Oh yeah?
Hmm.
Yes, that is striking, striking in being so very wrong. (That may be what Carlos Lozada meant; my disdain is for Biden, not him.)
Never before walked away from it? Is he kidding? Does he remember what “we” did to the people who were here first? The genocide, the mass expulsions, the theft, all that? Does he remember slavery?
Of course we’ve walked away from it before. We’ve failed to go anywhere near it at any time, before. We’re not unusual that way but the invasion and expropriation of the Americas are more recent and conspicuous than others, so we have less right to preen ourselves on being always sort of kind of pro-equality. As a country, we were not; that’s not our history. It’s just slush to say otherwise.
Being that they were written with only white people in mind, those words were sarcastic at best.
Well, I don’t know, if Biden thought they were pearls of wisdom other people probably do too.
This is the festering sore at the centre of American society. The American Dream, the way many/most US Americans view themselves is through a lens of equal opportunity and success through enterprise. What is ignored is that much of the success and opportunity of the successful has come at the exploitation and in some cases outright genocide of whole classes of people. If this fact is ever acknowledged by the majority of the population, much of that self image crumbles away like ash in the mouth.
I don’t claim for a moment that the US is alone in this, but I do think the US as a society is especially good at maintaining this blind spot. I suspect the aftermath of the Civil War has much to do with that.
If one parses Biden just right, his statement can be seen as true. America has usually walked towards those ideals- you know, with all deliberate haste. Sauntered, maybe. And perhaps in the past we’ve made only lateral progress sometimes.
Nope, can’t do it. Biden is talking out of his ass.
As someone who grew up poor, I was painfully aware of the limits of the American dream, and it always amazes me how many poor people are willing to suspend disbelief and think they will have opportunities (not most, by a long shot, but more than I can comprehend). If they just scratch that lottery ticket…if they just put in that overtime…if they just get that loan…all sorts of promises, few of which will ever be kept.
I dunno, it’s a useful lie. Trump doesn’t even pretend and we’re knee deep in sewage as a result.
Trump does pretend though – he pretends we’re Great, he pretends we’re the greatest, he pretends we’re the top, he pretends only bad people think there is anything bad in our history, he pretends it’s evil and bad to want to remove statues of pro-slavery generals from public spaces. He pretends a lot of shit.
I’ve heard it said that one of the reasons Republicans are able to get away with huge tax cuts for the wealthy is that so many un-wealthy people don’t want their millions taxed once they’ve (somehow) struck it rich.