![]() Nielsen’s new book A Disability History of the United States, published by Beacon Press, is hardly the most provocative thing about it. The absence of pity of any sort from Kim E. “I am a victim,” the logic goes, “of all those people out there playing victim.” Absent a frontier, the frontier spirit starts wallowing in self-pity. ![]() And it’s just as likely to pour out in resentment that is keen, if not particularly consistent. The reality that illness or old age threw even the hardiest pioneer into reliance on others hardly factors into this worldview the notion that civilization implies interdependence is, for it, almost literally unthinkable.Īs I say, this outlook can manifest itself as optimism (the future is one of unbounded possibility, etc.) not always distinct from wishful thinking or denial. It values independence, or says it does, but only by regarding dependency as a totally abject condition. ![]() ![]() ![]() There's a mean streak at the heart of a certain kind of American optimism - a rugged, go-it-alone, dog-eat-dog strain of individualism that is callous at best, shading into the sociopathic. ![]()
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