The Collective Failure of Rugged Individualism
We're in this together.
It's a phrase we hear time and time again through thick and thin. It's a phrase that evokes a common purpose or goal to be achieved. Togetherness. Unity. It's an expression that whatever it is we hope to achieve cannot be done by one individual alone. Whatever the result might be is one that will be achieved collectively rather than individually. It's a sense that there is something out there bigger than ourselves.
Over the past decade, I'm become gradually aware of both local and national politics. For me, the interest piqued in 2008 when I cast my first presidential ballot for Barack Obama. As a student of history, I found his story to be inspiring: from his humble beginnings to an Ivy League education to work as a community organizer to becoming a state senator to becoming an overnight sensation, Barack Obama led a life that I saw as only possible in a country like the United States. From being raised by a single mother to becoming the first person of color to lead the Harvard Law Review to winning a primary against the powerhouse that was Hillary Clinton, Obama in many ways defied the odds. Yet through his unlikely rise to stardom, he never lost sight of the fact that he had a support system in place that got him to where he was. From his grandparents' guidance to attending college via student loans to his campaign and eventually White House staff to his partner Michelle and her extended family, Barack Obama never failed to mention just how important it was to have that support system in place. Despite all the barriers he broke, Barack Obama insists that it was never about him, it was about us.
Flash forward 12 years and we are currently facing the worst public health crisis in our nation's history. We are at 277,000 deaths and 14.1 million COVID-19 infections and counting. We are losing the equivalent of a single 9/11 every day. We have North Dakota with the four highest COVID death rate in the world. We have schools resorting back to online learning. We have the nation's most-populous state considering a statewide lockdown. And through it all, we have a squatter in the White House who, like everything in his life, simply gave up when things got too hard. The question through it all is how exactly did the United States, with 4% of the world's population, end up with 18% of all worldwide COVID-19 deaths?
The answer: Republican ideology.
The Republican Party of 2020 is a political party hellbent on the antiquated notion of rugged individualism. That a person can succeed as long as he tries hard. It's a sentiment they love to share with their voters and it works because Republican voters actually believe it. They actually believe that they are not successful because they aren't working hard enough. It's why they are so drawn to Donald Trump, someone they believe "made it rich" as they say. It's the type of messaging that works with working-class White voters because it creates an unrealistic sense that if they only worked a bit harder then they would be successful. It puts the onus on them rather than the politicians.
Which is exactly the way it was intended. After all, blaming oneself for not working hard is a lot easier than blaming systemic inequality. Republicans love the rugged individual bullshit because it not only keeps their voters spinning their wheels but it also keeps them from requesting help from their government. Not only that, but they have been taught to actively distrust a government that is actually trying to help them. Sure, they'll lap up their social security checks. But try to force socialized health care on them? Hell no! Being a rugged individual means staying clear of big, bad, government at all costs. America was founded by explorers and cowboys that ruled the west. Government never told them where to go so why should government tell us what to do today?
What Republicans refuse to acknowledge is that they have been helped time and time again by big, bad government. The 20th century alone saw government programs create jobs and financial security during the Great Depression. It saw the GI Bill provide a college education for our returning WWII soldiers. It saw Medicare take affect in the mid-1960s. These same Republicans clamoring for big bad government to leave them alone are more than willing to accept a government check in their latter years when they're no longer employed. Of course, in their minds it's not a handout but rather an "earned" benefit they're accepting and they use that twisted logic to gleefully cash those checks each and every month. Such is the life of an anti-government Republican.
The problem is that rugged individualism has always been a myth. From the earliest days of the pilgrims, it should be clear to anyone with half a brain that we need others to survive. It's literally the reason why we celebrate Thanksgiving. A bunch of ill-equipped White settlers would have died if the local Native Americans hadn't taken pity on them and kept them alive. But the exploitation of others for Whites' survival doesn't end there. Wealthy plantation owners? They succeeded and acquired generational wealth through the exploitation of their army of slaves. Those rugged cowboys? They were given land grants by the United States government to take over the former lands of Native Americans. Modern farmers? They've been kept financially afloat by farm subsidies solely because they're an overwhelmingly White community. The whole notion of rugged individualism is only possible when viewed through the eyes of a White man and even then, you have to ignore a whole lot of history to actually believe it.
