I've already blogged about what Sonia Sotomayor said about Clarence Thomas, but here's one more thing:
I have often said to people that Justice Thomas believes that every person can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I believe that some people can’t get to their bootstraps without help – they need someone to help them lift their foot up so that they can reach.
What are bootstraps, and could we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps if we could only reach them?
Even if you can reach your bootstraps, you don't get anywhere by pulling up on them. Your entire body weight is still in your shoes. At best, you could pull one leg up, shifting your whole weight onto one foot, but that one foot would remain firmly planted in the original position. The phrase already embodies the idea that it can't be done. To stress helping people reach their bootstraps is really offering to distract them and lure them into wasting time waiting for assistance in doing something that is doomed to fail.
But it's just a metaphor. It doesn't prove that left-wing ideas about making life better for people is delusional. I'd find a different image if only to avoid cliché, but this is one cliché that is mostly used wrongly. It should be enough to say "Justice Thomas believes that every person can pull themselves up by their bootstraps." If you must say more, say: But it's impossible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Go ahead. Try it!
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Huh. Reddit left wingers say it's a delusional right-wing metaphor.
I'm so confused.
"It doesn't prove that left-wing ideas about making life better for people is delusional."
Pretty clear and convincing though.
I tried to pull myself up by my bootstraps until I met a man with no shoes.
The metaphor is about self reliance and having a better life if you work towards it yourself, as opposed to waiting for it to be given to you. Which is generally true in life.
A bootstrap loader loads in a very primitive program to load in a more complex program to load in the whole system. The metaphor works with that interpretation. Start with fundamentals to start a more complex attack to revise the whole situation.
The Huffington Post says that the original meaning of the phrase in the 19th century was to do something impossible. By the 1920s, Britons were using it to ridicule the American idea of the self-made man, but it looks like Americans took back the expression with pride. In the 1940s, "Operation Bootstrap" was the English translation of Operación Manos a la Obra, Puerto Rico's economic development program, and that gave the expression new currency.
Michael Oher, the guy from the Blind Side, said at one time that he would have been successful without football, Even if it was just a manager job at McDonald's, it would have been better than what so many others from his neighborhood achieved. That ideal is what Clarence Thomas believes in, and what Sotomayor doesn't see. She considers her life successful because she got a leg up to get on SCOTUS. But Thomas doesn't consider himself successful because of SCOTUS. I think he probably considers his grandparents more successful than him. Their worldviews are just different.
Cleverly avoids the recognition and acknowledgement that Justice Thomas has spent his life doing precisely that, and has pulled a far greater distance with more admirable results than 99.9% of the human race, and less recognition for his efforts than any famous person alive.
so wait a minute; Are You Saying? That Sotomayor is NOT the sharpest blade in the drawer?
Bootstrapping is also a statistical method where, from a large sample you randomly select thousands of smaller samples, and the statistics of the smaller samples are normally distributed by the central limit theorem, so you can calculate all the stats of the larger sample.
But, it is a joke, about someone who lifted himself by pulling on his boots. It resonates because people need to believe they can help themselves independently. You don’t need to explain that the upward force applied to the bootstraps is countered by the downward force of your upper body and you remain in static equilibrium, it’s a joke! But you can tip yourself over by pushing hard against a wall, so there is that.
We’ve had this bootstrap discussion before?
I was barefoot for years and years. Hated shoes. There’s nothing wrong w/giving someone a leg up, but to ignore the wisdom b/c the metaphor is wrong? Is wrong.
I did a quick google search and found that OTHER PEOPLE say Thomas believes in bootstrapping to success. Thomas hasn't said it, that I found. What I did find was Thomas saying that merit gets rewarded, and that some level of skill is necessary to achieve success. Specifically, Thomas said, "Employment is typically based on skills," he said in 1982, when he became chairman of the EEOC. "To become a news reporter, you must be able to write. Simple as that."
