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one of the biggest problems with Americans who possess great privilege is their mysterious sense of powerlessness. Failure to take responsibility--to admit that one does indeed have responsibility--is the great sin of America's credentialed class https://americanmind.org/salvo/losing-the-class/
take all of these GOP congressmen who claim in private that they opposed Trump but "have no choice" to follow along. Of course they had a choice. They might have lost their seat, of course, but what else would they have lost? Their chance to help the country (which, by
merit of opposing Trump in private, they clearly believed their public actions were not doing)? They sacrificed their personal integrity to the excuse of "having no choice."
I once had a friend at an elite law school who would use the same excuse. Her parents had paid down her law school costs completely. This was not just a position of privilege, but agency: she had the ability to do anything she wanted in the world, given the combination of
talents, connections, and wealth at her possession. She admitted to me once that the company of lawyers made her miserable, and that she was stuck following in the life course of her own miserable parents. But why was she stuck? She didn't have to repeat their life--but here
again I heard the words, "I have no choice." She lived a prisoner to her parents and her own shallow class expectations--but the prison was freely chosen. It is the same dynamic with these Harvard failson meme-ers.
It is *easier* to accept the futility of changing one's own life than it is to try and live up to a moral code. Integrity is important in a leadership class because a belief in integrity is a belief in *agency.* It is a belief that no, you are not some play thing of committees
and admission boards, that you *do* have responsibility for your own soul, that your behavior cannot be blamed on other people's expectations, career incentives or on hegemonic structures of power.
We have a ruling class that pretends it is the ruled. Far better to have a governing class that has a sense of responsibility for the country at large. But that starts at the individual level, with teaching men and women in this class that they have responsibility for themselves.
like this tweet if you want me to turn this into a full essay
