Jessica, before I go on, I have to say I love you for fighting the fight and you’re often right. But….
Hyperbole is sometimes necessary, but misuse of language and history is downright wrong. Speaking as a former Greek student, you definitely can’t say completely wrong things such as the origin of “xenophobia’. Xenos is Greek for “stranger, foreigner”. But you don’t have to have studied Greek to know that. Why would you say something like that? Call me next time, so you don’t give Boris Johnson, of all people, the chance to characterize the Ami Left as even bigger dolts than theirs.
Greece WAS the birthplace of democracy. It was a model that was known of by European intellectuals even before the French Enlightenment. And it is the idea that came down to use through no other source. And the model was simple: not have an all-powerful leader and have power shared. Granted, it was not shared among everyone and the inherited power of the elites were those only entitled to have a say. But, like all original models, they improve. Hopefully.
Judging the past, and most of all the imperfections that later generations moved along to a better, fairer, freer version is downright self-destructive insanity. And it won’t help whipping up the masses either.
And then there is generalization and/or exaggeration as truth-telling. Truly toxic, unless your intent is to poison, and then it’s the elixir of the right wing gods:
“Everything our politicians are doing has one purpose, to preserve the power of white men”
Why is this necessary? As bad as things are is it not bad enough for your story-telling? Shouldn’t the best approximation of truth be what makes things better because even the benighted might see?
And, as much as Zuckerberg is truly a blight, he’s just another semi-adolescent lotto winner who doesn’t know what to do with his winnings and keeps making it up and listening to various wannabes such as Sheryl Sandberg and Sean Parker who truly just want to be powerful and important and not much more and Nicholas Clegg who desperately wants an international stage for his clown role.
In other words, this is more like American High School than it is nefarious overlordism. Wealth and its trappings are just means to being Prom King, Prom Queen or PM.
When you give all nefarious motives, whether it be money or power, then you miss what has to be attended to: changing our habits and rituals and thinking and stop abetting American wannabe-ism. Spend a bit more time taking down the things that no one question that are the on-ramps to a lot of our crap.
And making seemingly adroit remarks, for instance, like this simply make the case for even the idiots that we’re idiots:
“They get to keep the government mostly white, and male, just like Athens 2,000 years ago”
Why tell people that wheels were worse in the past and they haven’t much changed.
What is wrong with just sticking to the facts and, most of all, hammering home the real reason we’re where we are: IT’S HARD WORK AND MOST PEOPLE WOULD RATHER DRESS FOR PROM OR SNARK AT THE COOL KIDS.
And saying things like “you don’t have to dig deep into American history…democracy, etc.” states the obvious: things have almost never been better in the past. Of course, if your audience was MAGAers, yes, it might help to point this out. But that is most certainly not your audience. And some of Trumpers may just say it’s fine, since we’re white and Christian. Tell them something they might not know that they can use and reuse.
And now we’re on my favorite topic: There are, by my count, at least 8 way better models that we could take from or even largely imitate. Holland, Belgium (kinda), Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Austria and… the best and most appropriate of all: Germany.
Even “well-educated” Americans think still that we are the best and most successful model. And the fact that the majority of these describe themselves as Social (as in “socialist”) Democracies gives added power. Provide them the metrics compared to ours. No, we can’t imitate everything the way one or the other operates (least of all, having a single-payer healthcare system: too much corruption still here), but show that WE SUCK because of believing our own mythology.
Nothing motivates like the Joneses next door. For Americans, for sure. Let’s educate, not tell people what they know, tell people WHAT THEY DON’T KNOW.
