Bootstraps, Whitman, and More!

     I know it’s post-election and some of us may be more than relieved that we do not have to sit through political advertisements and such.  Besides, all this political stuff really makes me feel bad for those who are being attacked…the system makes then seem like monsters! But what else tells us more about what appeals to our country then people trying to persuade us to vote for them?  A while back, I came across this video that debunked Paul Ryan .

This is the link if you would like to see:  http://youtu.be/hrmpHWVECpo

     This clip begs the question why Ryan (and both presidential candidates) mold their speech to include the national ideas of individualism, “self-made-ism” (couldn't think of the noun form of self-made), and the adage of “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.” These ideas supposedly connect everyone together belonging to the group of America. It is what attracts people. After all, Whitman told us that everyone working hard to be individuals is what America sounds like. Moreover, it seems like every political system has it myths—the soviet union has Alexey Stakhanov and the Unites states has Richard Hunter just to name two.

     The vice-president nominee casts himself as another Horactio Alger character.  Essentially what the video entails is Ryan’s speech of how he was placed in a sink or swim position after his father’s death and how he swam because he worked incredibly hard. The topic of debate is that Ryan gives very little credit to the other assets that served as his floaties. He claims to success besides the odds solely because of his achievements. This is perfectly appropriate because Ryan still has the binary option to fail in school. But the point is that it is harder for Ryan to fail with the opportunities that are presented to him.

     This is another prime example of where the ideology of a self-made man miscarries. The ideology excludes the benefits of being a certain race, of being born in a certain family, and that obstacles become relative based on the individual— that is, the self-made man is lore because it paints a mural of homogeneous success, that everyone can be successful if they pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.  

     The underlying assumption here is that though the self-made man is now thought of as a myth, it must still exist if our political and social figures still mold their speeches to include these founding ideas, and ultimately, as the speaker believes, persuade us. Ryan’s speech is not the first time a political candidate or social figure has undermined the act of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” from America’s first poet to Ben Franklin.

     Walt Whitman’s poem “I hear America Singing” connotes that hard work and individual achievements have become what America sounds like. Hard work is what joined every American at the time of its founding. Analogous to the original poem which did not include the slaves or minorities, the myth of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and achieving success fails to recognize the hardships that come with being superior on the chain of opportunities. Politicians (normal people like this too) revel in telling stories of their individual achievements coupled with how they dealt with hardships in a masculine way; as a result, their selective vision  often fail to accredit social networks, government aid, name, pre-established credibility given by their surname, etc. But we don’t see this as arrogant, we see it as American. To see Ryan and the other politians using the rhetoric of the self-made man, individualism, and overcoming hardship through shear hardship shows that these core ideas that we debunk as myths still exist in a palpable form. Though children, too, love the feeling of doing adult tasks all by themselves, perhaps our intertwined and developed society makes it harder to become a “self-made man” on our own and it is harmful to an intertwined society for individuals to revel in their own individual achievements. 

( ....This ended up being longer then planned D= Sorry!!!  )