I find it sad, no, tragic, how “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” has convinced so many people to vote against their own wellbeing. I also find it tragic how race still dominates our backward view of social order. I have no simple answers to economic inequality, white privilege, and overt, ugly racism, but it seems that our elected officials should have enough commonsense to “pull their heads out of their asses”, and “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”.