"Only in America" is a refrain heard time and again in this country's political discourse. According to both Democrats and Republicans, the United States is a singular nation: one in which anyone can achieve anything if you have a dream and the will to work hard; a place wherein upward mobility is assumed and someone born into crushing poverty and brutal socioeconomic conditions can reach the highest levels of wealth, success and power by sheer grit and determination.Obviously the reality in this exceptional nation of ours is quite different.
Nevertheless, an MSNBC montage perfectly illustrates the ubiquity of this mythologized narrative of American up-by-your-bootstrapism at this past week's Republican National Convention. Watch here:
When I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life. I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself. That's what we do in this country. That's the American Dream.Only in America.
This idea was hammered home by the final two speakers on Thursday night. Senator Marco Rubio touted the United States as an outlier in world history, a country founded on the principle that we, the people, were no longer "trapped in the circumstances of our birth" and that "we should be free to go as far as our talents and work can take us." In America, said Rubio, no longer was "[y]our future was determined by your past."
Only in America.
Early in his acceptance speech, newly-minted official GOP presidential candidate and multimillionaire Mitt Romney described a desire to work hard, the confidence in future success, and indelible optimism as "uniquely American." The United States is where driven people go to shake off the shackles of poverty and mediocrity, Romney declared. It's not where a better life is yearned for, it's where it is achieved.
Only in America.
Romney spoke of his Mexican-born father who "never made it through college and apprenticed as a lath and plaster carpenter," but had "big dreams" and eventually "led a great automobile company and became Governor of the Great State of Michigan."
Only in America.
Back in April, Romney tread the same ground during a speech in New Hampshire:
I'll tell you about how much I love this country, where someone like my dad, who grew up poor and never graduated from college, could pursue his dreams and work his way up to running a great car company. Only in America could a man like my dad become governor of the state in which he once sold paint from the trunk of his car.Only in America.
Earlier on Thursday evening, before Clint Eastwood scolded an empty chair for invading Afghanistan and Romney accepted his party's nomination, Mitt's son Craig told the RNC that, through his grandparents' "hard work and perseverance they lived the American dream, and gave opportunities to their children they wouldn't have had anywhere else."
Only in America.
Of course, the narrative of Barack Obama's rise to power also relies on mythologizing the unique power of American opportunity. In his "A More Perfect Union" speech, delivered at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008, then-Senator Obama declared, "[F]or as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible."
Only in America.
Writing in The New York Times just days before the election that would see Obama win the presidency, columnist Roger Cohen repeated those words and affirmed them. "Nowhere else," Cohen wrote, could a child of parent of different races and ethnicities, only "a generation distant from the mud shacks of western Kenya," ascend to such prominence, with the potential of gaining even more power and prestige through the will of a popular vote. "Nowhere else could this Barack Hussein Obama rise so far and so fast," Cohen concluded.
Only in America.
After winning the presidential election on November 4, 2008, Obama began his victory speech in Chicago's Hyde Park with these words: "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."
Only in America.
But not really. People all over the world who come from impoverished and working class families have achieved massive political and financial power. When 14-year-old Julián Slim Haddad arrived in Mexico from his native Lebanon in 1902, he was all alone and spoke no Spanish. In 1911, Julián, along with his older brother José who had immigrated to Mexico years earlier, founded a dry goods store in Mexico City. He eventually married Linda Helú, herself the daughter of Lebanese immigrants. Their son, Carlos Slim Helú, is currently the richest person on the planet, worth $69 billion.
Only in America?
Stephano Maino was a penniless mason who started a small construction business in an industrial suburb of Torino, Italy. He was a hard-working traditional Roman Catholic. At the age of eighteen, one of his daughters, Antonia Edvige Albina Maino (nicknamed Sonia), enrolled in a small college in Cambridge to study English, working as a babysitter and a waitress in a Greek restaurant to make ends meet. She met her husband, future Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who was then a student at Trinity College, at that restaurant in 1965. Since 1998, despite her religion, skin color, and European heritage, Sonia Gandhi has been the President of the Indian National Congress Party, the longest serving leader in its 127-year history. Both of her children, Rahul and Priyanka, are also politicians.
Only in America?
Only one son of Austrian parents Alois Schicklgruber, an uneducated customs inspector, and Klara Pölzl, a house servant of peasant ancestry, beat the odds and survived childhood. Despite barely graduating from his technical high school, he became a decorated soldier, survived a battle wound and chemical weapons attack, entering politics at the age of 30. Just nine years after being jailed for high treason, he was leading a major political party, ran for the presidency and was appointed Chancellor of Germany. His name, of course, was Adolf Hitler.
