Up By Your Own Bootstraps

[Bucky]

I believe in hard work, but I've never quite gotten the concept behind the Republican adage that poor people should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Aren't bootstraps those little thumb hooks on either side of the top of your boots? Those are designed for pulling the boots up onto your feet, so really they're meant for pulling your feet down, not the rest of you up. Given how tall most boots are (no more than 12 inches unless you're into that kinky stuff--in which case you have better uses for straps) bootstraps are only "up" from where you are if you're lying flat on the ground. Like a poor person would, I guess. But would someone so poor in this metaphor that they're lying flat on the ground be able to even afford boots, much less the good kind with the straps on them? Besides, if you're lying flat on the ground outside, chances are that if you have any boots, you'd be wearing them. Now there's no physical way possible for someone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they're wearing their boots already. So before you could pull yourself up by them, you'd have to take your boots off--all while still lying down on the ground, mind you--and then pull yourself up by them. Well, hell, if you can take your boots off, certainly you can also muster the energy needed to get up off the ground without trying to figure out the ridiculous engineering involved in pulling yourself up by something as flimsy as bootstraps.


In fact, the only way a pair of boots could even provide the leverage needed for a person to pull him or herself up by the straps of said boots is that someone would have to be wearing those boots. So really, for the cliche to even work, you'd have to pull yourself up by somebody else's bootstraps... while they're wearing them. The only way to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps is to ask some passing stranger in the street to stop, take off his own boots, put your boots on (hoping you two wear the same size), and then stand there while you pull yourself up by the straps on the side of your boots.



Only this is absurd. Your boots are still only a few inches off the ground. No matter how hard you pull, you're not going to get up on your feet that way. By the time you're on your knees, the straps are certainly too low-set for pulling yourself up by them anymore. So there you are, in the middle of a street, on your knees in front of a complete stranger, looking up at him, and basically grabbing him by the ankles.

I suppose this leaves me in a position to start earning a few bucks. But is this really the way Republicans want me to work my way out of poverty?



with admiration for Rabrrrrrr

[Blue_In_AK]

1. I never thought of it that way,

but you do have a point. :rofl:

[Hissyspit]

7. I've always thought of it that way - the metaphor seems a joke: You CAN'T "pull yourself up by

your own bootstraps."

So if you use that metaphor with any serious intent, you are making a fool of yourself. Typical Republican thought.

Hi, Blue. :hi:

[sam sarrha]

2. they are referring to the time before Reagan, collage was public education paid for by tariffs to

protect workers and the economy..

they want us to believe we can still use a system they gleefully destroyed

[Cresent City Kid]

3. Great piece!

The pictures drive home the illogic of the expression.

On another topic, the Great Depression could have been avoided if people would have gotten off their asses and got jobs.

[Bucky]

4. Interesting theory

The Civil War could have been avoided if those lazy slavekeepers had just been willing to do the work themselves. Or if those slaves had thought about saving up the money and buying some freedom.

[Morereason]

6. That was a really out of touch statement..

Compassion and historically challenged. I hope that we a tongue in cheek statement

[Hissyspit]

8. It was tongue-in-cheek.

[Morereason]

9. OK. Guess I lost my funny bone :)

[Hissyspit]

10. No prob. You're around here long enough and you start to develop a radar.

Although everyone loses their funny bone at one time or another and occassionally a poster posts something that NOBODY has any clue about. Thus the use of the :wtf: smiley icon. :)

[Cresent City Kid]

11. me too

I thought about saying I was joking, but that takes the umph out of it.

[Bucky]

18. There are some DUers who will constantly request you use the sarcasm icon

These people are idiots. They should be ignored.

[Quantess]

20. Welcome to DU!

:hi: It's a good idea for newbies to use sarcasm smilies, or something to let people know when you're serious and when you're ironic. Even oldbies with 1000+ posts sometimes need to, just because it's hard to tell someone's intent behind some words typed on a screen.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

5. I guess Hillary didn't want to come out and say "Let them eat cake"

so she used this more neo con style phrase.

