Gnome Chompsky talks a lot of shit about my first love, television, and my lifestyle, Consumerism, but overall, he is on PT. And even the shit he talks, I will admit is true, but because it conflicts with my current lifestyle, I choose to ignore it.
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Because you can tell people to fear and despise the poor and the oppressed, instead of pointing to an unfair system as the root of wealth disparity. Then the argument becomes one of economic and hegemonic inequality instead of one of race, character, legal status, and class.
The system will not support you. Even if you support you, most of you will not do well enough to rise in the system. If you do well, well, you're a weird one, an anomaly, a statistical improbability.
Understand the power structures of gender, politics, race, and, the greatest indicator of future success and single biggest predictive element in your life, class, and you too can be depressed and hopeless about your future and your capacity to change it.
Question and test everything. How else does one learn? Using critical thinking and skepticism towards systems is the only way I can think of to think my way "out of the box" as an aspiring intellectual.
Why do I feel like I do not own my identity as an Asian woman? Why do I feel like everyone has control over my sexual and racial identity except myself? Why do I feel like there is one way for me to act that is acceptable and a whole range of ways for me to behave that are not acceptable? Why do men, of all shapes and colors, approach me in public and want to discuss my sexuality and availability with them when my white girlfriends LITERALLY NEVER get talked to like this??????
Because the race system accepts Whites as normal and default, while all other Color-of-People get to serve as contrast to what is normal. We get to be a strange Other. We live in California where racial diversity is standard, but travel to middle America and you will get the stink-eye all day everyday, cutie pie. White people get to feel normal; I am taught, within this system, to feel like a "weird, moon-faced Other." This is why I fight racism.
Oh, a bonus, a true treat, because I am 2 minorities: a woman, and a person of color, I cannot separate my race and my sexuality, because the world has already inextricably linked these together for me. Thanks, world, for establishing this and then for maintaining it through ignorance of the masses.
Why do I have to wait to be approached by a dude instead of going up to dudes who catch my eye and interest?
Because the gender system accepts Males as default, while Women are the Others. Males are allowed freedom and action; Women are allowed to be objects of Male action. My gender and my race compound my Otherness and effects the way others treat me. This is something you will never experience and can never truly understand. This is frustrating and fucked up and wrong. This is why I fight sexism.
Why do I not feel safe or accepted enough to discuss my sexuality in a public forum, let alone with family and close friends?
Because the gender system also only accepts cis-gendered straight people as normal. Any deviation from this formula is met with derision and death, mostly via suicides. You've heard about all those kids who are bullied for being gay and who commit suicide, right? That's A Thing. Fucking why? Because straight privilege blinds people to a statistically normal standard deviation. Because socially not-normal deviation is handle with a mob mentality of bullying, telling little gay kids that they're defective, wrong, and are so gross that they should kill themselves. This is why I fight homophobia and transphobia.
Why was I so ashamed to tell my grade school classmates my father's blue-collar job?
Because the class system says that Rich People are rich because they are better people than poor people. The rich create and maintain systems of wealth that do not allow for upward mobility, then characterize poor people as "lazy" and "undeserving" and "lesser than." This is why I participate in class warfare.
America would not be a safe space for women, People of all Colors black brown yellow, the motherfucking EARTH, had it not been for the riots and revolutions and calls to actions of the 60's. Ugh, I'd love to live in that time, to be free in that way.
Recognizing man-made power structures makes me question the validity of what kind of person is "better" and what kind of person is "less than". Through this kind of questioning, I can associate with people who don't come from my exact socioeconomic background, a background that I presume we share. I strive to be a decent person who seeks to understand the through-line humanity of every person I encounter, u dum dum.
Literally the only weapon the poor have to combat economic injustice is public education and mass engagement in a political system that doesn't want you to participate. Why else do you think your parents settled here, in California? Where the higher-level public education system is comprised of over 30-40% Asians, a majority of that percentage being first-generation college students, at most every campus?
So if your father didn't go to college, guess you're shit outta luck then, huh?
brb never going back 2 school
Journalist: A while ago you called America “the greatest country on earth.” How does that fit together with what you've been saying?
Chomsky: In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society. In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.
Neoliberal democracy: Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless…
Neoliberal democracy: Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless…
The population in the United States is angry, frustrated and full of fear and irrational hatreds. And the folks not far from you on Wall Street are just doing fine. They’re the ones who created the current crisis. They’re the ones who were called upon to deal with it. They’re coming out stronger and richer than ever. But everything’s fine - as long as the population is passive. You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it. Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation. The people in power can live with that. What they can’t live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.
Nom Chompsky VERSUS. the media, institutions of education that are not accessible to the people, corporations that creates fake wants and that encourages mindless consumption.
Nom Chompsky FOR the people, who would be oppressed, silent, and voiceless if they didn't have a White Male Intellectual to speak for them/us. Because no one listens to a non-white, non-male, non-college educated individual, for realsies.
Still, some systems, if they are fair and serve the people, are totally fine. Systems should answer for themselves in terms of functionality and fairness. If they withstand these tests, then fiiiiiiiiiine they're fiiiiiiiiiiine.
