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Someone Give This Man a Goddamn Medal

By Petr Navovy | Social Media | March 1, 2019 |

By Petr Navovy | Social Media | March 1, 2019 |


no-take-out-margarita-header.png

Probably my favourite part of the recent Cohen hearings was—and please feel free to all sit down in preparation for the incoming shock—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

*GASP!*

I know right?! Knava banging that AOC drum? The hell is the world coming to? What’s he gonna do next?! Denounce centrism? Despair at capitalist climate change? Write a think piece on the breezy, unspoken socialism running through the body of work of Richard Linklater?!

…I…haven’t written that last piece.

Yet!

Anyway the reason that AOC was my favourite part of the Cohen hearings wasn’t necessarily because of how great she was with her questioning—which she absolutely was, grilling that souped-up shitrod in a gloriously clinical fashion in a testament to both her skill as well as her team’s seriously impressive background work—but more so because of the reaction to her performance.

This is a relatively benign example:

There was a litany of much worse reactions, running from surprise to condescension to outright hostility that this former bartender—and a POC, female one at that!—dare break into the hallowed halls of her betters and that she had the temerity to tear down their facade. It’s been happening ever since AOC won that shock victory last year, and it has also affected her newly arrived colleagues such as Rashida Tlaib. These people are just not supposed to advance to this level. Yes our shared myths sing to us the seductive song of meritocracy, but really—as the reactions, whether malicious or benign show us—this is not meant to happen.

There’s a serious pathology that runs through our society. A pathology that is enforced subtly and overtly by the powers that be, and that dictates to us that there are only certain types of people who are worthy of holding office. It’s a poisonous idea that serves the elites who enforce it but which has a deleterious effect on society as a whole. You need different perspectives in the halls of power, otherwise it’s just the capitalists serving the capitalists. It’s the same story as with media diversity, or gene pools. You gotta mix that shit up! Otherwise everything goes stale, and risks collapse.

In England we have a centuries-old ruling class. You’ll see the same old family names bouncing around the upper echelons down the ages. The elite, as we know, stay the elite. The arts are suffocated by a small coterie of privately educated actors and musicians; and in politics we are lorded over by a thin, top-floating scum who all went to Eton and studied PPE (philosophy, politics, and economics) at Oxford. And the worst thing is: We all defer to them! The idea has been so deeply inculcated in us that if someone fits the stereotypical image of an old-fashioned English gentleman, then they must be our better and therefore deserve to lord over us, no matter the wealth of evidence indicating the exact opposite reality. In America your ruling class has slightly different signifiers, and it is a relative adolescent, but a similar dynamic holds, albeit one propped up by the American Dream mythos—‘Why would I tear down the ruling class?! I’m gonna be one of them one day!’

And-…

via GIPHY

Shit. Sorry. That just kinda sprawled.

Uh.

All I really wanted to say in a semi-jokey way was: ‘Look, There’s Genius To Be Found Everywhere! Revel In The Transcendent Moment Of The Everyday!’ And instead off I went.

via GIPHY

Fuck it. Here’s a dude who deserves some sort of Margarita Medal. Happy Friday, all.

(Source: Thom “F.” Badinger’s Twitter)



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