[Bucky]

19. Hillary?

Dude, take your Democrat-hating comments over to GDP

[zehnkatzen]

12. Of course, parsing is exactly what they want us to do ...

But that's not to say you don't have a point there. Well said, the entire thing. Nice use of illustrations too!

Reading this article made me think so much about how conservatives are so amoral about playing on meanings of words and marketing. Now, I don't necessarily begrudge marketing in general. The breaking of innocence being the beginning of wisdom, one of my points of departure is one truism that personal experience girds for me: people are malleable. We can be influenced. The doubts of even the wisest person can be played upon, and archetypes rule.

One of the very few things that republicans get right (and I don't mean right in the relative sense) is how much we want to be identified with traits we see positive and uniquely American: self-reliance, innovation, hard honest work, and things of that nature. They then, with no remorse, proceed to use those against us, defining them as they choose and pretending the are talking straight to us. We therefore dance to the tune they call.

Some of us realize this. Too many of us don't. It doesn't take long to realize that the same attributes they implicitly demand that we proles own, live and die by, are seen as optional to those within their circle; self-reliance doesn't apply to mortgage companies who bamboozled poor people and minorities into contracts they never should have gone anywhere near; accountability and responsibility does not attach to republicans who manifestly corrupt the elections process (when they are caught, a few are jacked up, but most of the time we half-heartedly settle the issue and ignore it until a celebrity does something else risible to fill the front pages ... ooh, look Perez Hilton ... sparkly, pretty ...)

Withal, one thing republicans do with aplomb is get us to misunderstand our own words.

Once again, that's not to say that this post is amiss. Quite the opposite. This is one of the best deconstructions of a popular trope that I've seen yet. In a way, it makes all our points:

• define a positive characteristic
• redefine it to one side's benefit
• make it fashionable to identify with
• condescend to the proles that you're really doing it too, even though you aren't.

Nice post. Nicely said. Recommended.

[Bucky]

21. I love posts like this

Dude, you must've been an English major. I was, too, a lifetime ago.

And I agree: marketing is an awesome force in society--one I wish the Democrats knew how to use better. Too often we allow the regressive forces in society to define the agenda. Too often we allow the media to get away with crap like I saw on TV this morning, where a CNN common tater was saying "You know, it's usually the Republican who talk about values. But this time, for an incredible change, it's the Democrats who will have a CNN-sponsored 'Values Debate'."

My kingdom for a cattle prod.

[santamargarita]

13. With those bastards it really means getting stepped on!

K&R

[Marr]

14. Gravity is only a theory, you know!

:p

[Obamanaut]

15. Try this

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/290800.html

Meaning
Improve your situation by your own efforts.
Origin
The origin of this descriptive phrase isn't known. It refers of course to boots and their straps (laces) and to the imagined feat of a lifting oneself off the ground by pulling on one's bootstraps. This impossible task is supposed to exemplify the achievement in getting out of a difficult situation by one's own efforts
<more>

[ejpoeta]

16. Like GW has done so many times!

If you look throughout his life, I'd like to know just when he had to do any such thing. Rule 1 in selecting any future presidents.... no one who has been bailed out of everything and has never had to face consequences.... I personally believe that is the reason we are where we are. When you have someone who has never had to deal with their mistakes, they just keep making MORE mistakes.

[rasputin1952]

23. Welcome to DU...

and for what it's worth...bush has failed at everything he has ever tried. In fact, he is the template for failure, if not for a wealthy and prominent family, as well as the connections to vast amounts of cash through his father's connections, I would not be surprised to see bush doing nothing more than cleaning stables, and he'd probably fail at that as well...:D

:hi:

[Bucky]

22. Interesting. So as Marr points out in #14, it's based on denying the theory of gravity

Of course I cheated in the essay. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps isn't really a Republican slogan. Republicans tend to pull themselves up by their own no-bid government contracts and the occasional multi-billion dollar bail out from the government they hate.

[hisownpetard]

17. Well done, bucky! K&R.