{"id":8393,"date":"2016-05-14T22:23:29","date_gmt":"2016-05-14T22:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/2016\/05\/14\/the-myth-of-bootstraps-goes-something-like-this-i\/"},"modified":"2016-05-14T22:23:29","modified_gmt":"2016-05-14T22:23:29","slug":"the-myth-of-bootstraps-goes-something-like-this-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/2016\/05\/14\/the-myth-of-bootstraps-goes-something-like-this-i\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The Myth of Bootstraps goes something like this: I never got any help from anyone. I achieved my American Dream all on my own, through hard work. I got an education, I saved my money, I worked hard, I took risks, and I never complained or blamed anyone else when I failed, and every time I fell, I picked myself up by my bootstraps and just worked even harder. No one helped me. <br \/>\nThis is almost always a lie. <br \/>\nThere are vanishingly few people who have never had help from anyone\u2014who never had family members who helped them, or friends, or colleagues, or teachers. <br \/>\nWho never benefited from government programs that made sure they had electricity, or mail, or passable roads, or clean drinking water, or food, or shelter, or healthcare, or a loan. <br \/>\nWho never had any kind of privilege from which they benefited, even if they didn\u2019t actively try to trade on it. <br \/>\nWho never had an opportunity they saw as luck which was really someone, somewhere, making a decision that benefited them. <br \/>\nWho never had friends to help them move, so they didn\u2019t have to pay for movers. Who never inherited a couch, so they didn\u2019t have to pay for a couch. Who never got hand-me-down clothes from a cousin, so their parents could afford piano lessons. Who never had shoes that fit and weren\u2019t leaky, when the kid down the street didn\u2019t. <br \/>\nMost, maybe all, of the people who say they never got any help from anyone are taking a lot of help for granted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class='attribution'><a href=\"http:\/\/www.shakesville.com\/2014\/03\/this-is-not-solution-this-is-problem.html\">Shakesville: This Is Not a Solution; This Is the Problem.<\/a> (via <a href=\"http:\/\/brutereason.tumblr.com\/\" class=\"tumblr_blog\">brutereason<\/a>)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Myth of Bootstraps goes something like this: I never got any help from anyone. I achieved my American Dream all on my own, through hard work. I got an education, I saved my money, I worked hard, I took risks, and I never complained or blamed anyone else when I failed, and every time &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/2016\/05\/14\/the-myth-of-bootstraps-goes-something-like-this-i\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\"><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","hentry","category-uncategorized","post_format-post-format-quote","without-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}