Rugged individualism: America’s favorite foundational origin myth
next to a totally of-age Pocahontas
definitely consenting to be a colonist’s child bride.
I’m Francesca Fiorentini and in this episode of Newsbroke,
we’re looking at how some Americans’ obsession with individual freedom
over the well-being of the entire country has meant we lead the world in COVID cases,
and why individual freedom is in fact a myth.
So where does it come from,
who gains by continuing to peddle it
and what the hell is a bootstrap?
Newsbroke is back.
Again.
And last year, we talked about American exceptionalism
– that stubborn belief that the United States is number one
– but boy did we really outdo ourselves with the coronavirus.
Just take a look at this animated bar chart
of what has happened since we aired our last episode.
[motivational music]
Stop, stop, stop!
Why is the music to the final scene of every athlete’s biopic playing?
We don’t want to win this race.
Turn around!
A lot has been said about how other countries have managed to stop the spread of COVID
by prioritizing mass testing, isolation and quarantine,
contact tracing, having competent leadership and I dunno, listening to scientists.
Things that the U.S. has failed to do
to the point where other countries are banning us from visiting.
Which is ironic ‘cause travel bans are kind of our thing.
But there’s something deeper going on in this country
– what international observers might call a cultural problem.
That is, the belief that following even the most basic health protocols
is somehow infringing on Americans’ individual freedom.
We’ve seen it with the endless smartphone footage
of defiant, maskless shoppers, which proved
Hot Girl Summer was officially replaced by Krazy Karen Midsommar.
But we’ve also heard it from Republican politicians,
Fox News and the president.
Will you consider a national mandate that people need to wear masks?
No, I want people to have a certain freedom.
I’m very reluctant to mandate wearing a mask.
We just believe in freedoms in Oklahoma.
Lockdowns and other emergency powers are going to be used
whenever government needs to get you to bend
and otherwise relinquish your rights for “the greater good.”
Yeah, it’s not about your rights. You don’t have any rights anymore.
You have to wear a mask when you’re alone in the woods,
walking with no one near you in the park, while running, riding your bike.
Is there any science behind this whatsoever?
Yes, there’s science behind it, you professionally disingenuous buffoon.
But Tucker Carlson alone in the woods does beg the question:
If a tree falls on a blowhard in the forest and no one is around to hear it,
how many MyPillows does it sell?
And while most Americans say they do wear masks regularly,
the biggest reason for those who don’t
is because of their so-called “right as an American” not to.
Is it now?
Man, you gotta wonder:
Have Americans always been this petty when it comes
to putting aside our individual comfort for Laura Ingraham’s dreaded greater good?
Yes and no.
During World War II, the entire nation banded together
to do things like collect metal from their homes to build weapons,
and obeyed food, gas and alcohol rations to help the war effort.
Can you imagine us doing that now?
Or would we see hordes of Karens outside of Outback Steakhouse going:
First they came for the Bloomin’ Onion appetizer
and I said nothing
‘cause I am more of a Kookaburra Wings girl.
And then they came for the Outback signature steak
and I am on keto!
Even Donald Duck played a part in the propaganda
encouraging people to pay taxes for the war effort.
Every dollar you sock away for taxes
is another dollar to sock the Axis.
[laughter]
For it is your taxes,
my taxes,
our taxes that run the factories.
Taxes will keep democracy on the march!
Wow, that is compelling.
Almost as compelling as this clip of Daffy Duck hitting Hitler with a mallet.
[speaking German]
[screaming]
Good old Daffy.
The original antifa.
But unlike World War II, we can’t bomb the coronavirus.
If we could, we would have accidentally
bombed a hospital within 100 miles of it by now.
But the number of lives lost without a war
closely resembles another distinctly American problem
that we also can’t get under control:
gun deaths.
The U.S. is once again a global outlier because of our resistance to gun control.
More than 30,000 people are killed by firearms each year,
the U.S. leads the world in mass shootings,
and preschoolers do active shooter drills
because a few Americans want the freedom [growing motivational music]
to own guns designed for mass murder
– why is this music playing?
And whenever we have the gun debate,
the same argument of “individual freedom”
is used to stop progress.
One study found a correlation between attitudes about guns
and attitudes about individualism.
That makes sense since, for decades,
the NRA has been pushing the narrative that gun control advocates
“hate individual freedom.”
The study also found that the strongest predictor of individualistic attitudes
is whiteness, wealth and … testicles.
Which coincidentally is the strongest predictor
of being on Jeffrey Epstein’s flight log.
Dead giveaway.
[laughter]
But it makes sense that a belief in individualism correlates
to race, class and gender because individual rights
are applied and enforced very unequally in this country.
Black and brown Americans experience their individual rights
policed or taken away on a daily basis.
Like Jacob Blake being shot in the back by police seven times
while a self-appointed teenage vigilante with an assault rifle
is offered a bottle of water by police just before killing two protesters.
Or the fact that federal officers have been called on unarmed BLM demonstrators,
while far paler protesters in Michigan show up like this
to the state Capitol and officers there are like,
I better call for backup and make sure nobody messes
with their freedom.
The fact that individual freedom has never been
equally applied in this country is the first clue that it’s a myth.
But when did Americans’ understanding of freedom imply individual freedom only?
As author and professor Ibram X. Kendi writes,
Because “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” wasn’t followed by the words,
“no matter who it hurts – f*ck b*tches, get money.”
But slaveholders before the Civil War argued
that that’s exactly what the Constitution meant.
They believed it protected their right to enslave.
Because they considered slaves property
and believed their property rights were more important
than the individual rights of the enslaved.
Which may explain why today, some white people
are more mad at a Target burning down
than the police murder of Black Americans.
Somehow.