That is not an expression of the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" path to success, despite a Baltimore Sun editorial calling it that. That is an expression of the reality that an illiterate person will never become a successful news reporter, that skills are necessary to obtain and accomplish a job.
So what Sotomayor and others are doing is lying about what Thomas believes. Strawman!
Quelle surprise!
Front paged at Real Clear Politics this morning. I've never been one to have heroes, but Clarence Thomas is a hero of mine. We used to do long road trips in the summer. I always checked the driver of any RV we passed just in case it was him.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/17/clarence-thomas-in-his-own-words/
What SGT Ted said.
It means, put your boots on, work, and that improves your life.
I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps, by the skin of my teeth.
Damn right I'm proud!
With a well-planted bottom, or a leap of faith, you can pull up both pant legs simultaneously, or simulate a bootstrap routine.
Better to waste time pulling your bootstraps than being hoisted by your own petard.
Well, the discussion seems a bit literal. While as pointed out, the concept is used in computing to describe the use of primitive code to "bootstrap" more complex code. I'm old enough to have used computers where the first few instructions were put in by flipping switches until the program was read off the paper tape.
Many things are bootstrapped. Your cars engine is turned over by the starter to cycle the cylinders, draw in air and fuel, so it can be ignited before the engine starts running from that operation. Large generators must have small usually diesel generators to "bootstrap" the fields in the winding and them going.
Bootstrap has come to mean "v 1: help oneself, often through improvised means"
The alternative, favored by Democrats, is to have no agency and wait for your "betters", or the government, to lend you a hand, if they choose. But we all know depending on others, especially the government, without your own ability/effort is the road to dependency/slavery.
It doesn't prove that left-wing ideas about making life better for people is delusional.
No, the "War on Poverty" proved that.
It’s like that story from “Catch Me If You Can” where the mouse that fell into the cream bucket kicked his legs until he churned the cream into butter and crawled out of the bucket. Hard work won’t always, but can save you. No work always ends in failure.
It is a bad metaphor precisely because it is completely inapplicable to the situation being discussed. It makes me wonder which philosophy first employed it- someone who wanted to disprove the notion that a person had free will and could improve their lives if they only tried, or someone who believed the opposite?
How about "buckle down"? As in, "We need to buckle down and [fix problem]"
Can that be done?
My cowboy boots have straps on each side of the top of the boot. If I pull my boots on using the straps, I am lifting a foot. Then I put my foot down--that is a step. Next, I do the same with the other boot. In so doing, I am making forward movement. That is progress; that is the point!
Well, you can still teach a man to fish.
But this additional sentence from Sotomayer really does show what an intellectual lightweight she is. The wise Latina can't even use metaphor properly.
Having said that, we should be more kind and generous to the paralyzed community.
rhhardin beat me to it. Everybody knows boot the computer or if all else fails, reboot. But few know from whence it derives.
I always thought that the metaphor had to do (often) with situations where getting started or making progress appears to be impossible but is not. So it's not just about doing something yourself, it's got an element of "just plunge in and do it" about it as well. Obviously, that only works when it works.
The metaphor goes both ways. Sometimes it is used to describe something that cannot be done. Sometimes it is used to describe something that looks like it can't be done but, in fact, can be done (if you just do it, or if you stop dithering about it, or if you stop trying to work out the theory of it, or if you stop waiting for someone else to come and do it for you, or whatever). So it only looked like I was pulling myself up my bootstraps, but when I just plunged in and did whatever, I found a way to make it happen. The use and understanding of this metaphor requires some discernment.
The metaphor then takes on a different but related meaning when it was taken up in a very specific way by computer scientists. And it changes again when it moves from the context of machine language and assembly language to a more general meaning in the context of higher level languages.
Now I will have my morning coffee and see if what I just wrote makes any sense.
As an IT professional, it seems to me that the message was inverted the moment computer scientists heard about the metaphor and said, "hold my beer."