Only in America?
Diocletian, a low born Roman citizen from Dalmatia (modern day Croatia) became a successful and well-regarded cavalry commander and was named Emperor of Rome 284 CE. Joseph Stalin's father was a cobbler. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's mother was an English and Latin teacher, her father was a pastor. French President François Hollande had a middle class upbringing.
Only in America?
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was born poor, the son of a coastguard who moved his family to Istanbul for a better life. In his youth, Erdoğan sold lemonade and simit on the streets of the city's rougher neighborhoods.
Only in America?
Benjamin Disraeli's paternal grandfather and namesake immigrated to England from Italy in the mid-18th Century. 120 years later, Disraeli, the son of Jewish parents, began his first of two terms as British Prime Minister during the reign of Queen Victoria.
Only in America?
From a lower middle-class family, Isabel Perón was a fifth-grade dropout and former nightclub dancer before becoming the President of Argentina and the Western Hemisphere's very first non-royal head of state and government.
Only in America?
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was born in the small rural village of Sabaneta to impoverished parents, both of whom were schoolteachers. Japan's current Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is the grandson of farmers. He has said that his parents were too poor to pay for their own wedding reception and that he too has suffered poverty, at times unable to provide clothing for his own children.
Only in America?
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, whose grandmothers were both illiterate, parents were born into rural poverty and is of mixed German, Gola, and Kru ancestry, is currently the President of Liberia. She is Africa's first elected female head of state.
Only in America?
Lula da Silva, who had nearly no education, dropped out of school after fourth-grade, and didn't learn to read until he was 10 years old, became a popular union leader after working for years as a street vendor, shoe shiner, and factory worker. Lula was elected President of Brazil in 2002. After serving two terms, Lula left office as not only the most popular leader in his nation's history, but also as arguably the most popular politician in the world.
Only in America?
Born of humble roots in the small town of Aradan, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the son of a man who, at different points in his life, was an ironmonger, owned a barbershop then a grocery, became a blacksmith and was a Qur'an tutor. Ahmadinejad has an PhD in civil engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology where he was previously a lecturer and is currently the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. After his second term is up next year, he plans on returning to academia.
Only in America?
The daughter of a Grantham greengrocer, Margaret Thatcher, had careers as a research chemist and lawyer before becoming the first female Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Only in America?
Evo Morales, an indigenous Aymara Bolivian, grew up in a rural working class community of subsistence farmers. His family lived in an adobe hut with a dirt floor and straw roof. In his youth he sold ice cream, later taking jobs as a brick-maker, day laborer, baker and trumpet player for the Royal Imperial Band while attending a technical institute. He did not excel academically, returned to the family farm, became heavily involved in social activism, was elected General Secretary of a local coca farmers union, and eventually entered politics. Without having obtained a high school diploma, Morales was elected President of Bolivia, its first leader of indigenous ethnicity.
Only in America?
Nelson Mandela, from the small South African village of Mvezo, worked as a security guard for a mine and an articled clerk in a law office, completing a college degree by mail. After being imprisoned for 27 years for his militant resistance to the Apartheid regime, Mandela was the first ever President of South Africa to be elected in a fully representative poll wherein all citizens had equal voting rights.
Only in America?
The current South African president is Jacob Zuma. His father, a policeman, died when he was very young, leading his mother to take up work as a maid. He had no formal education and, by the age of 15, Zuma was working odd jobs to supplement his mother's meager income. At 17, he joined the African National Congress and served ten years in prison for his political activism against Apartheid.
Only in America?
In 1970 when the National Assembly elected him President of Guyana, Arthur Chung, born to Chinese parents, became the first person of Asian descent to become head of state of a non-Asian country. The son of Japanese immigrants, Alberto Fujimori, was elected President of Peru in 1990.
Only in America?
Adrienne Clarkson, whose family came to Ottawa as refugees from Hong Kong in 1941, was appointed Governor General of Canada by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999. Michaëlle Jean, a Haitian refugee who came to Canada when she was 11, succeeded Clarkson in 2005.
Only in America?
This litany is obviously far from comprehensive as the potential of gaining extraordinary power and influence from humble beginnings has long been known the world over. Furthermore, despite what self-aggrandizing politicians may imply, gaining access to the upper echelons of governmental power is not the true measure of success. The only thing exceptional about Americans, it seems, is our unyielding capacity to convince ourselves that we're more driven and more determined than the rest of the world and that we alone are masters of our own destinies. It's about time Americans embraced being a part of the world, rather than pretending we're better than the rest of it.
*****
Loved reading this! Keep the truths coming.
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