Why Freedom Became
“Free-Dumb” in America
What Americans Don’t
Understand About Freedom — That Europeans and Canadians Do
WRITTEN BY: Umair Haque
- vampire.
By now, you might have
heard North Dakota is the world’s worst Covid hotspot. The world’s worst, with
South Dakota not far behind. Things aren’t just desperate there — they’re
bizarre, at least to the rest of the world. Nurses talk about patients in the
Covid ICU lashing out at them because…they don’t believe Covid exists…while
they’re dying of it. Meanwhile, the governor refuses to make mask-wearing
mandatory, because she thinks that masks and lockdowns don’t work. You might
think all that would infuriate Dakotans, but quite the opposite is true:
they’re firmly behind her, as they are Donald Trump, the President who let
Covid spin out of control, and make North Dakota the world’s worst Covid
hotspot.
What the?
The rest of the world
is staggered by all that, because it is staggering. How many twisted levels of
illogic are even in there? Too many to count. People in the world’s worst Covid
hotspot dying of Covid who don’t believe Covid exists so they won’t fight Covid
and back a President and Governor who’ve just let it explode. It’s so awesomely
weird that you can’t really find this level of backwardness and folly anywhere
else in the world, which is exactly why Dakota is the world’s worst Covid
hotspot. But it’s not just North Dakota. Nine of the ten world’s worst Covid
hotspots are American states.
And that is because
something went badly, badly wrong in America.
In these states, which
are mostly red states, Americans have become effectively martyrs for a certain
idea of freedom. They are willing to sacrifice anything — and I mean anything —
including themselves, their families, their health and wealth, their futures,
their towns and cities, and their democracy. But what good is freedom if it’s
just the right to…self-destruct?
America became obsessed
with free-dumb: the idea of freedom as the removal of all restraint, the right
to harm others, the ability to do anything you please, no matter how
destructive, toxic, foolish, or inane. Covid’s a jaw-dropping example of it.
Think about the example above: it involves at least three levels of free-dumb.
The right to “believe” Covid doesn’t exist, the right not to have to wear a
mask, the right not to have to lock down. All these effectively add up to the
idea that Americans should be free to infect anyone they please with a lethal
disease. What on earth?
Where does this
amazingly, jaw-droopingly stupid idea of free-dumb come from? Covid’s hardly
some kind of anomaly. It’s part of a larger pattern. Americans — in the vast,
vast majority — think of freedom in a way that by now the rest of the rich
world and much of the poor one regards as dangerously backwards. Freedom is the
right not to ever have to cooperate, to invest, to act for the common wealth or
common good.
Why is America the only
rich society in the world that doesn’t have effectively any public goods? No
functioning healthcare, retirement, higher education, and so forth? Because of
free-dumb. “I won’t pay for their healthcare, education, retirement!!” Why not?
“They’re weak! They’re liabilities and burdens!! They cost me money!!” But
wait, don’t you understand that means you won’t have those very same things
yourself — because such social institutions are for everyone? “I don’t care! I
won’t reward weakness and laziness! Such people need to be punished! And I
should be free not to have support the weak!”
So goes the logic of
the average American. The idea of free-dumb is something like this. Freedom
means a gun, a beer, a Bible, and no rights for women and minorities. But
textbooks and medicine and good food and water — those take away your freedom.
What the?
How did Americans end
up believing this incredible level of self-evident nonsense? How can a gun and
a Bible give you freedom, while a book and medicine take it away? What on earth
happened to this society to make it actually accept this insanely depressing
and foolish kind of backwardness?
I’ll come to that in a
moment. First, you might think I overstate the case. Do I? After all, something
like 70% of Americans say they want all the things above. The problem is that
they never vote for them. Nope, not even this time around. Democratic voters
made Biden rise to power, not Liz Warren or Bernie Sanders, who were the ones
championing Americans having basic public goods. Yet again, Americans chose
free-dumb. And it’s crucial to note that choice cuts across the left-right
divide. Sure, the right only supports free-dumb. But on the center and the
left, free-dumb is dominant, too. Free-dumb so dominates American thinking,
society, ideas, culture, life, that Americans have never not chosen it.
To make it clearer just
how bizarre and twisted this notion of freedom really is, think about what
happens when you cross a border — an imaginary line — into Canada, or take a
short flight to Europe. There, freedom has a completely different definition —
one that’s diametrically opposed to American free-dumb. Canada and Europe are
famous for the world’s most expansive, sophisticated social contracts. Citizens
enjoy everything from healthcare to education to retirement to childcare and
more.