From https://zapier.com/blog/you-cant-pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps/
"The expression "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" was originally used to refer to a task that's impossible. It's believed to come from the German author Rudolf Erich Raspe, who wrote about a character who pulled himself out of a swamp by pulling his own hair.
It's a fun mental image, right? There's a certain cartoon logic to it, even if it sounds painful. That's probably why the phrase evolved to be about bootstraps, instead of hair, and stuck around for over a hundred years.
In the 19th century, the expression was mostly used to refer to impossible tasks. Here's an example from Bryant & Stratton's Counting House Book-Keeping in 1863:
The person competent to construct a system of philosophy on such a basis, would be able to show how a man might lift himself by his own boot-straps, or get rich by taking money from one pocket and putting it in the other.
People understood the expression "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" to mean "attempting to do something absurd" until roughly the 1920s, at which point it started to evolve toward the current understanding: to do something without any outside help."
One of the definitions of "bootstrap" is "a loop at the back of a boot, used to pull it on", I immediately thought of upper class Englishmen having the hired help pull or push on riding boots. The alternative was to do it yourself by pulling on the bootstrap. Perhaps that was how the term evolved to "do something without any outside help". On the rare occasion when I have worn boots, its been a pain the tail to pull them on and pull them off. I always appreciated it when someone helped me!
FFS. It is a well known metaphor. Anyone who pretends it isn't is either being silly, has an agenda or is stupid.
Ayn Rand wrote, “As man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul.” We make our own character; we make our own life.
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so first need to make boots and straps while barefoot??!!
Go ahead. Try it!
If everyone uses a phrase to mean a certain thing, doesn't it eventually take on that meaning?
Okay, it's an illogical metaphor. It's much better for people at the bottom to realize that their lives are hopeless, and, in the fullness of time, their wretched lives will only get worse......There's some interview in the NYT today with an economist. He claims that inequality is growing and that the middle class in America is soon to disappear. I believe that Marx submitted a similar argument about a century and half ago.....I grew up in a housing project and worked my way through school. I haven't had remarkable success in this life, but I finished college, made six figures towards the end, and, at present, live better than the richest man on earth lived in the year of my birth....People truly do pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That's the good news. The bad news is that is that although up is better than down, it's not all that great. You have to read all that depressing shit in the NYT after you become middle class.
Althouse, are you trolling today or what? The expression "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" is intended to indicate that one achieves the seemingly impossible by dint of exceptional effort and determination. The impossibility is what gives the metaphor its impact. But reaching your bootstraps is only difficult if you are seriously disabled. Like Sonya Sotomayor.
I've always thought that bootstrapping means using whatever purchase is available in a situation to advance towards the bootstrapper's goal. Like bootstrapping from Pride to get to Drag Queen shows for kindergartners, for example.
That is how Justice Thomas is using it. There are other definitions, though.
Imagine a way to lift your boot by its bootstrap, hook the bootstrap on something so the weight is supported, lift the other foot and repeat. Of course, I was part of the computer software industry where bootstrapping is common place so the idea of self starting is familiar to me.
I had always thought of the phrase as a metaphor for independence: if you wait for someone to help you, you will be unlikely to improve your sate of being; but if you solve your problems on your own initiative you will automatically be improving your state of being.
Rhhardin says it. Increasing rounds of complex function as the machine wakes up. Not a contradiction.
It appeared that our Prez got bootstrapped while riding his bike today. And he did need someone to help lift him up. I am thinking a trike is in his future. Or maybe training wheels.
Get a job. Any job. Show up and work. Don't complain. If they suck, give notice.
Get another job. Don't complain. Work twice as hard. Repeat until it works.
In this economy, there are no excuses. Pay your fucking bills on time. Don't complain. Show up rested, clean, and ready.
The Wise Latina just assumes because someone has a problem someone else has an obligation to remedy the problem.