The problem with this ideology, as we've come to see, is that there is no sense of purpose beyond oneself. It's written in the name individulism: to serve the singular person. Republicans don't see that social security check as part of a larger system where millions of hard-working Americans have contributed to for 40 or 50 years. They see it as something they are personally entitled to receive. They have no sense of the collective effort it took to get them those monthly checks keeping them alive. They see it as an earned benefit that they have earned and nobody else. After all, it's got their name on it, so it must for them and them only. It is in this way that Republicans see government as only useful when it benefits them personally and nobody else.
Which leads us to today. What we have is a death cult led by an failed fascist. Today's Republicans blindly accept Trump's authoritarian instincts while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of local and statewide-elected Democrats. What we're seeing is the 40% of Trump supporters falling back on their rugged individual instincts to do as they please, regardless of any sort of collective goodwill needed during these times. It's why Republican governors refuse to implement mask mandates. It's why Republican elected officials refuse to wear masks on the House or Senate floor. It's why we have Republican bar and restaurant owners defying local ordinances and risking fines and arrest to keep their businesses open. And it's why we have Republican families openly gathering during the holidays despite ever-rising COVID-19 cases throughout the country.
What Republicans call rugged individualism is actually selfishness. It's egoism. It's the sense that they and only they matter. At a time in our nation's history when we need to put political differences aside, Republicans have shown their true colors and given America a collective fuck you to every man, woman, and child outside their immediate family. By not wearing a mask, by defying ordinances, by bending the knee to a soon-to-be New York state inmate, Republicans have made the message loud and clear that their adherence to a mythical sense of individualism is more important than the safety and wellbeing of you, of me, of our first responders, of our doctors and nurses, of our frontline workers, of our teachers, of our grandparents, and of our immunocompromised friends and neighbors. They're saying that they'd rather die for freedom then wear a mask for 20 minutes at Walmart. That is someone you simply cannot reason with. That is someone who doesn't care about his or her community. And that is someone who cannot be trusted to do the right thing.
That's the point in our nation's history at which we've arrived. Dying of COVID to own the libs. There's an ever-growing list of Evangelical pastors who have preached against masks who have died due to COVID. Herman Cain passed away to please Derp Fuhrer in Tulsa. Multiple anti-mask Republican senators have been infected and forced to quarantine including Rand Paul, Rick Scott, and Chuck Grassley. It's a disease that doesn't give two shits about your rugged individualism. It doesn't care about your underground sex party. It doesn't care about your holiday get together. It doesn't care about your Sturgis bike rally. It doesn't care that you just have to get to Applebee's or the hair salon. It doesn't care that you're a quarterback for the Denver Broncos. It doesn't care if you work at the White House. It even doesn't care if you're the denier-in-chief. Everyone is fair game during a pandemic.
In a few months' time, we will have access to a vaccine. Joe Biden will equitably distribute the vaccine, starting with those most in need. Knowing this, we can be eternally grateful. But we can not and should not forgive and forget just how much worse this pandemic was due to Republican intransigence. That the "pro-life" party willingly killed hundreds of thousands of their fellow Americans to willingly appease their pitiful Pied Piper as he lead us all off the proverbial cliff. That Republican elected officials ignored scientists and experts for their own political game. That the entire Republican Party that warned us about death panels in 2010 deliberately chose practices and procedures that intentionally killed American citizens in 2020. That when the cards were on the table and all we had to do was come together, Republicans chose to protect their own political lives rather than the lives of their fellow Americans.
And in turn saved their own hides rather than the lives of their constituents.