Amidst this morning’s play-by-play on last night’s Democratic debate — Elizabeth Warren “pretty much laid Michael Bloomberg out on the stage and then ran a truck back and forth over him while the crowd cheered like it was a Monster Jam rally” — Nicholas Kristof deconstructs the “bootstraps” myth behind so much bad Republican policy. Democrats might find it a handy counter-narrative should the economy not flag before November.
It seems the saying to “pull oneself up by the bootstraps” originated as 19th century snark for a preposterously impossible task. Building a perpetual motion device, perhaps, or heaving oneself over a river or fence by yanking up on your bootlaces. Practitioners of the unholy amalgam of Jesus Christ, Ayn Rand, and Horatio Alger that passes for American Christianity have repurposed the expression to excuse callousness towards their neighbors. God helps those who help themselves, because they won’t with their tax dollars (2 Chronicles 17:35). *
Kristof explains how the bootstraps narrative drives out good policy. It implies Americans bettered themselves “through rugged individualism — think of the pioneers!” Never mind that perhaps a quarter of Americans owe some of their family wealth to the homestead acts. Plus, public education, rural electrification, and the G.I. Bill, programs a much poorer US of A managed to afford somehow because it wanted to.
As the Luckovich cartoon atop Kristof’s column suggests, the bootstraps narrative fosters the excuse that development and benefits programs for Average Joe foster “dependency.” Yet, in countries with more robust social welfare systems, fewer people of working age drop out of the workforce than here in the U.S.
Third, Kristof argues, “the bootstraps narrative implies that everyone can pull a Ben Carson (Carson himself falls for this fallacy). This is like arguing that because some people can run a four-minute mile, everyone can.”
There’s more to the piece, including the road -to-Olympia experience of a conservative, Washington state carpenter who has had “a real change of heart.” He now favors government programs to help “provide opportunity and address addiction, mental illness and education.”
Rather than debates over which presidential candidate has the better plan that won’t get past a Mitch McConnell-led Senate, Democrats should speak to Americans’ values.
Anand Giridharadas (Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World ) explained recently:
It’s un-American to let people die just because they forgot to register for health insurance. We don’t do that in foreign battlefields, we shouldn’t do it here.
When Michael Bloomberg says, “Medicare-for-All would bring America to its knees,” you talk back to Michael Bloomberg and you say, “You know what? The country that beat the Nazis can probably survive the implementation of Medicare for All. So if you don’t believe America can handle that, you’re not a believer, but I’m a patriot.”
As I said in a 2008 radio spot, “Leave no one behind” is a code of honor for our military. Why does that code apply only inside the base perimeter, but not outside in the private sector where it’s dog-eat-dog? This side of the line: All for one and one for all. That side: I’ve got mine, screw you. To our right-leaning neighbors, that somehow makes sense and both represent the best America has to offer. No, seriously.
Giridharadas says, “Talk like that in Michigan.” Talk like that in debates.
* The verse doesn’t exist. This makes it a handy reference for all sayings Americans think are buried in the Bible somewhere but are not.
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