Bootstraps: Can you pull yourself up by them?

Find out here.

A friend of mine and I were having a conversation about feeling kinda lost in life at this time. During this chat she said to me "I know you don't need saving…" I turned that over in my head for a while. I thought to myself, "maybe I don't need saving, but why has it become a sign of moral weakness and irresponsibility to admit that maybe someone does need saving?" Sometimes people can't get off the ground without some help. It bothers me that we are being steered towards becoming a country that criminalizes people for falling down.

It is painful to watch as the "boot strap" factions pass laws which will only to kick people when they're down. Laws like the ones criminalizing homelessness without offering substantial support to keep people off the streets. And the passing of laws that endanger the well-being of people. For instance, removing social security and medicaid from the elderly and disabled. We could address the conditions which have led to many people's homelessness, or explain why the elderly have earned that Social Security, but the powers-that-be love to tout the phrase "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps!!"

Have any of you examined this phrase? I will help you. Here is a quote from an article in the Huffpost from 2018. You can read the entire piece here. It goes into the history of this phrase. I will share highlights.

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.”

"Etymologist Barry Popik and linguist and lexicographer Ben Zimmer have cited an American newspaper snippet from Sept. 30, 1834 as the earliest published reference to lifting oneself up by one’s bootstraps. A month earlier, a man named Nimrod Murphree announced in the Nashville Banner that he had “discovered perpetual motion.” The Mobile Advertiser picked up this tidbit and published it with a snarky response ridiculing his claim: “Probably Mr. Murphree has succeeded in handing himself over the Cumberland river, or a barn yard fence, by the straps of his boots.”

Does that put it into persuasive? If cruelty and lack of empathy had a slogan, "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" would be it.

Let’s face it, this decline isn’t new. We had already been slowly devolving into a society that neglects its responsibilities to the less fortunate, but the speed at which we seem to be hurtling towards ever lower levels of fellowship and unity, is frankly startling. We have the party of Christians for ‘Murka to thank for it. With their ever growing list of legislation targeting the most marginalized in our country.

Here is a list of Christian values taken from https://www.christianbiblereference.org/faq_ChristianValues.htm.

I feel like numbers 7 and 9 have been missed by some of the Christian folk in Washington. Perhaps they were not in Bible study class that day.

I do not consider myself religious. But I was raised by a Catholic father who believed wholeheartedly that you practiced patience and tolerance and kindness because that's what Jesus did. I don't even begin to comprehend how the same people who are aligning themselves with Faith are also, simultaneously, implementing a structure where millions of people will suffer.

Is cruelty the point? I don't know. Why don't we just quit whining and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps?