Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast, although today we're sharing a sample of this week's episode of our other show, solved.

Best of Left members get solved early, ad-free, and complete with a members-only backstage segment all via podcast.

But we're also putting the show out on the Best

of Left YouTube channel where we're attempting to find a new audience. Consider supporting us

directly by signing up for a membership or help us grow on YouTube by subscribing to the

Best of Left YouTube channel and catching every episode of Solved there. And now here's a few minutes

for free to wet your appetite,

but just like Best of the Left, the Real Benefits Kick in when you hear the whole show,

which is greater than the sum of its parts. Today, we're looking at how language impacts

perspectives both on personal and society-wide levels, very often driving us in destructive directions,

and showing how our language supports the systems that have helped bring us to the brink of fascism.

Then we'll point the way forward.

Today, we're starting with an oldie-buddy-goody and working our way up the ladder of severity when it comes to language. So first of all, pull yourself up by your

bootstraps. Everyone knows it, loves it. It means good old fashioned American ingenuity and

individualism and taking responsibility for yourself to create your own success. So we go back to

an old article from the Huffington Post,

why the phrase pull yourself up by your bootstraps is nonsense. And they say,

quote, to pull yourself up by your bootstraps is actually physically impossible. In fact,

the original meaning of the phrase was more along the lines of, to try to do something completely absurd.

And it goes on, people have been referring to bootstraps in this metaphorical way for so long,

the original irony of the expression was lost.

Nobody's thinking of the impossible image of pulling themselves over a fence.

...