In the news — the attack on individualism.

Having created a tag "the attack on individualism" — for reasons stated in the previous post — and gone back to find that subject in my archive, I wanted to look at the present and see how much of this topic was in the current news.

Here are a few things I found:

1. "Big Data Analytics Shows How America's Individualism Complicates Coronavirus Response" (UVa Today):

Painstakingly, and with tremendous amounts of data processed by 97 advanced computers, Jingjing Li, Ting Xu, Natasha Zhang Foutz and Bo Bian went county-by-county to track levels of individualism – measured by the amount of time each locality spent on the American frontier from 1790 to 1890 – and correlate individualism to social distancing compliance and COVID-19-related crowdfunding.... “We were astounded by the large magnitude of those numbers, because they suggest that variations in individualism could account for almost half of a policy’s effectiveness,” said Li, an assistant professor of information technology in the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce.

2. "Andrew McCutchen criticizes Yankees' hair policy: 'It takes away from our individualism'" (CBS Sports):

The Yankees' "appearance policy" has been in force since not long after George Steinbrenner purchased the team in the early 1970s. As the story goes, Steinbrenner didn't care for Thurman Munson's appearance during one singing of the national anthem, and he put in place the following mandates: "All players, coaches and male executives are forbidden to display any facial hair other than mustaches (except for religious reasons), and scalp hair may not be grown below the collar. Long sideburns and 'mutton chops' are not specifically banned."

3. "How Individualism Spreads Racism" by Jackson Wu (Patheos):

[In] “Why Can’t We All Just Be Individuals?” [Robin DiAngelo writes] "The Discourse of Individualism is a specific set of ideas, words, symbols, and metaphors –– a storyline or narrative–– that creates, communicates, reproduces, and reinforces the concept that each of us is unique individuals and that our group memberships, such as race, class, or gender, are not important or relevant to our opportunities."... Individualism allows the dominant group to claim everyone has equal opportunity and that success is possible through hard work. This criterion is then used to validate the status of members in the dominant group. At the same time, the individualistic standard justifies bias against marginalized groups, as though their lower status were the fault of their own laziness, immorality, or inferiority.... [A] collectivist mindset informs the arguments of many people in marginalized groups.... 

4. "Pope Francis warns society against reverting to individualism after the pandemic" (CNN).

5. "The difference between Trumpism and fascism" George Will (WaPo):

Europe’s revolutionary tradition exalted liberty, equality and fraternity until revolutionary fascism sacrificed the first to the second and third. Fascism fancied itself as modernity armed — science translated into machines, especially airplanes, and pure energy restlessly seeking things to smash. Actually, it was a recoil against Enlightenment individualism: the idea that good societies allow reasoning, rights-bearing people to define for themselves the worthy life.

Individualism, fascists insisted, produces a human dust of deracinated people (Nietzsche’s “the sand of humanity”), whose loneliness and purposelessness could be cured by gusts of charismatic leadership blowing them into a vibrant national-cum-tribal collectivities....

Fascism was entertainment built around rallies — e.g., those at Nuremberg — where crowds were played as passive instruments. Success manipulating the masses fed fascist leaders’ disdain for the led.... Donald Trump, an envious acolyte of today’s various strongmen, appeals to those in thrall to country-music manliness: “We’re truck-driving, beer-drinking, big-chested Americans too freedom-loving to let any itsy-bitsy virus make us wear masks.”