Liberal rhetoric has inverted Kennedy’s dreaming from a virtue into a shame

Evidence

“I would feel ashamed if I didn’t deal with the way that the world is, not simply dream of the way the world I would like it to be”: capitalist realism in a nutshell. (An unfortunate echo of Bobby Kennedy’s famous slogan: “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.” See how, under pressure from capitalist realism, the rhetoric of mainstream liberalism has inverted.) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1547

Categorization

• CANDY: A neat, quotable inversion: Kennedy’s ‘I dream things that never were’ now condemned by a mainstream liberal as mere ‘student dreaming.’
• SEED: Potential essay angle: tracing how the rhetoric of aspiration and imagination flipped sides between 1960s liberalism and its neoliberal heirs.
• XREF: connects to: Trumpism inverted liberal aversion to cruelty into a celebrated virtue — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 436; LBJ invoked Kennedy’s memory to pass a bill Kennedy had not prioritized — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 969

Broader Connections

• Trumpism inverted liberal aversion to cruelty into a celebrated virtue #expands (0.95) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 436
• LBJ invoked Kennedy’s memory to pass a bill Kennedy had not prioritized #exemplifies (0.70) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 969