Edit: I should say, she's actually pretty on board with the rich/corporations fucking up the world, but she blames black people, poor people, immigrants, young people, for their problems instead of seeing the larger implications.

Maybe a specific episode of Chapo, Citations Needed, documentary, etc, whatever, she's what I would call a very conservative lib

  • Multihedra [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    It’s just a one-off thing (kind of), but I’m very fond of Wallace Shawn’s essay Why I Call Myself a Socialist.

    Re-reading it, it’s quite good: it is a pretty materialist analysis, and even pokes a bit of fun at liberalism (specifically the idea that “equality before the law” is meaningful).

    An excerpt:

    Around 400,000 babies are born on earth each day. Some are born irreparably damaged, casualties of the conditions in which their mothers lived -- malnutrition, polluted water, mysterious chemicals that sneak into the body and warp the genes. But the much more tragic and more horrible truth is that most of these babies are born healthy. There’s nothing wrong with them. Every one of them is ready to develop into a person whose intelligence, insight, aesthetic taste, and love of other people could help to make the world a better place. Every one of them is ready to become a person who wakes up happily in the morning because they know they’re going to spend the day doing work they find fascinating, work that they love. They’re born with all the genetic gifts they could possibly need. Wiggling beside their mothers, they have no idea what’s going to be done to them.

    It’s a short read. He as another, much longer essay, The Fever, which makes me cry every time I hear it. You can find videos of him reading this essay, although it is a 2hr reading. But it’s also quite good.