The Dominant (White) MALE American Cultural Narrative in the United States Is Dysfunctional
It is killing us and our children.
The historical and cultural self-image of White America is composed of rugged frontiersmen using violent methods to wrest their homesteads from nature and the indigenous other. Their efforts, it is believed, have resulted in a way of life superior to all others. This is the White American cultural narrative. This shared story gives order and structure to the thinking and behavior of White America, providing guidance about how to be a good person and live a good life.
This narrative does not emerge from the real history of America or its founding laws and documents. Still, it forms, in a manner of speaking, the “operating system” of the nation. It forms the subterranean foundation of how White Americans imagine themselves. In today’s society this cultural narrative is, to a large extent, communicated through and reproduced by the mainstream mass media.
Grounded in three basic images or ideas, this shared cultural narrative does not serve well. These basic components are the belief that we are (1) an exceptional nation composed of (2) rugged individuals who (3) use violence to solve problems.
As Paul Auster illustrates in his new essay, Bloodbath Nation, many aspects of the White American narrative emphasize that we owe our success as a society and as individuals to the repeated use of violence. In many ways the idea that White America is the purveyor of morally acceptable violence defines how we understand the nation’s history. This cultural narrative emphasizes that our most important historical figures were violent people, from Columbus through Daniel Boone and Andrew Jackson to George Patton and the Navy Seals. Sometimes it seems like the only history of the United States available to young and old alike is the story of how White Americans fought and killed to create a nation.
Unreflectively, White Americans often define the use of violence as a positive thing. We are told that it was good to use violence to separate various indigenous peoples from their lands and culture. The men who did this are national heroes whose violence was a “holy” endeavor to create a better world.
Seeing violence as a morally acceptable way to solve problems legitimizes it as a social and personal practice. It may be that this cultural narrative informs our very, very high rate of interpersonal violence and gun deaths. It also helps to legitimize the notion that all people have an inalienable right to own and use a gun. It makes us a dangerously violent society compared to our historical peers.
Often mythical stories of how White American heroes relied on killing and violence to protect their communities have flooded our minds since the days of Wild West shows and penny magazines. They are the most common plots found in our movies and television. Even today our movies amount to high praise for violence as it is used by Marvel superheroes, John Wick, and other characters who engage in loud and dangerous car chases, gun fights, and other mayhem while smiling and wisecracking. Even our sporting events are described as fights, battles, wars, and contests “to the death.” This way of thinking is so deeply a part of us that it even is used by our leaders to describe how we are solving our social problems. We are engaged in a “war” on drugs, a “war” on poverty, a war on cancer and many other “good fights.”
A second ubiquitous element in the White American cultural narrative is a focus on what might be called “rugged individualism.” This is the notion that human beings are designed by God and nature to be totally self-reliant individuals. We tell ourselves that success in life is dependent on the decisions and actions of the individual standing alone. Of course, this is simply not true, evolutionarily or historically. Human beings are amongst the most social of living beings.
From the very beginning we are dependent on others for our survival and development. More specific to the United States, the White American narrative of rugged individualism begins with the myth of the early frontiersman wresting the land from nature and from its indigenous inhabitants. We seem to believe that these early settlers lived as isolated individuals whose success in creating a nation was due purely to their personal individual skills and capacities, including importantly the use of violence. We seem to believe that they “pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps.” Contemporary historians discount this idea by pointing out that the White settlers our were not really self-reliant; rather, they depended on government (for resources and opportunity) and community (for goods and assistance) for their success in claiming the frontier.
This “rugged individualism” blinds us to the truth that most of the rewards of human life come from the communities we live in. It leads us to mistrust our neighbors and our social institutions. It makes us anxious, fearful, and unhappy. It is illustrative to note that the societies that repeatedly are shown to the happiest on the planet report to scholars that their contentment comes from a sense of belonging and a strong trust in their fellows, their communities, and their social institutions. This, of course, is pretty much the opposite of White American rugged individualism.
Once again avoiding biological and historical facts, the White American cultural narrative also contains a belief in what is called “American exceptionalism.” This is the notion (loudly and repeatedly pronounced by our Presidents from Hoover through Reagan to Trump and Biden) that the United States is a special place, different from and better than any other country. It implies that White Americans were chosen by God and nature to realize “Heaven on Earth.” So, it follows that whatever they do and believe is good and those who oppose them or do things differently are evil. Indeed, this sense of exceptionalism means that if it takes violence to impose White American ways on others, that is acceptable and moral because they are, after all, “the chosen people.”
Our exceptionalism also means that we believe that White Americans have nothing to learn from the “best practices” of other nations. For instance, even though the Nordic nations are happier, more peaceful, more equal, and (it would appear) more democratic than the United States, White Americans still believe that they have nothing to learn from other nations. Such beliefs prevent our nation from adopting proven policies for dealing with problems like access to health care, growing socio-economic equality, crime, environmental decline, and the like.
