This is a version of High Noon. Gary Cooper didn’t want to take on all the bad guys by himself. He spent half the movie trying to solicit help. But when he didn’t get it, he didn’t quit and he didn’t back down. This is an American style hero. I suppose we are not as unique as we like to think we are, but I think in most cultures you have a hero leading an army. The Army of One is, I think, one of our particular ideosyncracies.
But One is always the unit of perception, is it not? And does not all change, or growth, or innovation, or improvement in any way have to begin with one person? Why are Americans so creative, at least entrepreneurially? Well, our system encourages it. We value it. We don’t punish it with silly levels of taxation. And we attract the best and brightest from around the world because of this, and because of our system of graduate education.
But there is something in the American character–at least, the traditional American character–which admired the solitary hold out, in a world of conformists. Think Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men. Would the Henry Fonda of that movie–which I think was intended to warn of the dangers of lynch mobs, as something which many people feared from the Right back then–be at home in today’s Democrats?
LOL. Not a fucking chance. If show trials and kangaroo courts aren’t your thing, then you are probably a Russian spy.