"Not Just Getting By, But Getting Ahead" or Everyday American Psychopathy
I keep seeing Harris ads with this line about Americans "not just getting by, but getting ahead."
Ahead of who?
Ahead of who!
USians don't even bat an eye at this. Their ideology has created a mass delusion that causes them to believe "everyone can get ahead" in the competition of all against all. But "getting ahead" necessarily neans someone is behind!
Libs will deny this if confronted. They can live with this dissonance because they fundementally do not see the people behind as human beings. People behind have moral failings and therefore could never be ahead - no matter what you try to do for them. The people ahead obviously deserve it and are the only real people anyway so they can't even see how obviously anti-social the entire concept of "getting ahead" is. Deeply psychopathic culture.
The differences are getting harder and harder to distinguish, especially when "elect" failsons keep failing upwards and the working class suffers no matter how hard they work.
THANK YOU. I legit have been yelling that under my breath every time I see that fucking ad.
All I can think of is this Debs quote
If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and misrepresentatives of the masses—you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.
I gotta get ahead of all these random SOBs so I can be loaded and then stunt on everybody and be so rich I can give money away to help all the losers that I fucked over to get where I am.
not so much that they are made whole. I gotta drive a Lexus and wear nicer clothes and send my kids to a school with a Latin motto and shit.
i read these as getting ahead of the financial abyss and consequent dehumanification that lurks behind every working person and creeps up on them slowly but surely unless they're employed (and even that's not a guarantee of staving off the beast), rather than getting ahead of any actual people
maybe im giving her campaign too much credit though, idk. the people who wrote that probably didnt even think it through this much