Wage Slave Rebellion

The official language is bound up with the state, both in its genesis and in its social uses. It is in the process of state formation that the conditions are created for the constitution of a unified linguistic market, dominated by the official language. Obligatory on official occasions and in official places (schools, public administrations, political institutions, etc.), this state language becomes the theoretical norm against which all linguistic practices are objectively measured. Ignorance is no excuse; this linguistic law has its body of jurists - the grammarians - and its agents of regulation and imposition - the teachers - who are empowered universally to subject the linguistic performance of speaking subjects to examination and to the legal sanction of academic qualification .

… the socialization of boys regarding masculinity is often at the expense of women. I came to realize that we don’t raise boys to be men, we raise them not to be women (or gay men). We teach boys that girls and women are “less than” and that leads to violence by some and silence by many. It’s important for men to stand up to not only stop men’s violence against women but, to teach young men a broader definition of masculinity that includes being empathetic, loving and non-violent.

That the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that the ‘war on terror’ will last at least another decade (or two) is vastly more significant than all three of this week’s big media controversies (Benghazi, IRS, and AP/DOJ) combined. The military historian Andrew Bacevich has spent years warning that US policy planners have adopted an explicit doctrine of ‘endless war’. Obama officials, despite repeatedly boasting that they have delivered permanently crippling blows to al-Qaida, are now, as clearly as the English language permits, openly declaring this to be so. It is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it is precisely this endless war - justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism - that is the single greatest cause of that threat.

Their sense of entitlement. Their sense that the world is their oyster, their home, their castle. It no longer feels like “this land was made for you and me,” as Woody Guthrie sang, but for somebody else. They’re tired of “being made to feel like losers,” as many of them put it. They’re tired of feeling that the game is over before they’ve even started to play. They’re tired of putting the damned toilet seat down every time, of saying “he or she” on their term papers, of calling people of color “people of color.” They’re tired of feeing like there is no mobility—or, if there is, someone else is climbing over them on the ladder of success. They want to escape to a world where men rule and where reality doesn’t get in the way.