America's Motto: Do Not Tell Me What To Do

When I teach courses on American Literature, I talk with my students about fundamental beliefs or behaviors that we might find in the texts for the class. We search for important values -- positive and negative -- that shaped the history and cultures of the United States. 

Frequently, I tell them a story about the American South. In the late 1600s, investors from England were given charters to colonize Carolina. They recruited people to travel there and develop specific allotments of land. Everything had been mapped out before their arrival, and they were intended to live and work in their assigned locations. But once they arrived, the settlers located themselves wherever they pleased, regardless of the promises they had made beforehand. Describing this in his book Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America, Gary Nash writes, "In government, as in land affairs, they did what they pleased."

This is perhaps the most fundamental American value: Do not tell me what to do.

I need my Hot Pockets!

It definitely seems more true than the phrases found on our currency. More true than the Latin phrase E Pluribus Unum (Out of many, one). More predictive of American behavior than In God We Trust.

Stop calling me Karen!

This American value of irrational individualism is evident each day with more videos of Olds and Karens refusing to wear their masks in public, despite the Coronavirus pandemic. Whether it is an older man trying to push his way into WalMart without a mask or a white woman incensed that she cannot shop bare-faced at Trader Joe's, we see a pattern of refusing to obey the rules.

Could wearing a mask help save their life?

It does not matter. Do not tell them what to do.

Could it save the life of another person?

That matters even less. They are not responsible for anyone but themselves. Oh, and do not tell them what to do.

I believe most people are sensible and considerate of others. I think most Americans who are not the President or Vice President of the United States wear masks. But we should not be surprised by the refusal to surrender one's minor freedoms for the good of others. This stubborness was present at the very beginning of the United States, and it may be responsible for hastening its end.

"Do unto others"? What does that mean?

P.S. -- I think we could easily say the attitude discussed here can be racially marked/defined; it is a white American value. Those people coming to Carolina and refusing to live where they had agreed to live? They were white, and some of them had slaves, especially those who were coming from Caribbean. The United States was founded by and for white people who resented being told what to do by an authority figure, but they seemed little bothered by telling other people what to do -- Africans and Natives, especially. A Karen, by definition is a white woman. And the olds I have seen vocally resisting the masks have been mostly white folks. The Coronavirus pandemic has coincided with the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and I wonder to what degree the hysteria against masks is driven by white people feeling threatened by demands for equality and justice. As the saying goes, "When you're privileged, equality feels like oppression."

Amerika: What does it mean?

I saw this image recently and immediately thought, "Welcome to Amerika."

Then I quickly asked myself, "Why did Amerika flash through my mind rather than America? Why was that word so readily available to my brain's information-retrieval system? Why did that make instant sense?"

The photograph was taken by ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz, and she posted it on her Twitter account. It was taken during protest demonstrations in Washington, D.C. on June 2. These are U.S. soldiers on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In front of them, and not seen in this image, are protesters demonstrating against police brutality and in support of Black Lives Matter.

Why did the image instantly evoke AMERIKA in my mind?

My first encounter with that spelling was on a poster I had in my bedroom is a kid. Thanks to the Internet, where it seems you can find EVERYTHING, I was able to find an image of that poster.

This poster apparently was created after a Bank of America branch was burned near the University of California Santa Cruz campus in 1970. (You can buy the poster at justseeds.org.) I was 9 years old in 1970. I doubt I bought it that year. But even if I got it several years later, when I had become a teenager, did I understand what AMERIKA meant then?

So after seeing Raddatz's photograph and recalling my burning-bank poster, I looked up the word for some clues about its meaning and history. This is a variant spelling of America for German and Russian sources. (Oddly enough, Adolph Hitler's personal train, a mobile fortress HQ, was called Amerika.) So even though those German and Soviet sources had been describing an enemy when they used the word "Amerika," in the late 1960s the word began to associate the United States with those repressive and fascist governments. For instance, Carl Wittman published "Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto" in 1970, describing how San Francisco had become a center for people escaping homophobia. "Amerika" associates the United States with the repressive and militaristic regimes that traditionally have been considered its opponents. Rather than suggesting America as promoting freedom, Amerika suggests opposing freedom.

Jump ahead to 1987, and we find Amerika is the title of an ABC series starring Kris Kristofferson  about the Soviet Union taking over the United States.The TV series is discussed briefly by K.E. Roberts and Michael Grasso in "Avenge Me!: American Catharsis in 1980s Soviet Invasion Fantasies" While works like Amerika and Red Dawn (1984) depicted paranoid fantasies about alien invasions, Grasso indicates the Soviet enemy in them was a projection of America's worst impulses rather than an authentic fear of communists: "When the US forces in Iraq undertook their operation to capture Saddam Hussein, they called it… Operation Red Dawn. The irony of using this name for an operation in which we were the invaders was apparently lost on the Pentagon. Americans, it seems, will always take extreme measures to make sure that they psychologically remain the underdogs, that they can still shout “Wolverines!” with that sense of righteous fury, even as American forces more closely resemble [John] Milius’s brutal Soviet soldiers. It turns out that we were the foreign invaders all along."

This irony deficiency continues today, as President Trump declared ANTIFA to be a terrorist organization, despite it being an idea rather than an organization -- and despite the United States having fought costly wars against fascist regimes. So strange to see jingoistic patriots who a few years back embraced small-government Tea Party fantasies now embracing Big Brother oppression of citizens exercising their rights to assemble and to speak freely and of other citizens (Black Lives Matter) who claim their rights to life and liberty. One might say that it is contradictory for a president who loves eliminating regulations to also claim to be the law-and-order president, but it only seems like a contradiction. He and his supporters want to eliminate the laws that restrict their behavior in terms of economic and environmental exploitation and they want to get rid of the limits on their ability to silence and punish dissent. Look, for example, at the several states that have attempted to pass legislation criminalizing protests against oil pipelines. They love freedom: their freedom, not the freedom of others.

When I see armored personnel carriers rolling through residential neighborhoods and police trussed up in so much armor they look like Cylons or a character from Fallout, I wonder to what degree TV shows and films like Amerika were unconsciously prophetic; the United States was taken over by a fascist regime, but from the inside.