Since the dawn of manifest destiny, the “American way” has always been about building it bigger, building it better, and building it for our own personal gains.
“So what if this is ancient, sacred land that you and your ancestors have been living on for thousands of years,” says the white man (circa 1492 to present), “we’re gonna take it, and we’re gonna make it ours, and it’s going to be great! Well, for us of course- sorry Native Americans.”
Mixing the idea that we as individuals should work towards gaining personal wealth with the more unified, nationalist concept that we should work towards building a nationwide wealth, has left America in an unfortunately selfish capitalistic state. The wealthy want to stay wealthy, and thus they unsympathetically allow the poor to stay poor. And in a government like our own, the wealthy have the upper hand and the poor are last on the list for those given the opportunity to rise.
As I watched the past election, I took great note of those who voted for our current POTUS: those with a good amount of money, and those with little-to-no economic grounding. All social issues aside, the general concern among these two groups was that they would, under a democratic government, have to either: A) give money to the middle-to-lower class or B) give money to immigrants, the only members of American society who have it worse off than the poor. In both scenarios, the common ground is the desire to avoid giving. Giving, an action commonly practiced during the Christmas months and commemorated on the last Thursday of November, is generally considered a good thing to do. However, it appears to have taken on negative connotations in the majority’s political and social ideology, and unfortunately many groups in the world, but specifically in our country, find that giving often results in a loss of personal possession, and thus just simply isn’t worth the trouble.
Taxes get cut, and schools lose funding and infrastructure crumbles, and how does this concern a multimillionaire who has a personal landscaper and pays the tuition for his children to go to private school? It doesn’t. Taxes get cut, and the attendees of that school lose funding and thus don’t grow up to get a proper education. They grow up struggling to find jobs and to get by, and they grow up thinking,“Well, if nobody was here to help me when I was struggling and I turned out alright, why should I return the favor?”
While neither are necessarily wrong, neither are they well-informed or with any sort of moral justification. This is nothing new, as mentioned earlier, Americans have been building wealth with zero regard for the less fortunate since the humble beginnings of America- just look at slavery. But we as a society, have grown and developed, and while we’re supposedly working towards bridging the gap between various factions of society, America will remain divided, both socially and economically, if the furthest ends of the American economic spectrum won’t recognize and find a common ground.
Look at what happened with healthcare. The Affordable Care Act attempted to make healthcare more universal, and when the majority of wealthy republicans came into office they immediately wanted to shut it down. No, Obamacare isn’t perfect, however, the GOP’s policy worked to the favor of only those that could afford private healthcare, and disregarded the rest. When the GOP healthcare bill failed, there was not a single attempt made to make a compromise, and instead, it was considered a loss. Instead of working to compose a more compromised bill, a “Connecticut Compromise” of healthcare bills, if you will, they decided it wasn’t even worth it to fight for a better system.
And so the wealthy continue on, like individualist babies, so uninterested in the idea of helping others that they more or less ignored the idea of making a new healthcare system even if it may have worked to their own personal benefit in the end. There’s been a moral dismemberment from our governing, both self and political. While individualism is inevitable, it’s only human to work towards gaining personal benefit; but, it has become a burden on our present society and it’s, quite frankly, a little bit scary. We will never be able to work towards anything greater, if we can’t even see past our own personal wealth and agendas.
