Saturday, December 8, 2007

The Liberal Shibboleth of Choice




































































There are no fucking "choices." Being lectured about choices is being told that "I can afford to do these things and you can't so fuck you."

Choices is a key part of the foundation of white suburban privilege, and I am convinced that the entire political discussion is dominated by people deeply steeped in white suburban privilege and that this is the most important political force we face. It is fucking up everything and having a seriously suppressive effect on all discussions.

But we can't alk about it, except in the most detached and theoretical ways.

I swear, we can't even talk - we talk about talking, as though we were neutral academics, dispassionate and aloof observers of the show.

So what I want to know is this: where are people living? How are they surviving? What are they doing? How can they be so oblivious to the most important and obvious factor in modern politics, and keep pretending that it doesn't exist? How are thyey not running into tons of first hand evidence - overwhelming, obvious examples - of this force at play every single day? How are they immune? How are they existing? What are they telling themselves about their lives?

What is the fucking truth, because it sure as Hell is not being revealed in any political discussions.

If your 'choice' is between the 'free clinic' and bankruptcy, where is the freedom?

If your 'choice' is between medicine and food, where is the freedom?

If your choice is between housing and heating, where is the freedom?

4 comments:

Christopher Locke said...

I am situated in the heart of the beast: lilly-white Boulder, Colorado. I got here (meaning your blog, not Boulder) via some nice remarks you made about Mystic Bourgeoisie over at rigorousintuition.ca -- in an exchange with Dreams End, whose stuff I was also just reading tonight on right-wing eco-fascistas. I am not really Doctor X, as this says, but Chris Locke, and I am very pleased to meet you (unless my memory is as shot to hell as I think it is and we've already swapped gigabytes of email). Anyway, let's talk. clocke@gmail.com and the spammers be damned. After all, and to your point; what CHOICE do we really have?

Anonymous said...

doctor x,

that's very unfortunate, that you live in McBoulder, a place that once was a nice spot to live, and in the past 15 years has been "discovered" by yuppies and other egotistical fucks from all over America, so that now Boulder is Yuppie Valhalla Hell. People live there for the "image" they "present" to others when they beam glowingly about living in "Boulder," as if moving there is the equivalent of being accepted into the most select country club in America.

And now the same assholes are "discovering" my town and turning it into McBoulder's Northern Franchise.

Yee haw, the Wonder Bread/Velveeta/Ranch Dressing crowd of pseudo-westerners, pseudo-mountain dwellers, pseudo-outdoor athletes.

Biff, did you get your new Audi Turbo yet?

Chip, did you get your new Colnago carbon framed MTB yet?

Bink, did you get your new Bluetooth GPS unit yet?

Trey, did you get your new Viking range installed?

Anonymous said...

Here's an example of why I say doctor x's town is full of assholes:

http://www.telemarktalk.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=40237

Anonymous said...

ach! the complete URL got cut off.

the end part should be:

"t=40237"