The Ties That Blind









Since moving to the US in 2002 (from Canada), I am constantly and persistently amazed at the power that these "American" myths hold on everyday Americans. It seems to me that as long as these myths persist, it will be very difficult to advance progressive causes. Unfortunately, belief in these myths are not restricted to Republicans and Libertarians. I have discussions, with many otherwise mainstream Democrats, who still believe in American exceptionalism, don't realize that affordable access to health services and education should be rights and not privileges.

So let's talk about the decline in social mobility. That myth persists, but our poor have a much lower chance of escaping their poverty than people do in Europe. That needs to be drummed home.

I, as a guy forced to read some of Horatio Alger's dreadful potboilers as a kid, feel the need to attack the author at every opportunity. Whenever anyone uses "a Horatio Alger" story for someone pulling themselves 'up by their own bootstraps', they aren't reflecting the REAL Horatio Alger's sordid history or the way his character's rose in the world. (e.g. this piece on Elizabeth Warren "The candidate who is accused of instigating class warfare seems like she has stepped out of a Horatio Alger story.")
This is wrong:the real Horatio Alger was a defrocked Unitarian minister in Brewster MA, caught sexually abusing boys in 1866, who would move to New York and turn out over 130-odd formulaic and eerily similar novels where a handsome young boy with 'pluck' , homeless in the big city, would 'meet cute' a rich man (in 'Ragged Dick.or Street Life in New York with the Bootblacks', handsome young Dick, who want to be successful, saves a merchant's drowning child) who sets him up in a position...The success is not from hard work, but luck and catching the eye of a patron. They become not rich generally, but middle class and respectable. Yes, they practice thrift and hard work and self-improvement (unlike 'unmanly, soft, effeminate' slackers, who are not so good looking), but luck, in the form of a powerful older man is the real key to advancement in Alger's writing.

Alger seems to have been "a tireless advocate for the homeless" (mostly boys) and a serial pedophile... See
An interesting, if not entirely convincing take on the Horatio Alger myth is:

So the "Horatio Alger Story" is not success through hard work, but luck and attracting the wealthy patronl, with a sexual subtext of abuse of boys....

The greatest irony is that there would be very, very few jobs in America right now if it wasn't for Cold War-era military R&D spending. All of these Tumblrs and most of these right-wing websites exist on the Apache webserver on the Internet. There would be no Tumblr, no Apache, and no Internet without government spending. Also, most newly created jobs available today, since the decline of American manufacturing, are jobs created by the Internet.

The Internet came from Cold War-era ARPA/DARPA spending (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). The Apache server is the successor to the NCSA web server, created at the University of Illinois using not just public university dollars, but also grants from the National Science Foundation. Without these public investments that gave our country a huge head start in the cyber economy, it is clear that American unemployment would be MUCH higher indeed.

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