Stray Thoughts: American Ronin, Part 1

One of the key things to remember if you’re trying to understand America, is that we were to a large extent populated by people who looked at where they were in Europe – or Asia, or Africa, or what have you – and said Screw This I’m Outta Here.

Church of England? Too secular. Thirty Years’ War? You’ve raided over our farms for grain and livestock three times in as many years, we’ve had it. Jacobite Rebellion? A murrain seize ye all, Scots an’ Sassenach alike. Irish Potato Famine? Mary bless us, we’ll risk the coffin ships. Sicilian Mafia and vendetta? Ciao, baby.

Anyone and everyone heading for the New World sized up their chances in the Old, weighed the pros and cons, and decided to risk everything.

To put it another way, if Door #1 is “live within the system” and Door #2 is “die horribly”, we found a way to Take a Third Option.

It leaves a mark.

Specifically, three marks, all of which need to be considered if you want to grasp how American history and Americans turned out the way they did. First, if you got here, cleared land and worked it, or built a business from the ground up, anything from weaving shop to a printed newspaper – it was yours.

Not owed to a noble. Not obligated to support a family that might extend over several generations and as many petty fiefdoms. Yours, to own, improve, profit from, or lose if fortune and your own skills weren’t up to the task.

Second, if you’re caught in an impossible situation, leaving is always an option. Americans aren’t serfs, servants, or peasants. We may own land, but it doesn’t own us. If things aren’t working out, if someone somewhere is determined to make your life a living hell, and for some reason you can’t just shoot them – you can leave. Pick up what resources you can, and move on.

Is it risky? Of course! You could lose everything. Your friends. Your family. Your social support network. Your life. Especially if whoever’s been making your life hell doesn’t want to let you leave, because watching you suffer and squirm is what they live for.

Which leads to the third mark, that freaks out a lot of non-Americans: Shooting your way out is an option.

To be American is to believe you have not only the right, but often the responsibility, to initiate violence in defense of yourself, your loved ones, your property, and any incidental innocent bystanders who can’t defend themselves. Bluntly put: If I see you trying to drown a kitten, I’m not waiting for the cops. I’m going to bust something over your head and let the jury sort it out later.

In most societies the right to initiate violence is a jealously guarded privilege of the elite. After all, the whole point of being on the top of the noble heap is there’s so few of you, lording it over swarms of peasants. Why, if they ever got the idea that they could turn against you as a group… no, no, make sure they never think of it. Even better if they think of violence and bloodshed as something awful and spiritually polluting; if the noble is taking that horrible burden on themselves, the peasants can live humble and pure lives. And all it costs them is everything they have, supporting the nobles who sacrifice so much for them….

(What, did you think the crybully was a new phenomenon? Nope. Humans have been manipulating others in that particularly disgusting way for a long time.)

But moving to America, that just didn’t work. Most nobles stayed across the sea, raking in any profits with less risk to themselves; after all, the Atlantic crossing was risky, and who knew who’d riot on your estates if you turned your back? While most American threats were local and required an immediate response. When someone’s trying to scalp you, you can’t wait months for a letter to get to England and back. You have to do something, now.

Note, the first stable settlements in North America were in the 1500s. Meaning by the time of the American Revolution, we had almost three centuries of “you’re the one who has to do something.” Including the French and Indian Wars, which were 1) extremely nasty and 2) later seen as a betrayal by the colonists – we fought and died to win them, and then the British Parliament decided to give everything west of the Mississippi to Spain. The colonies were finally considered civilized enough to let lords move over here in numbers; best to seal the borders, take the guns, keep everyone in their appointed place, and make the colonies just another England. (With, of course, always less rights than true Englishmen. Because true citizens would never have left!)

We didn’t want to be England. We expressed that. Pointedly.

(A number of lead statues of King George III were melted down and used as ammunition. Americans love adding injury to insult.)

…The rest of this tomorrow. 😉