Mitt Romney as a Horatio Alger Story : wealthy capitalists are just exceptionally hard-working, smart, driven folk, these qualities are the cause of their wealth, and thus justification for it -- which erases birth, connections, luck, and other factors

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Condemnation of Mitt Romney as a "Pillar of Society" :

Robber barons rationalized their monopolies with myths and overstatements about rising from poverty to the pinnacle of success through smarts, hard work, discipline, and drive, all the while claiming to be the true source of America’s growing industrial strength.

Stars Through the Storm
Mitt Romney as a Horatio Alger Myth: You’ve Got To Be Kidding
January 21, 2012

By Dr. Jeffery Zavadil, a political theorist, intellectual historian, community activist, veteran, and public servant.


Mitt Romney as a Horatio Alger Myth: You’ve Got To Be Kidding


Some excerpts :

There is currently an effort underway by moderates and conservatives to normalize Mitt Romney and make him seem to be a hard-working contributor to society, just like you and me.  This effort is following some traditional patterns for asserting that wealthy capitalists are just exceptionally hard-working, smart, driven folk, that these qualities are the cause of their wealth, and thus justification for it -- which erases birth, connections, luck, and other factors that truly make for great wealth. You should, of course, decide for yourself, but it is vital to keep the record straight and our view of Mitt Romney clear, especially during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

David Brooks at the New York Times says that the Romney family history is a story of persistence in overcoming adversity to achieve success, and he cites Romney’s persecuted Mormon ancestors and his father’s early difficulties to garner sympathy for him. This is basically a variation on the Horatio Alger tales of the Gilded Age, when robber barons would rationalize their monopolies with myths and overstatements about rising from poverty to the pinnacle of success through smarts, hard work, discipline, and drive, all the while claiming to be the true source of America’s growing industrial strength. (Never mind that their wealth depended on skimming from the efforts of impoverished laborers, many of them immigrants, most who toiled endlessly but did not rise.)  Brooks asks: Is Romney an out-of-touch member of the one percent, with a character of entitlement formed by a lifetime of wealth, ease, and luxury? His answer:

“The notion is preposterous. All his life, Romney has been a worker and a grinder. He earned two degrees at Harvard simultaneously (in law and business). He built a business. He’s persevered year after year, amid defeat after defeat, to build a political career.

“Romney’s salient quality is not wealth. It is, for better and worse, his tenacious drive — the sort of relentlessness that we associate with striving immigrants, not rich scions.”

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