Why? Americans don’t
understand — even the ones who consider themselves intelligent, even the
educated ones — just why social democracies like Canada and Europe cherish
these things so much that they provide them to everyone, no questions asked.
They don’t understand the logic at all, because nobody has ever explained it to
them, even attempted to usually, and so free-dumb goes right on having an iron
grip over American life, making it as stupid as humanly possible.
The logic of why Canada
and Europe provide basics to all goes like — it’s about freedom, but in a much,
much deeper, more elegant, thoughtful, sophisticated, and beautiful way than
Americans understand. If I am fighting for the basics — bitterly battling
everyone else for the food, water, money, medicine, to survive, what does that
make of me? I become embittered, hostile, angry, resentful. I grow callous and
cruel. I become suspicious and distrustful and isolated and alone. I don’t grow
as a person — I shrink and wither into my worst self. The Greeks would have
said: I grow weak, morally, intellectually, socially, culturally. And people
weak like that are not capable of sustaining a democracy.
What happens, on the
other hand, if I do have the basics? Then I’m free. Not just free in the
superficial, narrow American way: free to have stuff. I’m free in an existential,
social, emotional, cultural, human way. I’m free to cultivate, develop, nurture
higher values and virtues. I can be trusting, kind, generous, empathic. I can
be thoughtful, critical, reflective. I can be humble and warm and appreciate
beauty and truth. I am free to be a genuinely good person. Human goodness has
been freed in me.
You might think all
that sounds dramatic and overblown, but let me assure you, as someone who’s
lived in America, Canada, and Europe — it’s not. Think about how Canadians are
renowned for their gentleness and kindness. Or about how Europeans are known
for their thoughtfulness and expansiveness and decency and closeness as
societies. These things I’m speaking of aren’t abstractions, and they’re not my
opinion. They are lived human realities that happen in these societies every
single day.
Now think of how the
world regards Americans, by contrast. It thinks of them, mostly, as idiots. As
cruel, abusive, selfish, exploitative. As narcissists obsessed with the
superficial aspects themselves. As violent dummies — people more likely to have
a a gun than a book. As bigoted and superstitious — people who think they can
pray the gay and the Covid away. I know that sounds harsh, if you’re American.
But is it untrue?
Go ahead and take a
hard look at Americans’ behavior during Covid. It’s been, in a word, shocking
and abysmal. Sure, “not all Americans” as the saying goes. But America, as a
society, hasn’t exactly done itself proud. Quite the opposite. As a society,
Americans acted just the way the world imagined them to be: selfishly,
ignorantly, violently, cruelly. Like spoiled, overgrown children throwing the
world’s biggest tantrum. How else did America end up with the world’s worst
Covid numbers? Precisely because people wouldn’t cooperate with lockdowns and
masks, or demand them.
Covid showed that
social norms and values of basic decency, kindness, thoughtfulness, care,
concern, consideration don’t exist in America. You might think I’m just
name-calling — but I’m trying to actually point out a deeper truth.
Norms of basic decency
and humanity and gentleness and empathy and care and so on don’t exist in
America precisely because Americans aren’t free to be and do those things.
Do you see my point?
It’s not about insults — it’s an analysis of freedom. Americans have built a
society focused on a certain backwards notion of freedom, free-dumb, the
hyper-individualist belief in one’s own right to do anything one pleases, no
matter how foolish, destructive, or harmful. But that has cost Americans a
truly free society.
Why are Americans so
violent, cruel, ignorant, destructive, thoughtless, selfish, careless? Because
Americans are not free to be the kinds of people Europeans and Canadians are.
Europeans and Canadians are free to be thoughtful, kind, gentle, wise, loving,
concerned, considerate people because they enjoy the basics of life. Therefore,
they are not consumed with the desperate battle for survival.
But American do not
enjoy the basics. For them, life is a constant, perpetual battle for
self-preservation and survival. Not just for the poor, but for more or less
everyone now, because America is effectively a poor society, made of one giant
underclass. Yes, really — 80% of Americans live hand-to-mouth, 75% struggle to
pay the bills, 70% can’t raise a few hundred dollars for an emergency, and
that’s because they don’t have it — the average American now dies in $62,000 of
debt, which means he’s been trying to survive, but hasn’t. He or she hasn’t
earned or saved or owned anything his or her his whole life long. Just having
the basics has proven impossible — it has left the average American in debt
that they die in.
What do we expect to
happen to people that don’t have the basics? Exactly what happened to
Americans. They grow angry and afraid, unable to think critically or carefully.
