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.
What Did the "Decade of Protest" Accomplish—And Why Did it Fail? (w/ Vincent Bevins)
Current Affairs Presents: "American Radio"
Can The Concept of "Philanthropy" Be Saved? (w/ Amy Schiller)
Why The Luddites Were Right (w/ Brian Merchant)
Why Students Are Rising Up for Gaza
The Meaning of "Security" (w/ Astra Taylor)
A Philosopher Explains Why It's Rational To Be Angry (w/ Myisha Cherry)
How is Capitalism Like a Bad Relationship? (w/ Malaika Jabali)
How to Spot Corporate Bullshit (w/ Nick Hanauer)
Your Money or Your Life: A Physician on the Miseries of Medical Debt
How Four Billionaires Are Creating A Horrible Future For All of Us (w/ Jonathan Taplin)
The Rise and Fall of Crypto Lunacy (w/ Zeke Faux)
How The Occupation Shapes Everything (w/ Nathan Thrall)
The Current Israel-Palestine Crisis Was Entirely Avoidable (w/ Jerome Slater)
Why Wars Happen (w/ Michael Mann)
A McKinsey Whistleblower on Life Inside The Secretive Consulting Firm
How Big Pharma Makes a Killing From Letting People Die (w/ Nick Dearden)
What Makes For a "Strong Town"? (w/ Allison Lirish Dean)
How White Supremacist Ideology Made Its Way Into Music Theory (w/ Philip Ewell)
Gary Younge's 30-Year Panorama of the African Diaspora
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