And an old local reference from about 1948
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bootstrap
Operation Bootstrap (Spanish: Operación Manos a la Obra) is the name given to a series of projects which transformed the economy of Puerto Rico into an industrial and developed one. The federal government of the United States together with what is known today as the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company set forth a series of ambitious economical projects that evolved Puerto Rico into an industrial high-income territory. Bootstrap is still considered the economic model of Puerto Rico as the island has still not been able to evolve into a knowledge economy.
John LGBTQ Henry
I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
Winston Churchill
As with jokes, metaphors can die on the dissecting table.
"Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" is/was a humorous way of telling someone to tough it out, to buck up, to persevere, to keep on keepin' on.
Dunno if Clarence Thomas said everyone "can" pull up their bootstraps, or whether everyone "should".
I suspect the latter, as Thomas has repeatedly stressed his grandfather's insistence on not letting the world (or "the man") hold him back when he was a kid.
I think the bootstrap metaphor is akin to Admiral McRaven. If you want to improve your life, start by pulling on the bootstraps to put your boots on and get to work.
In the New Testament John the Baptist says something like: my baptizing work is very important, but when I think of "the one" who will come after me (who turns out to be Jesus), I think I am not worthy to carry his sandals [or untie the strap on his sandals; the work of a slave]. I am mixing and matching from five different sources: three synoptic gospels, John, and Acts. A work ethic person might say: you have to learn to carry your own sandals, or tie and untie your own straps. A welfare state person might say: many people who say this have had a lot of help with their sandals, and the welfare state can help those who need help.
The Huffington Post says that the original meaning of the phrase in the 19th century was to do something impossible. By the 1920s, Britons were using it to ridicule the American idea of the self-made man, but it looks like Americans took back the expression with pride. In the 1940s, "Operation Bootstrap" was the English translation of Operación Manos a la Obra, Puerto Rico's economic development program, and that gave the expression new currency.
And an old local reference from about 1948
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bootstrap
Operation Bootstrap (Spanish: Operación Manos a la Obra) is the name given to a series of projects which transformed the economy of Puerto Rico into an industrial and developed one. The federal government of the United States together with what is known today as the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company set forth a series of ambitious economical projects that evolved Puerto Rico into an industrial high-income territory. Bootstrap is still considered the economic model of Puerto Rico as the island has still not been able to evolve into a knowledge economy.
John LGBTQ Henry
Some people like Sotomayor can't even see their bootstraps because they're too fat.
Some people like Sotomayor can't even see their bootstraps because they're too fat.
“It’s an idiom and idioms are always right.”
—William Safire
“A bootstrap loader loads in a very primitive program to load in a more complex program to load in the whole system. The metaphor works with that interpretation. Start with fundamentals to start a more complex attack to revise the whole situation”
Ahhh! Fond memories. Just over a half century ago I was introduced to Bootstrap Loaders. We had an HP 2000C (I think). The bootstrap loader was in protected memory, with the protection enabled with a switch. At one point, The prof deleted it, and we had to key it in, (literally) bit by bit. You would flip, I believe, 16 switches, then hit “load”, and the bits you just set would go into the next memory location. Rinse and repeat until the entire Bootstrap Loader has been installed into sequential locations in memory. What it consisted of was setting up several registers, issuing a Read request for the paper tape reader, and then transferring control to the first instruction read into memory from the paper tape, after te Read request was complete.
Argument by metaphor is usually unproductive because people wind up arguing the metaphor and not the actual proposition. I'll concede that it is impossible for someone to literally pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but even the people who argue the metaphor would probably concede that the meaning of the saying is that with hard work, people can solve their own economic problems. The other metaphor I see argued frequently is "A few bad apples." This is usually brought up when there has been misconduct in an organization and someone is trying to point out the malfeasance was just carried out by a small number of people and is not endemic in the organization. But people point out that the whole saying is a "A few bad apples spoils the bunch." This is also literally true. When apples or any fruit ripen and rot they release ethylene which causes other fruit to ripen and rot themselves. "The lady doth protest too much," also has a different popular meaning than it's original. In the play, when Hamlet says that to his mother he is being sarcastic and protest means something more like promise. He is sarcastically telling his mother that it is too much to promise that a widowed queen stay faithful to her late husband. Now the saying is taken to mean if someone complains or protests very loudly about an accusation then that is a sign that that person really is guilty as accused.