They can’t care for anyone else, because life is a bitter battle just for
self-preservation. Enmity and suspicion and hostility become social norms, not
kindness and gentleness and empathy. Cruelty and aggression become a way of
life, not cooperation and warmth.
In short, we’d expect
people to become violent, stupid, selfish, as they grow poor — not because they
are such things, but because that is what poverty does and is. Intellectual
poverty is ignorance and superstition. Social poverty is mistrust and
hostility. Cultural poverty is cruelty and aggression. Americans are poor in
all these ways now, and when the world shakes its head at them, and condemn
them, saying, “My God! Has the world ever seen such backwards, stupid people?”
what it, in turn, doesn’t understand is that this is what a society becoming
poor is. America becoming a place of stunning cruelty and stupidity and
callousness and selfishness, so much so that mass death swept it, and more or less,
it shrugged. That’s what poverty really is.
Let me put that another
way. Europeans and Canadians are wealthy in a profound, an existential and
human way — they are wealthy in happiness, trust, meaning, purpose, care,
kindness, consideration, decency. But Americans are poor in all those things.
That is why Americans cannot really express those values or virtues very much.
What made America poor in those things, though, those basic human values —
while Europe and Canada grew rich in them?
Freedom — the real
thing — versus free-dumb. Now let’s connect the dots. The European and Canadian
idea was that giving everyone the basics would free them. Not just to have
medicine and money and so on — but to be intelligent, kind, loving, decent
human beings.
The American idea,
meanwhile — descended from slavery — was just the opposite: only the strong
should survive, and the weak should perish. Therefore, nobody deserved anything
at all — even the basics — because human life had no inherent or intrinsic
worth. Only the strong deserved such things — and they were the ones who could
dominate and exploit and control everyone else.
This was a Nietzschean
view of power and society — the ones who rose to the top should be the
ubermensch: those only concerned with their own “will-to-power,” that is, with
making their own selfish desires manifest, who could subjugate as many others
as possible, and make servants or slaves of them. But what happens to a society
trying to be Nietzschean ubermen? Everyone soon enough begins trying to exploit
and abuse everyone else — while depriving them of the basics. You can see how
such a place ends up like America: renowned for cruelty, aggression, hostility,
thoughtlessness, violence, not the human values and virtues of kindness and
care and concern and so on.
Americans don’t
understand any of this, really. They get that Europeans and Canadians have
basics that they don’t, but mostly, they swallow the stupid, stupid American
logic that that comes at the price of freedom, and Europeans and Canadians have
less “choices” and so forth. Americans have no idea whatsoever that European.
and Canadian society is built on the existential-humanist understanding that
came from Camus and Sartre and de Beauvoir and many others that giving everyone
the basics frees them to be fully and wholly human.
Americans, probably,
have no idea what that phrase even means. So let me put it concisely. Anyone
can be foolish, destructive, selfish, greedy, hostile, cruel. To be fully
human, though, is to cultivate the higher values of empathy, grace, truth,
beauty love. When I have to struggle for food, money, medicine, what room do I
have to cultivate those things? I curdle inside, instead, and wither. It’s only
when I have the basics that I can really engage with the higher struggle of
being human. How do I love? Care? Know? Emote? Empathize? Understand? Share?
Grow?
These two notions of
freedom couldn’t be more different. Freedom in America, free-dumb, is about not
having to ever engage with the struggle of being human — just go out and be as
selfish as you please. Carry a gun to Starbucks. Don’t wear a mask. Don’t let
anyone have healthcare, including yourself. The vicious cycle goes on. Freedom
in Canada and Europe, though, is totally opposite to this: it’s about having
the basics, so you can engage with the higher struggles, the struggles for
love, self-definition, truth, beauty, purpose — and therefore reach a much,
much higher plateau as a human being.
Of happiness, of
meaning, of grace and fulfillment. That is why those societies are far, far
richer than America in all these things.
I don’t know if America
will ever really change. What I do know is this. I’ve never felt more alive
than when I was in Canada and Europe — precisely because I wasn’t surrounded by
idiots that thought guns, pecs, boobs, and religion mattered more than love,
truth, beauty, grace, death, time, dust, and goodness. I was freest there, to
grow, to develop, mature, to love, care, know, understand, think — because they
are the places that human beings built for being human.
Most Americans, sadly,
may never have that experience — and will be all the poorer for never knowing
what real freedom is.
How did things get so
twisted?
Umair
November 2020