Of course, to some extent all societies share a cultural imagination about who they are as a people. Many are fictional. Scandinavians look back to the Vikings and the Japanese remember the Samurai. Still, it seems that most other nations recognize that their cultural narratives are fictions no longer really relevant today. However, for some reason, White Americans often make the mistake of believing in their own myths. They take their cultural narrative to be true and relevant even today.
The ideal of the exceptional White American frontiersman standing alone and holding a gun is dysfunctional. It is killing us and our children. We are, I think better than that.
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Photo credit: iStock
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This Post is republished on Medium.
WHAT HAPPENED TO TIM BALLARD, THE MAN SOUND OF FREEDOM IS BASED ON?
BY RICHARD MILNER/ GRUNGE
JULY 21, 2023 11:00 PM EST
It's safe to say that Alejandro Monteverde's film "Sound of Freedom" has sparked more than its fair share of debate since its July 4 release, as well as caught on with the public in unexpected ways. As Catholic News Agency reports, Disney dropped the film in 2018. After that, it languished while its film-makers tried unsuccessfully to sell it to distributors like Netflix and Amazon, who rejected it because they thought no one would want to see a film about child trafficking. Now, as of June 20, it's already earned $100 million on a $14.5 million budget, in the process beating out massive blockbusters like the latest "Indiana Jones" and making cinema history through a 37% earnings increase from week one to week two.
At the center of the film stands Tim Ballard, portrayed by Jim Caviezel, best known for playing Jesus in "Passion of the Christ." Back in 2013, Ballard and others left the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to found the non-profit Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), which works to rescue children from sex trafficking. At the DHS Ballard was a special agent on the Internet Crimes against Children (ICAC) Task Force and an undercover operative on the U.S. Child Sex Tourism Jump Team. Those experiences form the story of "Sound of Freedom," which Ballard told Daily Signal centers on him disobeying orders to rescue children in Haiti and Columbia. Ballard remained CEO of O.U.R. before stepping away from the organization the month that "Sound of Freedom" debuted.
CENTER OF OPERATION UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Because Tim Ballard stands at the center of a very disturbing topic that evokes strong feelings — child trafficking — it's difficult to get clear, unbiased information about him, his past, his present, or his organizations — there are several at this point — or separate him from "Sound of Freedom." In a 2019 Fox News article Tim Ballard discusses having worked for Homeland Security for 12 years along the U.S.-Mexico border while stationed at Calexico, California. In the article he described human trafficking as "the fastest growing criminal enterprise on the planet" and the U.S. as "one of the highest, if not the highest, consumers of child sex." He stressed the need for a Trump-era border wall, a sentiment he repeated on The Daily Signal in June ahead of the launch of "Sound of Freedom." "Those kids pray for a wall," he said. "The wall will save their lives."
When Ballard wrote his Fox News article in 2019 he'd already headed up Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.) for five years. O.U.R. in its early days, he said, helped a 13-year-old girl from "Central America" dubbed "Liliana" escape sexual slavery somewhere in New York City. Another O.U.R. event — which featured Ballard collaborating with Columbian authorities — rescued 29 under-18 children from the sex trade, as a mini-feature on CBS Evening News shows, via YouTube. Around the time Ballard stepped away from O.U.R. the organization claimed to have rescued over 6,000 kids and arrested 4,000 traffickers.
CONTROVERSY AND FUNDRAISING
Tim Ballard left his role as CEO of Operation Underground Railroad before "Sound of Freedom" was released to work with The Nazarene Fund, as Vice says, a sister organization to O.U.R. owned and funded by former Fox News commentator Glenn Beck that aids the religiously persecuted around the globe. Ballard's role in the organization is unknown. Vice also says that Ballard is the co-founder of The SPEAR Fund, "inspired by the Sound of Freedom movie" but with a website containing no information other than a donation page. Ballard's role in this organization is also unknown. Why Ballard would choose to leave O.U.R. right at the release of "Sound of Freedom" is also unknown.
Regardless, Ballard's work has already left its footprint. Outlets like Rolling Stone attack "Sound of Freedom," calling it "a superhero movie for dads with brainworms ... designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy-addled boomer." In far more tempered language, Vox describes how "Sound of Freedom" wants to raise awareness of child trafficking but only emboldens QAnon conspiracists, a perspective adopted by a 2020 Vice exposé about O.U.R. itself. Meanwhile, another Rolling Stone article discusses Ballard's tendency to "self-mythologize," while Vice says that Ballard has "firmly established himself in the right-wing media ecosystem."
Meanwhile, all such discussions distract from the very real problem of human trafficking worldwide. The Human Trafficking Institute says that 25 million people were trafficked in 2022. Almost 5 million were sex trafficking victims, with 1 million of those being children. Ninety-nine percent were female.
LINKS AND PHOTOS
https://www.grunge.com/1344634/what-happened-to-tim-ballard-sound-of-freedom-movie/
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