So I guess I agree that finding a different saying would be beneficial because it really does risk people arguing the metaphor and not the underlying idea. And I think the underlying idea is largely true. If a person is in a bad financial situation hard work by that person is usually the best solution to their problem. Though it isn't a guarantee that success will follow. Maybe instead of a saying of how one can succeed through individual hard work there was instead a warning against the most dangerous plan, which is to simply wait for someone else to come and rescue you from that situation. I did a quick search for sayings on the dangers of waiting. The best one I saw in that short time was "Waiting is the great vocation of the dispossessed." I kind of like it. Though it lacks the imagery and positivity of the bootstraps saying, but I suppose beggars can't be choosers.
Since nobody but the CDO (it's supposed to be in alphabetical order) community misses that it's a metaphor for helping yourself, it's hardly contentious.
It's sort of like, "A helping hand is at the end of your arm," which everybody knows would be useless were there nothing for said hand out there to grab or otherwise use.
More often than not, I hear the bootstraps image used by people on the left to criticize the views of people on the right. It is true that you cannot pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but you can pull your boots up by their bootstraps. I suspect lefties want to eliminate bootstraps altogether, like they are getting rid of standardized tests because black students don't do well enough on them and Asian students do too well.
mikee at 10:16 has it:
"OTHER PEOPLE say Thomas believes in bootstrapping to success. Thomas hasn't said it, that I found. "
An uncharitable characterization of an opponents philosophy. More likely to be used mockingly, like "trickle down economics".
BTW, once time I jumped off a wall and grabbed my suspenders at the shoulder. It kept me from hitting the ground - so maybe it works after all.
If using the metaphor as a criticism of someone's philosophy of self reliance, wouldn't it be a correct usage?
Churchill's variant on “by your bootstraps” has been quoted above. Another similarly impossible metaphor can be seen in some fantasy movies (e.g., Time Bandits, Barbarella) where aboard a ship they run a fan as well as sails — either of which can work fine by itself (blowing out back, in the case of the fan — and if there's wind, in the case of sails) — but instead of doing that, they run the fan blowing into the sails.
Just as all really trying to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps is going to accomplish is to break your shoelaces — or your bones! — so all the fan-blowing-into-sails methodology can ultimately do (other than waste energy) is tear your ship apart. (Before that happens, if the sails are inefficient and spill a lot of air, then the fans may drive you backwards a ways despite the sails.)
Wasn't there an old comedian who said something like "Pull ourselves up by our bootstraps? We didn't even have boots!"
I'd have to agree that argument by metaphor is pointless, counterproductive, and a distraction.
we had an example today :
Biden fell off his bike >>>
was he able to pull himself up by his boot-straps?
Secret Service helped him!
on instructions from Sonia
engineers : consider this >>>
what if pulling on boot-strap is technique for storing energy [a la coiled spring]
which can be released to effect straighen up [no more is implied]
This is very hurtful to people with neither hands nor feet.
Have a heart.
Wait, that's hurtful to people without...
Wise Latinas prefer to be given a handout, or to be chosen as a quota hire...
it's impossible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps
This just in.
Joe’s daughter was known to pull herself up by his jockstrap. It’s in the diary.
Tina@11:50
Work that up as a grant proposal. I see untold $tax on the way to you!
The bootstraps saying is an imperfect metaphor, granted. The only boots "liberals" and other statists like is the one Orwell mentions, stamping on the human face forever.
You can pull your left foot up and place it on the first step. Pull your right foot up and place it on the second step. Continue on, making upward progress.
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