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Americans See Themselves as Homesteaders… Not the Eventual Rich (Guest Voice)
Americans See Themselves as Homesteaders…Not the Eventual Rich
by Tina Dupuy
I spoke with a thirty-something mother of two residing in suburban New Jersey about the Occupy Wall Street movement. She was disgusted by their antics. “Our business failed, our house was foreclosed on, we lost everything and you don’t see us blaming someone else for it!” she exclaimed. “It’s about personal responsibility!”
She lost everything as a result of the economic meltdown and yet still puts it on herself for not having anticipated or planned properly beforehand. I tried to explain that protesting a rigged system isn’t the opposite of personal responsibility. Doing what you can about the cards being stacked against you and 99 percent of your fellow Americans is, personally, responsive. And that is what Occupy Wall Street and their international — viral solidarity demonstrations say they are there to do.
There’s a bastardized quote attributed to John Steinbeck that says socialism never took root in America because we all think we’re just temporarily embarrassed millionaires. The actual quote, which Steinbeck wrote in America and Americans, is more pointed, “I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.”
We’re not really a culture of delusional dreamers who all believe someday we will be wealthy. There are some, sure. Their escapist fantasy involves a windfall and a secluded island. There are also those who (still) actually become rich. But for the vast majority of Americans — the myth is less we are going to be rich — the myth which led us to the extreme wealth distribution debacle we’re now in — is that we’re all homesteaders.
You don’t have to grow your own food, build your own house or “paint your own wagon” to believe you could if you really wanted to. And really, did in some indirect way.
We’re a society full of pioneers, pilgrims and immigrants. We were a religious freedom sanctuary from England and then penal colony for England — insulted, neglected and over-taxed by the empire. This led us to tell the King of England off, then engage the most powerful army in the world at the time for our independence. And we succeeded at it.
Then people from all over the world flocked here to find refuge and opportunity. It has led Americans to have a bit of bravado about who we are as a people. We think of ourselves as rugged individualists. Because it takes courage and determination to leave your country and forge a new life in this one — and most of us are descended from those people.
It’s not so much that we think our destiny is to be rich — it’s that we believe our destiny is ours. We make our fortunes or we don’t make our fortunes. We block out of our minds that roads aren’t a naturally occurring phenomena; that buildings take legions of workers to erect or that energy comes from somewhere. We think we do it all and when we fail — it’s our fault.
So when things don’t go our way, we don’t blame outside factors. When we fail, we don’t see that the game is fixed. We tug at our bootstraps and feel anguish at our own deficiencies.
The reason why Occupy Wall Street is resonating still with Americans is because there are those who’ve been living with shame for what they see as not being self-sufficient…enough. They’re not “embarrassed capitalists,” they’re mortified homesteaders. They’ve been laid off, they’ve lost their homes, their retirement is gone — they feel personally humiliated that (according to their personal creed) they didn’t do the right thing and maybe could have avoided this defeat.
Occupy Wall Street is letting people who’ve been in the shadows know that they’re not alone and they didn’t cause this. It’s something Americans at their core don’t usually believe. It’s actually a tough sell. But the movement is growing so apparently there are some converts.
Americans in general, and the downtrodden specifically, are figuring out they’re not alone.
They are, in fact, The 99 Percent.
© Copyright 2011 TinaDupuy.com, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Tina Dupuy is an award-winning writer and the managing editor of Crooks and Liars. Tina can be reached at tinadupuy@yahoo.com.
8 Responses to “Americans See Themselves as Homesteaders… Not the Eventual Rich (Guest Voice)”
Framing personal responsibility as a neurosis? Wow.
Holding ourselves ultimately responsible for our outcomes doesn’t require pretending there are no roads, or that what happens on Wall Street doesn’t affect us. It doesn’t even mean we shouldn’t fight for change.
What it does mean is recognizing where our leverage is. If I’m fatter than I like, suing McDonalds is a low-leverage strategy. I have little leverage on them, and they have little leverage on my diet. A better strategy is for me to eat better.
I’d love to see some more convincing financial sector reform, and I think it’s great that OWS is fighting for it. But that’s no reason to knock the homesteaders who recognize that their best strategy for avoiding foreclosure will always be to avoid risky mortgages.
Everybody wants to be a millionaire, few believe it possible or actually set out to become a millionaire. Had their been more, there still wouldn’t be more IMO.
Most people simply want a secure life to live and time to live it away from supporting it.
Those that feel they have to go all out, may or may not become over successful, but those that do seem to have a diametrically opposed belief in what life actually is, with those that don’t. In any case we all come to the same end.
I’d rather know that I spent my time not being the destructor of lives for personal gain. I wish more felt the same way. I doubt that we would have the economic problems that we have if they did.
People are being foreclosed on who did not get a risky mortgage. To claim otherwise is insulting to people whose crime was to lose their job and not be able to find another one (Check the stats on long term unemployment.) or, if they did find one, wind up with one that just couldn’t meet the mortgage payment. Nice broad stroke of unwarranted assumption, Dr. J.
Jim, investing in a house is a risk. Borrowing money to do it is a leveraged risk. Part of the risk is that something may happen to your income.
Taking risks is fine, and people have different appetites for them. But when one goes south, that doesn’t mean you committed a crime or that you have to find someone to blame. It is no one’s job to make all your risks pay off.
‘But that’s no reason to knock the homesteaders who recognize that their best strategy for avoiding foreclosure will always be to avoid risky mortgages.”
Many of these people were tempted by: it’s too good to be true mortgages, and the dream of owning a home (thanks, Dodd, Frank, FNMA and at least two prior administrations). They were guilty of being conned. And yes, many people just can’t afford their current payment schedule and were unlucky to have bought at the wrong time so their property is under water.
Allen, that was a rather nice comment, above.
As a famous ensemble once said, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition”.
Many of the young people now demonstrating at OWS did the right thing – studied hard, got their college degree, and stayed out of trouble.
Their parents (depression babies who heard all their lives about how bad it could be) did the right thing and only bought houses they could afford and encouraged their kids to go to college.
Now not only the college-loan-laden young person has to live with mom and dad and work at McDonalds (if they’re lucky) to pay at least the interest on their looming debt; they’re all in a RV somewhere cause Mom & Dad couldn’t keep up with the mortgage ’cause both lost their jobs – and their house.
You could say they should have been living in an RV all along because they could at least afford that. Seems harsh…
I have a hard time blaming them for the 600 Trillion dollars in inflated debt that’s hanging over the whole world’s heads – seems to me that’s someone else’s fault/fraud.
Unfortunately somebody made buying a dwelling to live in a “financial investment“.
I suppose they started by quadrupling the cost of building these slapped together stick and chalkboard so-called houses so people would have to beg a loan to get it, and, that the developer, (business man), could really get fat fast with a little Come-Shaw, (old navy term), thrown toward city hall. The idea that one has to pay half his life, and, make several other entities wealthy in the process just to have a place to live,..is WRONG!
Houses should never be “an investment”, they should not be so expensive and thus so easily taken away. Why? Because if you have a place to live, then that’s way more than half the battle. You have some place to regroup, a place to create, (which the country needs right now), without the stress of paying way to much to have that place out of the snow and rain. This is where business starts to own your freedom so you can make THEM money.