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Fancy That – America Is An Individualistic Nation

She wouldn’t pass the Facebook truth in advertising test

This rather makes the progressives choke on their granola – America is an individualistic nation. The observation here is specifically that in the times of the virus folks just wouldn’t do as they were told by all those clever people in government:

America’s biggest mistake in fighting Covid-19 began with an assumption made long before the virus behind the pandemic first appeared in humans.

In the federal government’s previous pandemic playbook, the initial actions taken by President Donald Trump’s administration, and advice given by experts, there was a common theme: that America would come together against a major national threat, helping put it down collectively.

As it turns out Americans are rather more individualistic than that. Quite why this is a surprise among those who quit every other nation – or were thrown out of, to taste – to then found America is hard to grasp. This is rather the point of America, to be individual, not collective.

The proposed solution is that something must change:

One way to fix these problems would be to try to make Americans more collectivistic.

Well, good luck with that, cultures are rather more difficult to change than people tend to think. The other thing that could be done is to take note of this:

Whenever collective action is called for, Americans don’t do it — or, at the very least, don’t do it sufficiently. America is too politicized, fractured, and, above all, individualistic for a collective move to save it.

Well, OK:

It was ultimately an acknowledgment: America is an individualistic nation, and a progressive administration alone can’t change that.

How about taking that to heart more generally? It’s not a collective sorta place, it’s an individual one. So, stop trying to govern it like its a colony of ants that will all perform their particular function and no other. Run the system as if it’s actually for a series of individuals each with their own different desires then.

This would mean shooting most of the bureaucracy of course. That in itself would be fun. But the most important step would be to devolve power down. As, actually, the system was originally intended to do. While this all sounds a bit posse comitatus it is actually true that the essential political and legal unit is the county, with the State above that. The Feds are there to deal with foreigners and the Navy – maybe these days the Army too. So, return to that system.

The Federal government gets 3 to 5% of everything to pay the Pentagon and the diplomats. Everything else – including all welfare, pensions and so on – gets done at those lower levels of the political structure. Because that’s how individualistic places get goverend successfully.

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jgh
jgh
3 years ago

They’re trying to refound the USSR 30 years after it died? Are these people children who have never read anything? Most of the 20th century was America fighting against the un-American foreign threat of collectivisation.

But, as ever, if *you* want to collectivise, go ahead and do so… to *yourself*, it’s your life, nobody’s stopping you.

Spike
Spike
3 years ago

Damn! we won’t just pull together, when the best minds in the Parasite Sector assure us that hospitals are going to be piling corpses in the closet, based on one study from Imperial College and another from U. Washington and the inconvenience would only last for two weeks! With “deaths” skewed by a cash payment and “cases” without symptoms or contagiousness! So on the back of this we are to give the liars yet more power to herd us?

Barks
Barks
3 years ago

When does this “fixing” of the bureaucracy begin. There’s an ammo shortage right now so it may be an extended exercise. More good fun then.

john77
john77
3 years ago
Reply to  Barks

I see just below Barks’ comment there is an advert for a pretty vicious “kitchen knife” – it would get more use in an abbattoir.
Is this deliberate?

Jon Jermey
Jon Jermey
3 years ago

Where does slavery and institutionalised racial discrimination fit into the hierarchy?

Last edited 3 years ago by Jon Jermey
TD
TD
3 years ago

Americans are a bit cantankerous. Even in my family, who came as immigrants when we were children, have tended to absorb the trait. People elsewhere should give their inner rebel a bit of a try – they might find they like it.

Snarkus
Snarkus
3 years ago

So return to the days of local parish welfare ? Perhaps, except in the poorest parishes. Sounds like 16th century administrations. Taxes to feed waster kings and their parasites, keep the Navy afloat and an army of sorts to quell the riots. Wont work with the Hero Myth so deeply embedded in the culture. When I see Marvel and Disney go broke it might work in some form

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