how radically our images of what it takes to succeed depart from the lived reality. She exposes the constraints that keep people from achieving a decent standard of living, and shows how "dependency" isn't a bad thing—in fact, we're all interdependent by our nature. Quart's book shows how people help each other through mutual aid and presents an inspiring alternative to the existing vision of the "American dream."

"As much as individualism dominates, millions in this country have also pushed against the singular and toward its opposite, coming together in cooperatives, collectives, and mutual aid societies...While the fairy tale of solo success fails many Americans, there are alternative models that can take that fiction's place, ones rooted in the tenet of interdependence and working together to life one another up. We might also accept our dependence, permitting an acknowledging societal aid and help from other structures of support." — Alissa Quart

More on MLK's speech about car commercials can be read at Vox (note the mention of Current Affairs in the article.) Dolly Parton's horrible Squarespace ad is here. The book about "meritocracy" is The Rise of the Meritocracy by Michael Young.

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Episoder(600)

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AIPAC Knows Its Money Is Toxic (w/ Track AIPAC)

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Track AIPAC is an advocacy and watchdog project that tracks AIPAC and other pro-Israel political sp...

27 Aug 31min

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25 Aug 19min

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🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Eli Clifton is an investigative journalist and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible S...

21 Aug 36min

The “Silent Genocide” in Cuba (w/ Abby Martin)

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Abby Martin is a journalist, filmmaker, and creator of The Empire Files. She joins Current Affairs ...

20 Aug 53min

Socialist Defends Medicare for All on Fox News

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18 Aug 4min

Send Ben Shapiro to Iran

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Why should other people’s children be the ones who die in the wars he promotes? 🌹 Full article by ...

13 Aug 13min

Graham Platner and the Left’s Misogyny Problem (w/ Yasmin Nair)

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Yasmin Nair is a writer, activist, and longtime contributor to Current Affairs. In this conversatio...

11 Aug 1h 17min