America's modern personality is making it hard to beat a Virus

I'm thinking more and more that it is possible that the good ol' US of A doesn't have the requisite attitude of collectivism to conquer many of the things that are facing it now and the many things that it will face on the horizon.

We seem to be the one country where getting people to wear masks in public in order to prevent the spread of a dangerous virus is proving to be too difficult. Americans, perhaps more than any other culture, have grown to expect that there will be no restrictions placed on them for the sake of anyone else. Yes, we have speed laws on our highways to protect everyone and we have laws against driving drunk which are designed primarily to protect the innocent but we just don't seem to be able to act as an orchestra, an army, in order to defeat a global pandemic. The qualities we summoned in order to defeat an existential threat in Hitler are missing at this crucial time. The American orchestra can't seem to play the notes on the sheet music in order that the music sounds it's best. Everyone wants to just interpret the sheet music on their own. It's a kind of free for all and it makes for unpleasant and ineffective sounds.

Yes, Americans were on the same page when we were fighting the Nazis. We had a great and disciplined orchestra. We had a sense of collectivism then, perhaps because we were in the midst of a 13 year wave with Franklin Roosevelt as our President, arguably our most egalitarian President and perhaps the one who expected Americans to sacrifice for the good of the country, for the good of all Americans. I don't think it is controversial to say that our country has adopted a much stronger connection to "rugged individualism" over the last 50 or 60 years. I don't think many Americans are willing to act towards the "common good". It’s just a hunch. It could be because the average American doesn't trust it's government to define the "common good" in a way that is satisfactory. It could be that people in America aren’t very concerned about their fellow man or woman.

I haven't done the research but it appears that of the developed countries we rank at the bottom with respect to controlling the spread of the Coronavirus. The skills individual Americans have in abundance of creating social media platforms and elaborate smart phones, etc., don't seem to have transfer value to the basic requirements needed to stop the spread of a social disease. We don't appear to be willing to all be on the same page for the common good. It's quite different from when FDR would give his fireside chats and all the family would gather around the radio to hear of their next assignment as soldier, citizen, mother or father. I think rugged individualism has it's place and acquiescing to "Groupism" has it's negatives for sure but this present form of Americanism is failing to rise to this occasion. Certainly we are lacking credible leadership and that is a fundamental problem but America is a much more fractured and compartmentalized social fabric than it ever was. There are so few things that every American agree on and that it can make sustainability a challenge.

I remember hearing from people in a discussion a few years ago that they didn’t think it was fair that any of their tax dollars went towards funding schools because they didn’t have any children. What if we asked citizens to cut back dramatically on their fossil fuel emissions, or if they made it illegal to drive cars that ran on gasoline? What if there was very solid scientific evidence that the world’s environment could only be saved if we all did this collectively. do you think there is even a remote chance that people would comply, even if the Government in power had tremendous credibility and trust? I don’t think so. I truly don’t think that enough Americans would give up hot dogs if was proven that if we all gave up hot dogs collectively that we would be able to cure cancer.

Where do we go from here?

Food for thought......