Pigs All the Way Down

Pigs All the Way Down

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‘Pigs all the way down.’ Michelle Goldberg’s Sept 24, 2018 NY Times OpEd

The anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1926 – 2006) provides the following anecdote about Indian cosmology in his book The Interpretation of Cultures (1973:28-29)

There is an Indian story – at least I heard it as an Indian story – about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked, what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle?

“Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down.”

In her NY Times Op Ed today, Michelle Goldberg offers her version of that trope— exemplified by Brett Kavanaugh — whose nomination to the Supreme Court illustrates the sad reality that our society rests on a foundation of miscreant white privilege — Pigs all the way down. www.nytimes.com/…

Watching all this unfold is radicalizing for reasons far beyond Republican mistreatment of Kavanaugh’s accusers. His story shows, in lurid microcosm, how a certain class of men guard and perpetuate their privileges. Women who struggle ceaselessly to be smart enough, attractive enough, ambitious enough and likable enough have been playing a rigged game. As they realize that, their incandescent fury is remaking our politics. We’ll know things have changed when palling around with sexual abusers carries more stigma than being abused does.

Ms. Goldberg’s piece is worthy of study and sober reflection.

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