Struggles like the civil rights movement have historically fought
to expand the idea of individual freedom in America
to truly apply to all individuals – the entire country as a whole,
not just a privileged few
– and have met consistent pushback from the white, I mean right.
I mean white?
But American individualism has also been sold to us as the ability
to start from nothing, work hard and make it big all by yourself.
And you hear it championed using a very particular phrase:
When you’re going through a hard time,
you pick yourself up by your bootstraps.
The ability for people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
It’s very patronizing actually to say that the people that are homeless now
or the people that are poor now
couldn’t have that same story,
that if they got a job, and they were able
to pull themselves up by the bootstraps,
that they couldn’t become the next Bezos
or they couldn’t become the next Steve Jobs.
Yeah, just think of all the billionaires who started out homeless.
Ok, there’s
ALADDIN!
That phrase, “pull yourself up by the bootstraps,”
is commonly used to mean help yourself, do it alone.
And that’s what I thought it meant too, until I heard this:
You know this idea,
this metaphor of a bootstrap started off as a joke.
The whole thing is a joke!
She’s right.
When it was first used back in 1834, it was used as a joke.
It was an expression that actually meant
to try and do something completely absurd, something impossible.
Think about it,
you can’t pull yourself up by your boots.
What would that even —
[straining]
Am I doing it?
Telling someone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps
is about as sincere as telling someone to climb the corporate ladder by
planting a beanstalk.
Just make sure you water it every day.
And yet the bootstraps myth persists.
As recently as 2011, nearly 90% of Americans said that hard work and ambition,
not the circumstances of a person’s birth, are the key determinants of success.
If only.
In fact, there’s more economic mobility in countries like Canada, Denmark, France
or other places I’ve looked into relocating to if Trump gets reelected.
OK, so what about the idea of the American dream,
the achievement of our individual freedom?
That term has also been totally twisted and misinterpreted.
The author James Truslow Adams first wrote about the “American dream”
as a response to the obsession with money and material wealth of the Gilded Age.
The dream wasn’t to become like the ultra rich robber barons,
it was a dream for equality, democracy and justice.
University of London Professor Sarah Churchwell says the American dream
was further warped during the Cold War,
when consumerist capitalism became synonymous with Americanness
as a response to the communist Soviet Union.
Wow, that’s what the American dream means?
This is the worst game of historical telephone ever.
What else have we misinterpreted?
Next you’re gonna tell me the Louisiana Purchase
was actually just a giant bowl of gumbo.
So why do we keep holding onto these ideas of individual freedom that cost lives,
are never applied fairly and have been wildly misunderstood?
Because it’s a brilliant myth to blame people for their own problems
– their poverty, their debt, even their death.
And you’d want to do that if extreme inequality is kind of working out for you.
If you’re, say, the world’s largest company
that employs the largest private workforce,
which you subject to anti-union videos like this:
Believe me, joining a union isn’t something I ever want to do again.
Here you can get ahead based on your own performance.
I am in control of my own career.
Yeah, there’s no one more in control of their own career like a retail worker.
They don’t answer to a union
– they only answer to a shift manager,
floor manager,
store manager,
market manager,
support manager,
assistant manager,
co-manager,
asset protection manager
and Karen who would like to speak to all of those managers
because you’re asking her to wear a mask.
The myth works if you’re Andy Puzder, the former CEO of Carl’s Junior,
who was almost Trump’s labor secretary,
and is not just against unions but workers getting sick leave,
overtime pay and raising the minimum wage to even $10 an hour.
Over the past seven years,
we’ve seen a disturbing move away from individual responsibility
and reliance on free markets to a dependence on government.
Whenever government gives you something, it takes something from you.
Your independence, your freedom.
It’s like I always say: When you’re dying of thirst in the desert,
being given water only takes away your drive to survive,
and your freedom to see the mirage of an oasis
that will only disappear the closer you get.
The myth works if you’re a Republican politician trying to take away
a government program as moderate as the Affordable Care Act.
With President Trump’s leadership,
Obamacare’s gonna be replaced with something that actually works,
something that’s built on freedom and individual responsibility.
Yeah, freedom and individual responsibility from the guy who isn’t allowed
to dine with another woman unless his wife is present.
Wookay.
The myth of individual freedom helps the wealthy keep hoarding.
And it allows those in government to keep cutting the social safety net.
Meanwhile, our warped idea of the American dream is the carrot at the end of the stick
that makes us believe that hey,
maybe one day we too will find a magic lamp in a cave and it’ll have a genie inside
and maybe we’ll get to see a whole new world or whatever.
But probably definitely not.
Which brings us back to COVID.
America’s failure to stop the coronavirus proves that we need a new definition of freedom.
I’m not talking about the freedom to get a haircut.
I’m talking about the most fundamental freedoms
that have been denied for far too long:
The freedom from infection,
the freedom from death.
Exactly.
Especially when millions of children are not free to go to school,
parents are not free to work
– not because Democratic governors won’t allow it,
but because we’re being told that the individual freedom of an ignorant beefcake
that wants to flex maskless in Costco is more important
than our entire nation’s freedom to not die.
What about our collective freedom
– to go outside, to breathe clean air, drink clean water,
to live in a community free of gun violence,
to own a home and be able to stay in it.
Our very survival depends on reclaiming American freedom from the powerful.
They’ve been bastardizing it for far too long.
[motivational music plays] That was the perfect use of that music. Finally!
Thanks so much for watching Newsbroke!
Or my TED Talk.
Or PhD thesis or whatever that was.
It was long, and you're here
and that's all that matters.
Let me know in the comments what you think of this idea
of individual freedom vs. community freedom.
Can we ever reconcile the two?
Let me know, and we will see you next week.
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