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The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior QUOTES

The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior QUOTES

1 " I think right-wing populists hate the `liberal elite` more than economic elites because they've grabbed all the jobs where you get paid to do something that isn't just for the money - the pursuit of art, or truth, or charity", notes David Graeber, an anthropologist whose ideas helped shape the Occupy movement. "All they can do if they want to do something bigger than themselves and still get paid is join the army. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

2 " Americans should not fear riots. They should fear apathy. They should fear acquiescence. They should not fear each other. But it is understandable, now, that they do. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

3 " In the American media, white people debate whether race matters, rich people debate whether poverty matters, and men debate whether gender matters. People for whom these problems must matter -- for they structure the limitations of their lives -- are locked out of the discussion. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

4 " In one of the wealthiest countries in the world, privation should not come with the job description, and survival should not be an aspiration. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

5 " Gentrifiers focus on aesthetics, not people. Because people, to them, are aesthetics. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

6 " The surest way to keep a problem from being solved is to deny that problem exists. Telling people not to complain is a way of keeping social issues from being addressed. It trivializes the grievances of the vulnerable, making the burdened feel like burdens. Telling people not to complain is an act of power, a way of asserting that one's position is more important than another one's pain. People who say "stop complaining" always have the right to stop listening. But those who complain have often been denied the right to speak. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

7 " Charity, as a supplement to justice, should be applauded. But charity as a substitute for justice is neither charity nor justice. It is cruelty. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

8 " It is easy, when people feel frightened and abandoned, for a demagogue to exploit those feelings of despair for political gain. It is easy for that demagogue to translate fear into fanaticism, to shift extremism into the mainstream and market it under the guise of populism. By the time buyer's remorse hits, a new and more brutal political culture has arisen. A gaslit nation becomes engulfed in flames. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

9 " Poverty is a sentence for the crime of existing. Poverty is a denial of rights sold as a character flaw. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

10 " College is a purchased loyalty oath to an imagined employer. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

11 " All social movements are dismissed at some point as complaining. Over time, they are recognized as speaking truth to power. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

12 " Charity, as a supplement to justice, should be applauded. But charity as a substitute for justice is neither charity nor justice. It is cruelty. The "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

13 " Paranoia is aggression masked as defense. It was paranoia (and hubris, and greed) that caused the run-up to the Iraq War; it is paranoia that leads to thousands of innocent Muslims being profiled in New York; it is paranoia that led to Trayvon Martin being shot to death on the street. In Congress, paranoia is less a style than a sickness, employed less with flourish than with fear. Paranoia is the refusal to recognize others except as filtered through ourselves—and how do Americans see themselves? Afraid, afraid, afraid. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

14 " Dependence may be the primary trait of the millennial generation, but it is a structural dependence, caused not by "laziness" or "narcissism" but by a lack of options or social mobility. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

15 " Mistaking wealth for virtue is a cruelty of our time. By treating poverty as inevitable for parts of the population, and giving impoverished workers no means to rise out of it, America deprives not only them but society as a whole. Talented and hardworking people are denied the ability to contribute, and society is denied the benefits of their gifts. Poverty is not a character flaw. Poverty is not emblematic of intelligence. Poverty is lost potential, unheard contributions, silenced voices. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

16 " The condemnation of digital media has two sides. There is a legitimate claim that digital media has given old viciousness new visibility. . .. Certain facets of social media—speed, anonymity, the ability to "dox"—have changed the nature of harassment, making it easier to accomplish and less likely to be redressed.

But are the mainstream media any different in their biases and cruelty? They do not appear to be. Mainstream media cruelty is actually more dangerous, for it incorporates language that, were it blogged by an unknown, would likely be written off as the irrelevant ramblings of a sociopath.

Instead, the prestige of old media gives bigoted ranting respectability. Even in the digital age, old media define and shape the culture, repositioning the lunatic fringe as the voice of reason. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

17 " You are not your job. But you are how you treat people. So what can you do? You can work your hardest and do your best. You can organize and push for collective change. You can hustle and scrounge and play the odds. But when you fall, know that millions are falling with you. Know that it is, to a large extent, out of your hands. And when you see someone else falling, reach out your hands to catch them. --Originally "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

18 " Changing your major will not change a broken economy. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

19 " It could always be worse, they say. They don't like to say that it could always be better, because that would require redress. Ranking "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

20 " Blame Stalin, the pundits cry, echoing the argument made every time something bad happens in the former Soviet Union. Blame Stalin, because we can pronounce that name. "

― Sarah Kendzior , The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior